Here are the Restarting Rules and New Master Keyword List, initially developed for use with the new set (Pirates of the Golden Seas). The first draft was finished in July 2021, and underwent numerous revisions until the current version was finalized in August 2024. Woelf (the Rules Arbitrator) was consulted heavily throughout the process.
-One rules document. (not split into Start Here and Complete Game)
-2 action limit is clearly defined under “Rules of the High Seas”
-The standard build total is 60 points instead of 40.
-The “any build total can be chosen” part is underlined for emphasis.
-“Events should not be used unless all players agree to allow them.”
-Round Earth is now the default boundary rule
-Flat Earth now includes: “Players cannot voluntarily move their ships over the edge.”
-Islands must be placed at least 2L from each other (rather than 3L)
-Terrain can be placed anywhere on the play area, and each piece can touch any other piece of terrain or islands.
-The last player chooses their home island first, followed by the second to last player, and so on until the first player is the last to choose their home island.
-Changes to links: “When two linked crew are assigned to the same ship, they share a single cargo space. In the same way, if one crew is assigned to a ship to which it is linked, that crew does not take up cargo space. If multiple links are present on a ship, all crew that link share the same single cargo space. Links are considered rules rather than abilities, so they are not subject to the No-Stacking Rule, and they cannot be cancelled or copied.”
-Movement bonuses can be applied at any time during a move action, rather than just at the end after base move segments are completed (original rule only appears in The Pirate Code, not in the Start Here or Complete Game rules).
-Boarding: Winner chooses whether to take a treasure or eliminate a crew; winner chooses which treasure to take; loser chooses which crew to eliminate.
-Made it clear that towing can occur when a ship is touching the bow of a derelict, not just at the end of a move action.
-Docking a towed ship at an island or fort when the towing ship docks is now optional.
-Ships with any number of masts can now ram and board (they don’t need to have at least one mast).
-A successful ram eliminates masts – removed the part saying “(remove from the game)”.
-Treasures are always looked at when exploring.
-Treasure from a sunken ship is not split between players in a 2 player game. It is always removed from the game regardless of the number of players.
-Added: “The number of flags on a fort must match the number of cannons it has when first built.”
-Players are not required to unload regular (non-UT) treasure when they dock at friendly forts.
-Forts can repair with a shipwright in them (including when they have no flags left).
-Removed the wording around Abandoned forts because it is unnecessary (first sentence moved to Shooting section, second sentence irrelevant with shipwright-repair option).
-Icebergs can continue moving after hitting islands
-Sargasso Sea reworded for clarity
-Whirlpools are bad on rolls of 1-3 and equipment can be lost to them.
-Sea creature rules moved to the back/bottom of rules. Text heavily modified and specific game mechanics will be addressed as part of sea creature type keywords, not in the sea creature rules.
-No “more than half the starting gold” endgame condition in 2 player games.
-Endgame condition changed to only one player can give future move actions (rather than half or more players cannot give future move actions)
-Added some Pirate Code text to maximize clarity of rules.
-Some wording changes for clarity/brevity/etc.
Changes to the Master Keyword List:
-Shipwright (made better).
-Sea Monsters may move and shoot using the same move action.
-Sea creature type keywords: Revamped in various ways. Now each keyword says what that creature type can do, without overly relying on the sea creature rules to define what they can and can’t do.
-If a sea monster or titan eliminates crew via boarding, it may repair one of its segments as a free action.
-Scorpions can board sea creatures with their blade attack.
-Changed “boarding action” to “boarding party”.
10/22/2020: I’m a day late for a Trafalgar Day game, but this is the game I’ve been wanting to play for almost a month, ever since my package from Cloud of Craft Gaming arrived and in the same week I 3D printed my first ship. 😀
I’ve had mixed success with 3D printing ships so far, having initial success very early before running into a myriad of issues (all my fault lol, I’m a total beginner). However, I have made some progress and improvements (don’t use “soft” PLA for Pirates stuff!), and now have an additional 4 master in addition to a 5 master. I did not create any of the files used to 3D print any of the stuff used in this game. Here are the resources I used:
-Both forts and the Skull Island volcano were printed at about 50-65% size, with 10-20% infill.
This was a “concept game” to test what it would be like to play with a combination of regular Wizkids ships, the wooden ships, and 3D printed PLA ships – along with 3D printed island/fort stuff. The setup and fleet makeup was secondary to showcasing the stuff and trying it out, but nicely enough the game turned out surprisingly great!
I am not concerned with artwork yet, which is why things are bare and white. I hope to delve into that eventually, but for now my focus is on 3D printing (ex: getting more ship types available in terms of files/etc).
