Tournament #3

Wizkids Pirates CSG competitive tournament

All Battle Reports

2/11/2024 – 4/7/2024

Tournament #3 (T3) was the third notable Wizkids Pirates CSG competitive tournament I have played. The first two are T1 and T2, which were played on VASSAL with Xerecs. T3 had almost no house rules and was played in physical form, so it could be considered the most “pure” tournament I’ve played so far. I made sure to track all the scores, who went first, and how much gold each fleet collected throughout the tournament. You can see those stats at the end of the final battle report.

Universal Pirate Swan - Competitive Pirates CSG Fleet. Involved in Tournament #3

Universal Pirate Swan, one of the participating fleets

Each matchup would be a best-of-3 series, with the exception of the tournament Finals, which would be a best-of-5. Each fleet had to come with a standard 40 point build, but their +5 selections could be modified as much as they wanted – by game within a series, and changing from one series to the next. The average ocean was about 37 inches wide, 43 inches long. That is slightly larger than the recommended minimum of 3 feet x 3 feet, but it’s worth noting that the 37″x43″ ocean is not large enough to have all 6 islands at the maximum distance of 6L apart, so if playing a competitive tournament, you may want a larger ocean.

Here are the house rules I used:
-Bonus gold (from +1/+2 abilities) is available for building forts, home island raiding, etc.
-Becalmed doesn’t do anything against ships that can move when mastless – they retain their full (current) base move, as the ability text does not say it is reduced to S.
-Abandoned Crew can be flipped face up on the controlling player’s turn in order to turn them into crew even if their abilities are not used when flipping them face up.

Note about fleet “intelligence”: Fleets have no idea about the other fleet going into the first game of each matchup, but they remember crew and UT’s as best they can for the rest of that series. Fleets don’t “watch” other matchups in the tournament, so every new series matchup is fresh as if the fleets are facing each other for the first time.

I was generally able to play on Sundays from February to April, getting through all 8 series on schedule (including a play-in round since I had 9 fleets I wanted to see get involved, rather than 8).