Seafair Pirates CSG

8/6/2023

Ahoy mateys!  I met up with Kyle for a pair of epic scale games, as we were Seafair Pirates for a day!  Seattle Seafair is an annual tradition featuring hydroplanes and the Navy’s Blue Angels, and we figured it was a great event to showcase an outdoor game in the beautiful summer of the Pacific Northwest.  We played at Aubrey Davis Park on Mercer Island, getting a good view of the jets on numerous occasions.  It was also a great opportunity to get more attention on the game, and I handed out about 9 OE packs to about 5 interested parties throughout the afternoon.

When I play epic scale it’s usually a very casual game, so although we used a few of the usual house rules, they were mostly confined to the terrain changes.  We did a draft to pick our pieces, with 80 points for the first game.  Most of the past epic scale games have seen a crazy mishmash of factions for most of the fleets, so my goal with the draft was to have a bit more of a faction theme this time around.  I rolled to go second, so I drafted first. I ended up with Revenant, Emerald Rose (a custom 3 master made by PDXYAR, the originators of the epic scale fleet), Grinder and A Fearsome Creature for a Cursed Pirate fleet.  I was tempted to pick the 11 point Flying Dutchman as my final ship as the more pragmatic option, but couldn’t resist using a kraken in epic scale for the first time!  That meant I had 23 points to spend on crew, so I got Emperor Blackheart for the Revenant, who would also have a captain. Emerald Rose had a captain and helmsman, with helmsman and explorer on the Grinder.

The Emerald Rose is a really nice looking ship!  At some point I’ll have to repair her port quarter main deck area, but it works fine for now with the quarterdeck attached to hold the port side in place.

Kyle drafted HMS Interceptor, President, Nautilus and Proud Tortoise for a wide variety of ship types.

4 wild islands with 4 coins each; we placed 5 terrain each.

On the second turn, Emperor Blackheart got a 5 with All-Powerful!  He sent A Fearsome Creature through a whirlpool, then used the second action to move away from the exit whirlpool to surround the Proud Tortoise!

So close to the gold!  But the turtle ship is likely doomed.

Kyle flips Mercer to give HMS Interceptor a Sac action coming out of a different whirlpool!

Emerald Rose is dismasted and her captain killed in the ensuing boarding party!

Proud Tortoise scored a hit, but was no match for the kraken.

The turtle ship was ripped apart by the giant tentacle arms, with wreckage strewn about.

Grinder had picked up a couple coins from an island near my HI, but the whole island was only worth about 4 gold (I think the coins were 2,1,1,0).  She hid in nearby fog on the way back home to avoid the dangerous President, but more action was brewing in the east!

Blackheart brings the Revenant through the whirlpool and uses his extra action to move and shoot, taking advantage of the ability to shoot through ships.  However, she only goes 1 for 5!  (even with some interested little kids providing their “newbie luck” and rolling some of the the dice for me heh – they rolled better when Kyle attacked lol)

I filmed the second action of the Interceptor’s counterattack:

Blam!  Just like that, most of the Pirate fleet is decimated.

President sails out of the fog bank and sinks the Revenant!

Interceptor captured the Emerald Rose but dropped the tow to search for treasure.  President and Nautilus began setting up a blockade of my home island, which in the past has sometimes signaled that I will win the game….

A Fearsome Creature guards the whirlpool to let Grinder collect more gold in peace.

The remainder of my fleet whirls home with 2 coins on the Grinder, who loses another mast to whirlpool travel.

However, the President sinks the Grinder and her coins!

With only the slow kraken left in play, my best hope was to surround the HMS Interceptor and sink her gold before she could unload it at home, or just end the game as soon as possible.  Interceptor was moving L+S (rather than L+L+S) with a mast missing, which helped a bit.

Incredibly, on the first attempt to dash the poor kraken on the reef next to Kyle’s HI, I rolled a 2!  This eliminated all of A Fearsome Creature’s remaining segments, killing the beast and ending the game!

1. Cursed Pirates: 3 gold
2. Mixed alliance: 0

It was a bit of an odd game and abrupt ending, so we decided to play another.  This time we’d have 60 points to make a fleet using mostly only the stuff we had already drafted.  The setup would have 3 wild islands instead of 4, and 4 terrain placed per player instead of 5.  The kraken and submarine were removed from the fleets, with a few small crew edits as well. Kyle had a ton of room for crew so he took Lawrence and an oarsman (latter proxied by Fitzgerald as we were already using the rest) and put them on his HI.

This time I rolled to go first.