Here are the fleets used in the order of play – 4 at 50 points each. All game pieces from Wizkids can be found in the Master Spreadsheet, while most of the customs are from my Epic Seas set in the Customs Database.
The Cursed
Devil’s Glory + Ebenezer Foxe (from Riz; has Captain+Helmsman), Disciples of Lucifer (Cannoneer+Crew Protect), oarsman
Namazu (RtSS)
Just using basic crew chips to proxy in for the other crew. (C+H for Foxe, blank for Disciples)
Pirates
Tempest + Emperor Blackheart, helmsman, oarsman
Spanish Mercenaries
Fortaleza + captain, helmsman, oarsman
El Neptuno + helmsman
El Picador
The Spanish were the one faction “civilized” enough to have an actual building on their home island. 🙂
Americans
Cascade + Jonathan Haraden, John Paul Jones, helmsman, oarsman
Jarvis + explorer
The Islands
Skull Island volcano has a special house rule – when a ship docks at it, they have to roll a d6. On a 1-2, choose one crew from the ship to be removed from play. Dead spirits haunt the island and are looking for new recruits.
I love how intricate this one is, and how the staircase leads up to the top:
With the Pirate deathbat flag (and podcast logo) fittingly in the background:
Maybe the island will take flight?! 😉
The circular fortress has 12 cannons, all at 3L and they can only fire in a straight line from where the cannons are actually pointing. The fort can be hit normally, and each hit eliminates a cannon (ships actually choose which cannons to shoot at to eliminate). On the 12th and final hit, the fort is destroyed and the fleet that got the final hit automatically gets 10 points/gold towards their final score.
The Torus fort has no cannons, but must be stormed to get to the gold inside. When a ship docks here, they can roll for a boarding party against the fort. The fort has a base boarding roll of 2 (like a 2 masted ship). When a ship wins, they can take a number of coins from the fort equal to the boarding score difference. If the fort wins, no gold can be taken and the losing ship eliminates a mast.
Ready for action! Round earth rules in effect! Also, no damage from ramming.
It doesn’t take long for shots to ring out! Guided by Blackheart’s All-Powerful, the Tempest smashes 2 of the fort’s cannons right away.
The Cursed and Spanish both head east. What a sight! A 3D printed 5 master and fort, a wooden 10 master and wooden sea serpent, and El Neptuno! 😀
The Cascade shuts down two more of the fort’s guns – could this lead to a conflict between the Americans and Pirates?
The Jarvis is brave enough to sail for Skull Island volcano!
The Devil’s Glory is the first to storm the Torus fortress! She succeeds and loads 3 coins! (should have been more but I forgot about Hidden Gold)
The circular fort is proving to be rather inept, missing the Tempest and not finding any good ranges to the Cascade:
The Pirates go rogue and blast the Cascade! Both the ship and fort take damage!
With a double action via All-Powerful, the Tempest lays waste to the American ship! Blackheart purposely kept the Cascade in between the fort and the Tempest, making sure the fort would have trouble reaching the Tempest if any cannons were in range.
El Neptuno’s crew storm the castle! Both sides fight admirably but the Spanish come out on top! 3 coins are loaded after the 11-8 score differential.
Here comes the Fortaleza!! She rounds the big island and gets her bow L range cannons in range of the Devil’s Glory! One connects, no doubt angering The Cursed.
The Americans have a decent turn, taking 3 coins from Skull Island as the Jarvis avoids getting spooked, while John Paul Jones gets the Cascade home to repair with SAT.
Submerged prior to now, Namazu has surfaced! I have a bad feeling I know what that S range straw means….
TIDAL WAVE ATTACK!!
Namazu’s wave attack blasts through two thirds of the Spanish fleet, dismasting El Picador and doing damage to the Fortaleza:
The Fortaleza’s “fort” mast has fallen on the Torus fort:
Spanish forces watching at home are horrified by what they witness. Unfortunately for the Spanish the atrocities will continue!!
Wave attacks like Namazu and Neptune’s Trident are one of the most fun things in Pirates CSG!
The Cursed aren’t done yet! The Devil’s Glory shoots 4/4 to smash the Fortaleza even more!
Barely needed Wizkids stuff to play this game 😀
With the Glory’s Cargo Wrecking ability, the cannonade also eliminated all three of the Fortaleza’s crew!!
Back in the east, the Tempest does work, eliminating an additional 5 cannons from the fort.
