DTW 2024: 3×60 Finale

March 10th 2024

The final game I played at Dice Tower West 2024.

Thanks for watching!  For another DTW 2024 battle report, check out the 2×60 from the day before.

Not every day do you get the opportunity to attack multiple Limited Edition Spanish 5 masters with a crazy switchblade setup!

Parley?

Another Mysterious Island Exploit fleet

3/9/2024

The final Wizkids Pirates game between Captain Randy and I on the Saturday of Dice Tower West 2024.  60 point build total, with Randy combining some elements of his 40 and 50 point builds from earlier that day to make a new fleet.  We used the Las Vegas house rules (through the “RtSS legal” part), and ended up with a more spread-out map than the previous two games.

In accordance with my fleet strategy, I placed three copies of Mysterious Island (MI) #15. Randy placed one MI as part of his island contributions, one that I hadn’t memorized the effect of based on its shape. Since we were using MI’s, we needed to use a d6 to determine who placed each island during the Setup phase (to make it random). We placed 4 terrain each for 8 total. I had rolled to go first, so Randy chose my home island (HI) to be in a far corner of the map. I considered putting his HI at the MI he contributed (partly since I didn’t know what the effect was), but wanted to keep the MI’s in play for maximum fun/chaos and noticed that by putting him at the final lone non-MI available, he would likely not get ships in range of my native canoes on the first turn (knowing exactly where I wanted the canoes before I placed them).  I made sure to place the French native canoes at one of the MI #15’s, which happened to be quite close to another copy of the same MI.  🙂

The fleets in turn order:

Ben – Parley?

Celtic Fury started with her stern S away from my HI, ready to round earth immediately upon moving.  An empty L’Intrepide was my +5 selection, as events were banned per the house rules.  Princess Auraa, Jules de Cissey, and a tribal chieftain were content to camp out at home all game and watch the treasure pile up.  XD

The Cursed native canoes are easy to proxy in for the French ones, since they have the same cannon rank, point cost, cargo space and speed. These were 10 French canoes ready to farm mysterious island effects like their life depended on it!

Captain Randy:
Neptune’s Hoard + Hammersmith (F&S version), 1 crew
La Santa Isabel + Bianco’s Haulers, 2 crew
Bonnie Liz + Genny Gallows (SM version), Powder Pete
Libellule + explorer

We also agreed to use the chess clock, at 30 minutes per player (automatic loss for a player if their time runs out). It was Captain Randy’s first time using it, and my first time using it in a non-solo game.

I immediately started redocking the French native canoes at MI #15.  Upon flipping the MI to reveal its effects, Randy quickly caught on to the strategy and we had a good laugh about it.  I think only one canoe got the negative effect (marked by the S length straw), but most of them got the 5-6 effect: “Randomly move one treasure coin from this island to your home island.”  😮😂

Unlike the gimmick fleet used in the previous game, this MI effect did not require any exploring of the wild island – it was a simple automatic transfer of a random coin on the island to my HI.  A “direct deposit”, if you will. As a result, it works much quicker than even UPS – theoretically you could win the game almost immediately by redocking at least 4 canoes and getting lucky enough with the treasure distribution that the 4 coins sent home are worth 16+ gold!

In this case I only needed to redock 6 of the 10 canoes in order to fully drain the MI of all its resources.  All 4 of its coins were sent straight to my HI, netting me 14 gold (6,5,3,0) within the first move actions of the game!  The last 4 canoes sped off to another MI #15 just a short distance away, with one of them docking and sending a coin home (which I think was the French Royal Decree UT, lol).  For the Parley aspect of my fleet, it would be perfect if the coins sent home stayed face down so my opponent couldn’t see them, but we hadn’t established a house rule where coins on HI’s stay face down even in a 2 player game.  Of course, Parley hadn’t been revealed yet…

Celtic Fury and Intrepide both round earthed, eager to participate in the MI farming experiment. I flipped the SS version of Eileen Brigid O’Brien (aka my friend Tiffany, the former Wizkids Product Manager for the game), getting her SAT/Born Leader roll to catapult CF towards the MI #15 that the canoes likely wouldn’t get to.  Since the CF had her linked crew aboard, she would get +1 to MI effect rolls due to the Ex-Patriot keyword. Normally Tiffany and her crew complement on the CF would be worried about negative UT’s such as Plague or Missionary, but not in this case.  There was no need to explore the island – just redock and trigger the effect until the island is drained of all coins!