HMS Interceptor provided some deja vu on Kyle’s first turn, saccing to dismast the Emerald Rose!  This second sacking of the cool custom made by PDXYAR angered the Cursed Pirates, who vowed revenge!

Indeed, retribution came swiftly.  Blackheart whirled into action once again, with his Revenant much more accurate on the cannon volley this time around.  Revenant moved to tow the Emerald Rose out of the way of Grinder’s aft gun, so I had all 8 available cannons in range between both of my shooting ships.  Grinder hit 1/2 on the President.

Mercer threw the Interceptor’s captain overboard to propel the ship home via the whirlpool (Sac needed to reach the whirlpool with 2 actions at S+S speed).  President followed, but Emperor Blackheart’s rage was not satisfied.  He followed them back, determined to win a conclusive engagement.  President survived, but Interceptor did not.

Carnage all over the park today!

President began repairing, Proud Tortoise headed home with gold, and Revenant headed away from danger and toward a new island.

Grinder was towing the Emerald Rose home for repair, with the Revenant whirling back to home waters.

Proud Tortoise raced northeast to try for more gold, but would be looking at facing the entire fleet of dangerous rank-2 cannons in the Cursed Pirate fleet on the return trip.

The game ended soon afterwards – Emperor Blackheart got a 6 to toss the President into harm’s way, where the Emerald Rose finally got some personal revenge, blasting her apart and sinking her with help from the Revenant. On the next turn he got a 5 for All-Powerful, allowing the Grinder to corner the Proud Tortoise and shoot away her shell panels.  At this point Kyle conceded, with no way of getting the PT home alive.  I knew I had 7 gold on my HI and Kyle couldn’t have more than 6 (he had one coin and I mentioned to him that PDXYAR didn’t make any 7 coins for epic scale), so I didn’t need to keep the PT alive and collect more gold to ensure victory.

1. Cursed Pirates: 7 gold
2. Mixed alliance: 5

The pictures don’t show it but there was quite a crowd by the time we left!

We also had a great view of the Blue Angels throughout the games – pictures don’t do it justice but we saw some really cool low flyovers as well.

Epic Scale at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle

10/15/2022

After our 5×40 game in Bellevue to start the Saturday, Xerecs, L0rdgingerbread and I sailed off to Cal Anderson Park in Seattle for a game of Epic Scale Pirates!  We used the usual house rules for the weekend, but did away with the setup specifics because it would be a faster and more casual game.  We did a draft to pick our fleets, and this is what we ended up with:

L0rdgingerbread
Grinder + helmsman, oarsman
Shaihulud
Proud Tortoise + helmsman, explorer

A7XfanBen
President + captain, helmsman
Nautilus + captain, helmsman

Xerecs
Enterprise + explorer
Gog-Clocthoth
Le Coeur du Lion

We only did 3 wild islands, with 4 coins on each of them along with some terrain.

True to form, 3S cannons were completely useless to me.  The Nautilus immediately attacked, but missed all shots and her ram and board against the Grinder.  Spencer did heavy damage to the sub in his counterattack!

Our other ships got into an engagement as well, but my “luck” had truly deserted me, with the President failing to dismast the Proud Tortoise with a ram roll of 1!  Even the big foam dice aren’t any good for me!  XD  In the background, Xerecs has explored an island and looks to transfer some of the treasure to the Coeur du Lion.

Unreal!  The Proud Tortoise is immune to the President’s L-range cannons, so Spencer could just keep me pinned and plink away if he wanted to, forcing me to rely on Xerecs’ approaching Enterprise to break up the situation.

The President loses masts as the Enterprise closes in:

The President was able to shoot a few masts off the Enterprise while pinned – I didn’t want to make an enemy of Xerecs, but I was worried Xerecs would take out the PT and President in one volley or extra action (EA), which would eliminate me from the game (the Nautilus had been sunk by now).  In the background the Grinder and Coeur have unloaded coins, with Shaihulud stalking Xerecs’ HI.

The Proud Tortoise ran for it, but was just barely caught by the President, who finally succeeded with a ram to dismast the turtle ship.  I captured the PT on my next turn and was back in business to some degree.  I had the PT dump her coins back on the island, as I had some swapping to do if I was going to get any coins home from such weakened vessels.

The coins on the island were somewhat low value (including a 0), so the Proud Tortoise explored it for me, re-dumped her explorer, loaded a crappy coin, and the President redocked for a free explore to load the two best coins from the island.  An interesting sort of HI stalemate is developing between the Bowen brothers in the background.  The Enterprise is headed home both to unload a coin and to repair.