The Fortaleza gets some measure of revenge, taking two masts off the Devil’s Glory:
The Neptuno headed for home, towing the Picador on her way back. However, this slight deviation of course proved unfortunate for Spain, because they had unwittingly put themselves into the line of fire (or line of tsunami) again….
Another tidal wave attack by Namazu blasts another 4 masts off the ships!!
The Fortaleza is really hurting now:
The Pirates finish off the circular fort, netting them 10 gold automatically! Then the Tempest heads even further east, probably looking to round earth towards the chaotic western area!
Realizing their mistake of towing the Picador, and wanting to get gold home before the Tempest potentially arrives with a bang, the Neptuno scurries home to unload her coins. I put them under the cube building, which is the perfect size for coins.
The Fortaleza hits on both of her shots to kill Namazu! The great beast is dead, but not before taking out 8 masts in successive tsunami blasts!
An overview of the small sea, showing that the Americans have gotten back on their feet with gold and repairs.
Not bothering to repair, the Devil’s Glory comes out for another round! She hits twice to dismast the Fortaleza!
Emperor Blackheart is here to take over the game! However, his crew barely wins a boarding party (8-7) against the Torus fort, only escaping with one coin.
El Neptuno plans to round earth and join the Jarvis at Skull Island, but the excitement here lies with the Cascade joining the other gunships in the west!
The Devil’s Glory pulls off a sweet maneuver, angling into the island to tow the Fortaleza as she docks at the fort to steal its final coin!
But Emperor Blackheart is All-Powerful!! He sinks the massive junk and prepares to wheel around the stern of the Devil’s Glory!
The Tempest knocks down the DG’s final masts:
SEVERE CARNAGE
The Cascade arrives, taking two masts off the Tempest and killing her oarsman! She captured the Devil’s Glory (oops) and had her explore the Cascade, grabbing her coin. This shouldn’t have happened since the DG had both Crew Protect and Oarsman aboard.
I was just playing this game to showcase the new stuff and I got a horrid bloodbath! O_O
The Tempest shoots at the Cascade and hits her with a wave attack!! Namazu’s not the only one who can do that in these parts…
The Jarvis isn’t so lucky this time, with her explorer abandoning ship to join the dead at Skull Island.
The Cascade rows away at 4S and the DG at 2S (realizing my mistake on the latter, keeping the Cursed alive).
Blackheart continues to take over the game, sinking both ships!!
The Tempest finally succeeded at her whirlpool generation ability, placing one next to the Pirate home island in case they would be able to make a quick getaway soon (if another whirlpool was placed elsewhere). The 1 on their HI just represents the 10 from the destroyed fort.
The Neptuno loses her helmsman to the spirits of Skull Island! The island may have been drained of gold today, but it gained two new souls… perhaps we will see it again….
The desperation of the endgame has begun. Blackheart gets his first 6 with All-Powerful and commands the Jarvis to shoot at the Neptuno! However, she shoots 0 for 3! XD
The Neptuno flees, but gets rammed by the Jarvis again. The Jarvis again loses the boarding party, failing consistently here at the end of the game. Blackheart arrives in the Tempest to bring the Neptuno down to 1 mast, with all 3 ships nearly at Ocean’s Edge!
The Jarvis does something I try to avoid but could not in this situation: a round earth ram! She finally wins a boarding party to steal a coin.
El Neptuno does a high wire act, reminiscent of the Black Pearl at the end of Dead Men Tell No Tales:
The Jarvis wouldn’t fit on the other side, leading to the main awkward thing about using round earth. Still worth it though!!
The uncaptained ships were content to make their way home with a coin apiece, but as Thanos said, “destiny still arrives.” In Pirates CSG that destiny takes the form of All-Powerful Emperor Blackheart, rolling another 6 to force the Neptuno away from her own home island. The Tempest round earths and slaughters her final mast, eliminating the Spanish from the game.
The Tempest captured the Neptuno and brought her to the Pirate HI, while the Jarvis got home with another coin for the Americans. With all gold unloaded, it was finally over.
I had no idea the game was going to be this bloody and full of carnage, with nearly all ships sunk or dismasted:
In the end, The Cursed claim victory!
The Cursed: 18 gold
Americans: 14 gold
Pirates: 12 gold
Spanish: 7 gold
What a game! Not only was it exciting and a bit crazy throughout, there were even close scores at the end. This game was like a love letter to Pirates in a way – even with a rushed setup and quick gameplay, it was absolutely incredible! It really showed how great the game is overall.