Captain Randy was not able to reach any of my ships on his turn.  This allowed 4 of my canoes to dock at their second overall MI #15, sending home 1 of its 3 remaining coins (farming efforts were slowed a bit lol, they were getting tired).  Celtic Fury also docked at the southernmost MI #15, sending home a coin. Those coins were 5 and 0, meaning that I had already won 19-0 after only a round and a half of play!! 😮😂  However, between this type of ending happening for the second game in a row and wanting to simply play more Pirates that day, we decided to keep playing, essentially just ignoring the “more than half” endgame condition.

An approaching Santa Isabel and Libellule means the canoes will likely have company soon, while Bonnie Liz headed through a whirlpool in search of undisturbed treasure.  Intrepide and some canoes head towards the CF’s island, ready to take up duties on the farm in case Tiffany gets too busy fighting to redock constantly.

Neptune’s Hoard got a little too close to Tiffany’s flagship!  Celtic Fury rumbled into action, with Tiffany’s SAT helping to deliver a devastating broadside that sinks the ship!

Bonnie Liz managed to get the 5-6 effect at the MI Randy had contributed, and it was one of the wild ones!  “When this ship explores this island, replace one treasure coin with a unique treasure from your collection.”  He chose Sunken Treasure to try to catch up in the gold race, but the double d6 roll was only 5 total.  Santa Isabel reached the canoes and shot 1/2 to eliminate one of them, also docking at the island and sending home a 0 coin (she also found the Celestine’s Charts UT that I had put in, which was inconsequential).  This was an unintentional way of actually limiting Randy’s fleet strategy – he wanted to load the 0’s and bring them home so Santa Isabel (or Bonnie Liz) could bonus them up with +2 gold, but the MI effect prevented that from happening by just warping it home!  (and you can’t load treasure from your own home island)  I believe CF got another SAT from Tiffany, going north to sink Libellule!

CF was on the Santa Isabel’s route home, so Captain Randy decided to simply shoot at her on the way by.  It was time to reveal the other part of my fleet strategy – Parley!

RotF Lenoir was flipped at last – she was still face down because I wanted her to be a funny surprise when actually using Parley, and because Tiffany had barely needed Lenoir’s Reroll (this was probably my luckiest day of playing Pirates CSG in multiple years).  Unfortunately the fleet strategy didn’t work out perfectly as planned – the random treasure transferred was a 6, the highest value coin on my HI. 😂  The idea is to warp home crappy coins like 0’s, negative UT’s such as Wolves/etc, and then Parley them to an opponent!  (as the frustration and amusement mounts)

However, this still prevented the CF from being shot at, allowing her to return fire with a full broadside and dismast the Santa Isabel on my next turn!

My farming efforts were less effective at this phase of the game, with various canoes being slowed by the negative effect and mostly worthless coins getting warped home.  The Charts and Wolves are just meant to slow opponents and not me, as I had no intention of ever exploring an island in this game.

Celtic Fury captured the Santa Isabel.  With only 1 mast remaining in play, Randy was unlikely to get any more treasure home. The Bonnie Liz didn’t have enough gold on her anyway to make up the difference, especially with Sunken Treasure decreasing in value each round.  In addition, I would have sank the Bonnie Liz before she could reach home, so we called it.

Scores:

1. Ben’s French: 16 gold
2. Randy’s mixed: 6

Another wild “proof of concept” game. When abused to the fullest extent, Mysterious Island effects can completely break the game. As in the previous game that day, I had all the luck on my side though. The fleets were arguably a bit lopsided, which was multiplied by the luck disparity.

