Tabletop Simulator 2025 – Fleet Challenge Semifinal Game
2/23/2025
I met up with Grammaring on Tabletop Simulator for our semifinal game of the Old vs New Tournament of Champions Fleet Challenge. My Spanish fleet from Golden Seas had won in the first round.
The fleets in play order:
Sometimes I just want to shoot something
This shot doesn’t show the 4th and final wild island to the south. Spanish in the west, Pirates in the east.
La Mensajera got busy spying coins to the east, alerting me that most or all of the 5-value coins (the highest value in play) were over there. She explored, finding Plague and Rum, soaking up their negatives so Grapa could come in and load the regular 3’s from the island. However, I forgot to use La Grapa’s ability that would likely have allowed her to reach home instead of being preyed on…. Oro del Oeste found Ghostly Encounter, which took out her explorer. This interrupted the explore action and prevented her from loading the other coins on the island (3,3,0), thus delaying her a crucial turn with Longshanks on the hunt. She loaded them on the next Spanish turn, but multiple conflicts were quickly approaching.
Oro starts heading home with Longshanks in pursuit. I was able to use Grapa’s ability and make up for my prior mistake by using it in an aggressive way. Grapa was not going to reach home before likely being dismasted by Harbinger, so instead she turned around, touched Mensajera to load Plague, and then use her ability to crash into Harbinger and plague the Pirates to wipe out their crew! This severely crippled Harbinger and meant she would be too slow to intercept Oro del Oeste. The Spanish got a successful scuttle roll for Mensajera.
Harbinger sank La Grapa (giving each player a 3 coin on their home island) and captured La Mensajera! On the previous turn, Longshanks had shot and rammed Oro del Oeste after catching up to her, taking out a mast. Oro continued sailing home as fast as possible, but was slowed after Captain Jack Hawkins slashed the throat of Antonio de Bolívares (due to Longshanks getting pinned).
In the game’s pivotal moment, Longshanks went for another move-shoot-ram attack, landing a shot but then rolling a 1 on the ram roll to leave Oro del Oeste with 1 mast standing! Oro’s Secret Hold keyword kept her gold safe, though her helmsman was knocked overboard by Hawkins.
Oro had just barely escaped an ugly fate, with enough sails set to return home with a nice haul of 8 total gold, bringing my total to 11. Now she needed to wreck herself to end the game as soon as possible.
Indeed it was too late for the Pirates to catch up in full, though they narrowed the score to 11-9 by warping Mensajera (and her Rum UT worth 6 gold) home with Harbinger. The Pirates went for more gold, but only two reef rolls were needed to turn Oro into a shipwreck, meaning the Spanish had no future move actions available.
Scores:
- Spanish: 11 gold
- Pirates: 9
There you have it! A close contest that went down to a single roll – if Longshanks succeeds on one more d6 roll (such as that final ram), the Pirates would win on Units in Play (3-3 gold tie). The Golden Seas Spanish fleet moves on to the finals of the Fleet Challenge tournament.