The new stuff was great to see in action for the first time. The wooden ships have really neat artwork, while the 3D printed ships feel about as sturdy as the original styrene models. Some improvements should be made with the 3D printed stuff, since the ships aren’t perfect (not saying this is the fault of the file creators, I think it’s just somewhat inevitable). However, playable is awesome to have so soon after getting my printer. I also really like the 3D printed forts and island, though I think in the future I’ll change the fort rules a bit, probably making them more difficult to face if in the same category of an NPC. They could also be regular forts, or maybe even start as NPC before being taken over and used by a player. Tons of possibilities and fun house rules!
If you love Pirates CSG, I do recommend the Ender 3 V2 as it led to exactly what you saw in this report! Now that I’ve played this game I plan to continue working on 3D printing Pirates stuff when I have time. If you have any contributions of your own, feel free to post them in the 3D printing thread.
The Adventure Book is a unique item that was never fully released. Only two copies are currently known to exist. It sold for $53.33 in an eBay auction back in 2011. Between the awesomeness of J_ARRRRR_P and Woelf, we now have the entire contents of the book available! The scenarios were released in 2011, and official Wizkids documents provided by Woelf show most of the stories, save for the last one. (which I revealed for the first time)
Courtesy of the above users, here are the documents.
2009 – proposed but not released – a “Pirates Adventure Book” box including new ships, crew and treasure: one Pirate fleet with ships Charming Mary and Mercy, and crew Sean ‘Cannonball’ Gallows; and one Cursed fleet including ships Demon’s Heart and Wraith, and crew El Fantasma; also four Unique treasures (a Red, Blue, Yellow and Green ‘Gem Shards from the Eye of the Leviathan’); a new plastic Map with 6 preprinted islands on it, and four “fiction pieces” with scenarios.
Here is the original thread at Miniature Trading concerning the scenarios! (I think the reason I didn’t comment at the time is because it was my first year getting back into the game and my obssessive nature with it didn’t kick into high gear until late 2014/early 2015.)
This is meant to be a comprehensive post of all the information and data I have saved from Miniature Trading. All card info (stats, abilities, etc) can be found in the Master Spreadsheet. You can still view Miniature Trading via the Internet Archive. Example: Pirates CSG Forum. You can navigate to many old threads and even some fleets and miniature reviews, but many URLs were never archived.
I pulled pictures from the Miniature Trading database with httrack in 2018. The first two links are folders of the biggest versions of the pictures, sorted into one folder per set. Hardly any of these pictures were taken by me. Google Drive just shows my name as the default creator. If there are any game pieces missing pictures that had been at MT, httrack didn’t pull them.
ALL Miniature Trading database pictures files pulled from httrack
-Here is a folder you can download to have all the pictures. It includes all the file sizes that the httrack download yanked from the site. “big” are the folders with the full size pictures. Feel free to make your own copy.
Before I figured out how to use httrack to pull only picture files, I made sure to get full page screen captures of all the Pirates sets from the MT database. So for full redundancy I have that too. Enables us to see pictures as if we are still on MT after the site is gone.
I couldn’t find an easy way to put the miniature pictures into the Master Spreadsheet without a) making every miniature entry massive due to the picture resizing the columns and rows (making it hard to see more than 1 or 2 pieces at a time) and b) doing in a timely fashion that wouldn’t require me to upload all 1,000+ miniatures into the spreadsheet individually (this is probably more doable but arguably pointless due to a; people can easily make their own personalized versions of the Master Spreadsheet if they want).
Here is a .zip folder of a large httrack download of Miniature Trading. It is about 1.3 GB in size and contains a TON of stuff. For all I know there may be enough in there to recreate parts of MT somehow. No idea how to use it or what to do with it, but I got around to making a .zip copy so I could share it with everyone.
For maximum redundancy here are links to Imgur folders where I have saved some of the above as well.
Here at Pirates with Ben, you can always be sure to find the Pirates CSG Rules in all their various forms and formats. If you’re a beginner, the Start Here Rules are what you’ll want. However, they assume you only have one pack with which to play, so you’ll quickly want to move on to the Complete Game Rules. This is a much more advanced version of the game, but the way it’s intended to be played.
Now that you’ve got the main rules, you should be ready to play full games of Pirates CSG without too much trouble. However, there are some very good supplemental materials that can greatly aid in your playing time. Woelf‘s Master Keyword List is a classic document containing all of the keywords ever made. This is great because Wizkids only printed keywords in the Complete Game rules associated with that pack’s specific set. If you use a copy of the MKL, you’ll never have to search through various Complete Game rulebooks just to find one set-specific keyword.