I really like this fleet idea. It’s brutal but amusingly effective when things go right.  It’s a way to gamify multiple abilities and combos/effects in a way that destroys parity and can make a mockery of the game.  With 10 canoes redocking at an MI #15 on the first turn, it’s reasonably likely that the entire island will be drained right away.  The Ex-Patriot linked crew can help CF send coins home on her own, while Coeur could even assist by dropping the extra chieftain and trying to dock or explore a wild island at some point.  We saw one of the ideal situations in this game – high-value coins getting warped home early for a very quick win.  The other (arguably even funnier) option is that the canoes send home complete trash, such as the 0 and Wolves.  Then your opponent comes for CF when you have nothing good on the HI, and Lenoir parleys them the garbage coins before wreaking havoc and dismantling the opposition with up to 20 shots in the counterattack!  “One man’s treasure is another man’s trash”… in this case, it would be more shocking to have coins on HI’s face down, so that Lenoir knows what coins will be parleyed out, but the opponent can only respond with horror when they realize they’ve been had.

Feel free to know what you think of this gimmick fleet idea, or the games played at Dice Tower West.  Thanks for reading!

Dice Tower West Pirates

3/9/2024

In this 2 player 50 point game, I faced my friend Captain Randy. We were Dice Tower West Pirates, playing three consecutive games on one of the main days of the convention in Las Vegas.  We used the primary Las Vegas house rules (through the “RtSS legal” part).

I rolled to go first, with a new fleet I had concocted recently: Canoe Vacuum Farmers.  It’s essentially a UPS variant designed to be competitive at 50 points instead of 40 since I couldn’t figure out a satisfactory way to make it work well for a standard game.

Captain Randy went second with a mixed fleet including Neptune’s Hoard, Libellule, and Concepcion.

Randy picked my home island (HI) to be in the southwestern area, and I actually chose one of the Mysterious Islands (MI’s) I contributed to be his HI because I knew about its powerful vacuum “treasure suction” effect (wanting to keep his ships a bit further from the other MI). I intentionally placed my American native canoes at the MI #1 closest to my HI, knowing they would become professional farmers in record time. (“farming” is the term for continually redocking at a Mysterious Island in an attempt to trigger it’s effect(s))  We had agreed to place 3 terrain per player.  Ready to set sail!

How about this for game-breaking! “5-6: When this ship explores this island, randomly move two treasure coins from every other wild island to this island, and then choose which to take.”

With the first action of the game, I redocked some of the American canoes.  My luck was fantastic as it was this entire weekend – multiple canoes got the 5 or 6 needed to suction treasure from the other wild islands to the canoe island!  However, only that morning had I realized that there was a bit of a snag in the strategy – the suction didn’t happen upon docking at the island and rolling for effect, unlike some other Mysterious Island effects.  It would only vacuum the gold when the ship that rolled well explored the island, which would be on my next turn.  However, I got two of the positive effects and none of the negative 1-2 results.

But that was only one move action. I was still able to go nuts with Hai Peng. She loaded an oarsman from my HI and sacced it with Jimmy Legs, speeding out to reach the center island and exploring it.  Captain Jack Sparrow sent home a 5 coin to Coeur du Lion, who unloaded it for +2 gold with Maurice Aristide’s bonus.  Captain Randy then took his turn and sent his ships out to the islands, but with no action generators present and no chance of eliminating canoes, there was little hope of catching up to a UPS-style fleet.

The game was as good as over, in a shockingly fast rout of broken proportions. The native canoes explored, vacuuming up all the gold in play.  O_O  All treasure coins that remained on wild islands were suctioned to the canoe island, making it a “kingpin” stronghold of epic loot.  This meant that I had the pick of all the treasure in the game.  The canoes loaded all the lowest-value coins, leaving the best for Captain Jack Sparrow to send home for a very quick win.  He sent another 5 to Coeur for another 7 total with Aristide’s +2 bonus, then Jimmy Legs sacced another oarsman so he could send home the final 5 I contributed to the Rattlesnake, who was given her only action of the game to explore the HI and unload it.  This brought my total to 19 gold, enough for a 1.5 round 19-0 shutout victory.  O_O

In addition, I believe this might be the first time I’ve seen a game end so quickly where the winning fleet also had complete control over every treasure in the game – every single coin was either on my home island or on one of my ships.  That’s usually quite the rarity in general, let alone accomplished in only 2 turns.

