Tag Archives: 2025
Lucky Yeh International and the original Pirates dies
Back in 2022, an eBay listing was sold and eventually ended up with a Pirates CSG collector. From that listing, it became known that Lucky Yeh International (also known as the Lucky Group and Lucky Worldwide) was one of the primary suppliers Wizkids used during the original production runs of Pirates CSG.
In this case, the Michael in question was probably Angotti, but could also have been Mike Selinker or Mike Mulvihill
I have reached out to Lucky Yeh multiple times through many different channels, to no avail.
-March 2022: Sent messages through their website, another site, and 4 of their email addresses (some couldn’t be delivered to). Tried calling them but my phone couldn’t dial the Hong Kong/etc number.
-August 2023: Mailed physical letter to their Hong Kong location with questions about the dies (letter is at the bottom of this post). It just so happens that the first person I taught how to play Pirates is from Malaysia and knows Cantonese, so he verified the Chinese translation of the letter as well (it was also sent in English).
-November 2024: Sent inquiry through tradeeasy
-December 2024/January 2025: Messaged Lucky employees on LinkedIn (no responses so far)
-November 2024 – January 2025: In contact with them through Alibaba, to no avail. Representative was not able to connect me with anyone in the Hong Kong office, and couldn’t confirm any information about the dies and pictures shown in this post.
I have a feeling that either nobody there can ever say anything about the dies (even just their cost to produce and what happened to them), and/or there may be no employees still working there that worked on the project as late as 2008.
Credit to Matt for all of the pictures.
Here are the previous discussions about this in the Pirates community: Initial Discord posts, Full posts with reveal
Here is the letter I sent them in the mail back in 2023:
Greetings,
I am interested in the work that Lucky Yeh International did for Wizkids on the Pirates Constructible Strategy Game (CSG) around 2004 and likely afterwards until possibly around 2008 when the game went out of print. I have included an example of a card from the game. It was also known as Pirates of the Spanish Main and Pirates of the Cursed Seas.
I would appreciate any answers to a few questions:
1. Does your company still have any of the equipment used to make the game? (such as dies used to press/punch the styrene cards)
2. If you still have any of the equipment, are you able to sell it? If so, how much would each item cost?
3. Do you have financial information about the production costs that you are able to share?
4. How exactly were the cards for the game made? (including the artwork, coloring, number of cards per sheet, and how the artwork was applied to the styrene cards.)
5. Was your company the primary and/or sole producer of the game during its entire production run from 2004-2008? If not, do you know what other companies were involved in the production process?
Thank you!
Ben
Old vs. New Tournament of Champions Final
Old vs. New Tournament of Champions Final
2/24/2025
Congrats to Foxtrot for winning the Fleet Challenge!
Tabletop Simulator 2025 – Fleet Challenge Semifinal Game
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.
Spanish Main vs. Golden Seas: 40 point Fleet Challenge tournament matchup
Fleet Challenge: Old vs New Tournament of Champions! (Discord invite link if you need to join)
Fleets in the order of play:
JW Darkhurst: https://psmlist.com/public/fleet/show/6HUE9KTGM94M5Y59
Ben: https://psmlist.com/public/fleet/show/YQ293ABX62C672FU
With a 17-0 victory, the Spanish move on to the next round in the Fleet Challenge tournament. (Spanish would win 18-16 if we had played until all gold was unloaded)