Unfortunately, Wizkids made a number of contradictions, gaffes, and confusing wordings in the rules and abilities for this game. That is where another fantastic document from Woelf comes into play. The Pirate Code (FAQ). This is a life saver. Although it’s much larger than any of the other Pirates CSG Rules documents, “the Code” (from Pirates of the Caribbean and of course pirate history) is an incredible resource that will answer nearly ALL of the potential questions you could have about the rules of the game.
Finally, although it’s far less necessary than any of the above documents, the Reference Diagrams (also by Woelf of course!) contain a number of useful tidbits. Veteran players will not need them for the most part, but they can be quite useful for beginners. Even after playing hundreds of games, I learned of a towing option I had never thought of or realized before!
Basic Rules (.docx file download, with the Windlass font)
This is my attempt to combine the Start Here rules and Complete Game rules into one document, while simultaneously changing a few things that I believe are the best house rules, and also keeping the overall document relatively short by saving space where practical. These are the basic rules that I intend to teach new players with. I talk about some of the changes in the video below.
I have also put these on the front page of the site to accompany the various useful documents near the bottom of that page.
The main difference is that the google sheet can be viewed online in a browser, while the file can be changed to your liking if you want to edit it. The file also has the filters enabled properly, which can be difficult to do in shared google sheets.
Credit to:
-Original Wizkids documents provided by Woelf
-Jolly Roger spreadsheet by Holofernes
-Miniature Trading database
Pros of my spreadsheet:
-Don’t have to scroll to the right for anything important (flavor text and treasure values off to the right) (Basically a rule of Pirates CSG spreadsheets in my opinion – if you can’t easily see all gameplay-relevant data without scrolling, columns should be shrunk down for ease of use.) -All flavor text included -Factions color coded for maximum ease of use (I like the new design so much that I think I will be converting my custom sets to the same color scheme!) -Took the best stuff from each resource used (Holofernes’ notes from Jolly Roger + filtering, flavor text from Wizkids spreadsheets, Miniature Trading database for cannons and some flavor text (a/b for crewfer twofers/etc are lowercase because that is how they appear on the WK documents) -Includes unreleased and “lost” items from official Wizkids documents
Cons: -Some columns do not display well at all with the filter view. Those are the ones I slanted so they would be more legible (it gets worse if they are horizontal). -Filter view does not seem to work with Google Sheets version for online viewing, unless you create a temporary filter view yourself. Even tried allowing editing mode and locking the sheets, but that didn’t work either. (https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/docs/68RwOGYUCqA/PFFYjiaKBwAJ) To view filters in online version: Data>Filter Views>Create new temporary filter view The .xlsx file of the spreadsheet has the filters. -Likely some minor mistakes due to copy/paste errors or excessive dragging of cell data. (please point out so I can fix them)
Pirates Constructible Strategy Game (CSG) is a collectible and constructible board game that was produced by Wizkids from 2004 to 2008, releasing 13 sets (or “expansions”) in a five year period. Topps (who owned Wizkids) shut the game down on November 10th 2008. Since then NECA (National Entertainment Collectibles Association) has bought Wizkids and the Pirates CSG product line from Topps, proceeding to make a cards-only version of the game. Pirates with Ben is the online home of Admiral A7XfanBen, one of the game’s most passionate fans.
One game pack contains everything you need to play (hence the “Game in Every Pack!” slogan): two ships, an island, a card with treasure, and both the simple “Start Here” rules and the “Complete Game” rules. The packs originally sold for $3.99. Wizkids also began making Special Edition boxes and other releases such as Mega Packs and Scavenger Packs in later sets.
The ships come “unpunched” in their cards. Punch them out and build them! Some ships are harder to build than others, but the Start Here rules have assembly pictures for each particular ship or hull type for that particular set. You can also punch out the islands, crew, and treasure, although some players keep their crew (especially named crew, the crew that have unique faces and flavor text) in the cards.
Pirates is similar to a board game but without a board. This is one of the biggest appeals of the game – with no set path to go on like almost all other games have, you can sail wherever you want and do whatever you want! The game is extremely customizable, since you can play games as big or as small as you like. There are so many ships and crew that you’ll never run out of options when building fleets.
Feel free to create a free account to participate in the Forum here at Pirates with Ben! If you’re new to the game, check out my Beginner’s Guide to get started where you can find tutorial videos on how to play.
Below you can find the full rules for the game, in addition to supplemental material that will help when playing. Full credit goes to those who created and uploaded the documents at BoardGameGeek. (On desktop the PDFs will open in a new tab; on a smartphone you may have to hold the link and hit “download link” or open in new tab)