This is a sickening “new” way to win by combining the UPS strategy with a gold-hogging Mysterious Island abuse tactic.  The canoes are included specifically so you can always have them start the game at an MI #1, and to give as many redocking chances as possible. At least one MI will always be wild, even if the other two in play are picked as HI’s.  The odds are decent that at least two of the five canoes will roll a 5-6 upon redocking, giving them a chance to trigger the suction effect on the second turn.  Even if they roll low and send treasure to a different wild island, as long as the last roll or two at the MI is the good effect, they can just warp it back when they explore.  By allowing CJS to have his pick of the best treasure, it’s very easy to send home the highest-value coins, which in some cases mean that only two coins will be enough to win.  (I will probably change the default treasure distribution of this fleet to be UT’s + 6,6,3 so the fleet can reach 16 on just 2 coins if Aristide adds +2 to both 6’s.  7,7,1 would also work of course.)

Of course, it’s a very luck-dependent fleet.  I was only able to execute the combos perfectly because I went first, got the right rolls at the MI, and neither the canoes nor the Hai Peng came under fire in the first round.  The HP also didn’t find any negative UT’s like Missionary at the center island.  However, another nice thing about vacuuming up all the gold is that when the “kingpin island” is explored, if all remaining treasure has been suctioned, there is a very high chance (100% chance if it’s the first island explored) that the Kharmic Idol or Pirata Codex will be there, wiping out any negative UT’s and allowing CJS to have free reign on sending home the best coins when he arrives.  I was very happy that things went right, as this game serves as a proof of concept for the idea.

When things go right, it’s hard to imagine a more game-breaking succession of combos.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more action!

Whirlpool Ride to Victory

2×40 at Dice Tower West 2024

3/9/2024

Day 2 of DTW kicked off with a 2 player, 40 point game between myself and my friend Captain Randy (twayne1047). This day was a bit of a wild west, as originally there was supposed to be at least one more player attending (who may not have had a fleet, or possibly never have played), but it turned out to be just us. I was also originally anticipating at least one other additional player at the event that is pretty knowledgeable about the game, so my fleets were a bit overkill for this Saturday of gaming.  However, I had been really looking forward to testing them out and this was a somewhat rare opportunity to do so in non-solo play.  I had also been itching to play some more complicated fleet ideas and whatnot.

We used the Las Vegas house rules (through the “RtSS legal” part) and placed 3 terrain per player – almost all fog.

I went first with The Grim Express.

Captain Randy followed with the Spanish:
La Santa Isabel + RotF Luis Zuan, tribal chieftain, helmsman
Bonnie Liz + Genny Gallows, Powder Pete, 1 crew
Spanish native canoes

I chose the Spanish home island (HI) to be west of mine, as I anticipated whirlpooling into the east.  However, I forgot about round earth, partly since it wasn’t used the day before and I haven’t been using it in T3.

I did a quick overview after my first turn:

It felt as though the game would end almost as soon as it had started. Banshee’s Cry loaded a 5 from the first island she explored (Mycron for two actions on the first turn), then she explored the adjacent island in the east so she could soak up any potential negative UT’s before Cassandra went in for some loot. She found the Pirate Globe, which flipped all coins on wild islands face up for the rest of the game. She didn’t load the 5,3,3 on the island, leaving Cassandra to dock and load those three coins. Cassandra then got an action from Mycron/Patagonia to go back home through the whirlpool, not taking any damage.  The Spanish explored, triggering the Pirata Codex and wiping out all the remaining UT’s.  However, neither La Santa Isabel nor Bonnie Liz would be able to catch Cassandra or the BC to stop them from getting home.

Round 3 saw Cassandra and Banshee’s Cry dock home their 16 gold for a shutout win!

1. The Grim Express: 16 gold
2. Spanish: 0

Many times in the past when using Calypso, I don’t get her roll to work on the first turn. Here it was a boon when combined with going first. In addition, I found 16/30 gold on the islands I whirled towards, making it easy to win without having to steal any gold with Grim or deal with the Santa Isabel.