The President was able to get the coins home to my HI and I believe the Coeur was sunk.

The President and Enterprise repair, the latter only after some bad fog rolls that forced her to stay hidden because Shaihulud blocked her path home. Spencer has recaptured his PT with the Grinder, but if you look closely you can see I’ve deked him slightly by putting the 0 on her knowing she wouldn’t be fast enough to row home for me.

The Grinder drops the tow to load the final coin worth any value in play (a 1) as American warships repair!

Sometime during this endgame we did a quick count to see if the final coin would matter, which revealed that Xerecs would win in a landslide either way!  However, Spencer was at 8 and I was at 7, so we decided to play out the carnage for fun and to see who might get second place.

The fully repaired President was finally able to shoot a full broadside, smashing up the Grinder:

Spencer dismasted the President on his next turn, dooming my game:

Gog-Clocthoth surfaced to snack on some turtle shell panel.  Indeed, it was nearly time for us to return to Mox Boarding House Bellevue for dinner.  XD

This game of Epic Scale was over!

1. Xerecs: 21 gold
2. L0rdgingerbread: 9
3. A7XfanBen: 7

Xerecs had found a bevy of valuable coins on the island he explored with the Enterprise, which was enough to secure the win!

Huge thanks to the Bowen brothers for flying up from LA and being great friends!!  😀

Lake Union Park Seattle – Debut of Epic Scale Pirates in Washington!

9/24/2022

I met up with Kyle at Lake Union Park in Seattle for the debut of PDXYAR’s Epic Scale supersized version of the game!  We had a 60 point game using our house rules.  We did a draft to make our fleets.  I rolled to go first with the following:

Revenant + captain, helmsman, firepot specialist, oarsman
HMS Interceptor + captain, helmsman, oarsman
Grinder + captain, helmsman

Kyle’s fleet:
Enterprise + captain, oarsman
Muninn + captain, helmsman
HMS Sea Phoenix + helmsman
Le Coeur du Lion

We had a number of passerby check out the game, so we explained the basics of the game in between actions. I was happy to give out some OE packs and my contact cards.

My ships sailed out, looking for nearby gold and anticipating whirlpool usage if I would need to get more.  We used some spare bags of the explored island skull tokens to weigh coins down so they wouldn’t blow away.  🙂

It was the perfect weather and setting for a game!

HMS Interceptor about to snag some coins:

Kyle had great luck and timing with the Enterprise’s EA – soon after this it would trigger to allow the Enterprise to dock at and explore a wild island in the same turn.

The Grinder and Revenant teamed up to load the 3 coins at their island worth value – there was also a 0 there.

At last some conflict was upon us!  The Interceptor blazed ahead to rake the Enterprise, but only went 1 for 4!

After the Enterprise dismasted her, the Interceptor revealed her oarsman to row S+S towards the reef.

I wasn’t convinced I needed the Interceptor to win, as I had seen 16 gold between the two wild islands I had explored.

This was indeed the case, and I had won by the standard rules by a score of 16-14.  There were two 0’s on the islands Kyle had explored.  Since our PNW games are normally played under the multiplayer rules where the game only ends when all available gold has been unloaded to home islands or only one player can give future move actions, we decided to keep going a bit between the coins in play and HMS Sea Phoenix being a home island raider that could potentially turn the tide in Kyle’s favor.  Plus, we hadn’t seen much combat or excitement, so it was worth playing out a bit.

I was just going to camp at home to protect my gold, so Kyle took lots of “simulated” turns in a row to group his entire fleet near my HI.

Since I had already won by the standard rules I wasn’t interested in a drawn-out maneuvering chess match, so the Grinder took the opportunity to speed out and land a hit on the Sea Phoenix.  I figured I should go big or go home, so the Revenant sailed out of her comfy berth and got into the action as well, sending splinters flying across the decks of the Enterprise and Coeur!

Banana for scale!

When the dust settled, the Enterprise, Grinder and Coeur lay mastless.  The Revenant was able to survive some shots from the Muninn, essentially ending the game shortly afterwards by dismasting the Sea Phoenix!

1. Ben: 16 gold
2. Kyle: 14

In the end I simply got lucky with the treasure distribution, as 16 of the 30 gold was on the two wild islands closest to my home island.  Ironically I contributed a single 0 and found it, while Kyle contributed two 0’s and found both of them.

It was a great start to playing epic scale Pirates in Washington!  I highly recommend Lake Union Park in Seattle if you make it up here, and let us know if you’re coming so we can play at a park together!  😀    The “Queen Anne’s Revenge” is behind us.  🙂