The good news about it being a quick “whirlpool ride” of a game meant that we would easily be able to fit two more games in that day!

Dice Tower West 2024

5×40 Beginner Intro Game

3/8/2024

The first Wizkids Pirates game of Dice Tower West 2024 was at 5 players, 40 points!  Three of the players were brand new, and I had extras on hand to help them make their first fleets. It would be an introductory game with a few house rules to simplify and streamline the setup.

We placed 3 islands per player, 1 terrain per player, and each player contributed 8 regular coins of any total value (many of which were chosen randomly). We didn’t have room for the standard 3L-6L distance, so islands could be any distance apart. Home islands were chosen in reverse turn order. We did use flat earth rules (edges of playing areas as impassable boundaries), and generic crew could use their abilities on ships of any nationality (partly since we mostly just used paper crew chips).

Here is the setup!

Here are the fleets in play order:

French Corsairs:
Bey’s Revenge + captain
Desert Wind
L’Intrepide
Le Bon Marin

English:
HMS Goliath
HMS Sultan
HMS Granville + captain

French:
La Ville de Paris
Tepant
Cleopatre + oarsman

English Pirates:
HMS Nautilus + captain, 1 other crew
Gibraltar (flotilla)
Bloody Jewel + helmsman, explorer
Lynx + helmsman

Modified version of Guide Grim to the Goodies
-I removed The Hag of Tortuga, both events, all UT’s, and replaced the Banshee’s Cry+crew with El Chico. Also added an oarsman to Morocco to fill out the fleet at 40 points.

Desert Wind got into an altercation with the Granville on the former’s attempt to steal gold from the Sultan, but neither ship could do much damage initially. The Nautilus/Gibraltar combo took a few masts off Tepant, but sailed into the fog bank to avoid a larger conflict with the Ville de Paris.  Many ships scattered across the map in search of treasure.

The French Corsairs continued to harass the English, with the Bey’s Revenge getting involved. The “pure French” were the only fleet to struggle with gold collection, as La Cleopatre was sunk by the Nautilus/Gibraltar combo.

The English split up their schooners, with the Granville raking the Bon Marin and dismasting her.  Nautilus/Gibraltar hits twice on Morocco, but she has enough rowing speed to dock home her second haul of loot.

Neither Corsair galley took reef damage.

Over the course of a few turns, the French Corsairs managed to dismast the Granville and capture her, while Bey’s Revenge started towing the Bon Marin.  Nautilus/Gibraltar took out 2 masts on the Cassandra, but she was able to dock home her 3 coins and start repairing. Morocco has finished repairing from her encounter with the same enemy.  At the top of the frame, the slow French attempt a blockade of the English Pirates’ home island. However, Bloody Jewel (just out of frame north of them) would speed through it without being dismasted, netting a couple more coins for the English Pirates.

Both Granville and Bon Marin were towed home successfully by the French Corsairs, and repaired one mast each. Sultan made a move towards Granville, but thought better of it when realizing a failed ram could pin her indefinitely to a docked Granville at her new captor’s HI. At the end of the game, the English and French Corsairs did get into a larger scuffle than their initial battle, with HMS Goliath captured in the fray.  As the English HI was closest to Grim’s, this allowed the Cassandra to swoop in and steal 3 treasures.  The game ended due to time constraints before she could get it home, but it would still count since treasure on ships counts in multiplayer games.  The other final coins in play would also count – one each on Nautilus and Morocco.

Final Scores:

1. Guide Grim to the Goodies: 50 gold
2. French Corsairs: 28
3. English and English Pirates tied: 18 (English Pirate player had to leave a round early, so not sure who would have had more units in play)
4. French: 0

A solid intro game of Pirates CSG at Dice Tower West 2024!  All players had fun learning and playing the game, and everyone was able to fire the cannons today (my lone shot was a Jolly Mon miss lol).  Grim’s HI hoard netted me 7 from the English, so the only result change if that hadn’t occurred would be the English firmly in third ahead of the English Pirates (25-18).

Stay tuned for more, as more Pirates games are due to be played at the convention!