Wild Game with Storms and Mysterious Islands
10/16/2022
With the big weekend winding down on a late Sunday night after our “points climax” in the 7×120 game, I brought the LA crew back to Mox Boarding House in Bellevue to join Kyle for the last game in our time together. As usual, some house rules were used along with these:
-Storm terrain and mysterious islands legal for the 80 point game.
-Lord Mycron legal, but has Limit and Ransom in addition to his regular abilities.
-Custom game pieces are allowed if all players agree to their legality.
-Three islands placed per player.
-Each player can place 3 pieces of terrain during setup (in the same order as islands, per usual), with a maximum of 1 massive terrain and 1 medium terrain per player. (Picture – Massive=7 in top 2 rows; Medium=7 in bottom row)
-The last player in the turn order chooses their home island location first, followed by the second to last player until the first player chooses their home island last.
-Each player must contribute an equal number of coins of any value or type in order to have 4 coins per wild island. (8 coins per player due to 2 wild islands per player)
-Gold bonuses will be applied permanently to the coin in question (ex: a 7 becomes an 8 ). The added value stays with the coin, and the coin can be “used” normally for the purposes of home island raiding, fort building, etc.
Emphasis added! Prior to the weekend’s start, the players voted to allow both Storm terrain (pioneered by Xerecs and his brothers in the always-epic Century of Economy campaign games) and mysterious islands. Both of those are some really crazy elements that usually make for a wild game. They are quite luck-based and therefore best for a casual, almost silly wild game where it’s best to go in with extremely low expectations.
Storms are a Custom terrain piece. At the end of a round of turns, a d6 is rolled. Match the result to the number printed on any Storms in play. Roll the d6 again. Match the result to the number printed around the edge of the Storm and move the Storm L in a straight line in that direction. If two or more Storms collide or move into contact with one another, they merge and move as one Storm. If any part of a game piece touches a Storm, it is immediately placed inside of it. Roll a d6, the result is the number of masts, segments, flags or damage points removed from the game piece. If the result is more than the number of remaining masts, segments, flags or damage points, the game piece is eliminated from the game. If a storm spends more than three rounds over a body of land, it is removed from the game.
Here are the fleets used!
Xerecs (some customs used; Customs Database for more info)
Marhi (proxied by Mobilis)
Intermediaro
Kanoka + Gelu, Pohatu, Onua, oarsman (proxied by Constitution)
HMS Antelope + Robinson, Lord Mycron
A7XfanBen: “GodCrab”
Raninoidea + RotF Crimson Angel, RotF Hermione Gold, LE Griffin, Gentleman Jocard, RotF Gus Schultz
Calim + exploding shot
Coeur du Lion + Jean Desailly, Princess Auraa, Jules de Cissey
Banshee’s Cry + helmsman, oarsman
Rover + helmsman
El Algeciras + helmsman, oarsman
Kyky
Marie Antoinette + crew
Pandora + crew
Terror + crew
Beast’s Belly + crew
Marianne
L0rdgingerbread
Hai Peng + crew
HMS Lady Provost + crew
Lady Newport + crew
Polaris + crew
Banshee’s Cry
I had some very specific shenanigans in mind and contributed 3 mysterious islands along with some storms which made for a dangerous map (though less busy due to less players).
For reference, these are the 3 mysterious islands I contributed:
Ships scattered everywhere as the mysterious islands quickly began to take their toll. Raninoidea and the Lady Provost took damage upon docking. I made sure to make my giant crab Eternal, so any casualties incurred as a result of MI “farming” would not be truly fatal.
Things quickly got nuts!
The Hai Peng getting essentially auto-eliminated via Pandora’s Box + Lost was just the start. I had multiple ships docked at some mysterious islands, ready to mind control for maximum chaos. In this case the cheap ships added to my fleet at the end were not for competitive gold running, but a different kind of “cheese” – mysterious island farmers. XD Xerecs closes in on my Banshee’s Cry, with Intermediaro giving some coins to the submerged Marhi.
Another Lost UT was found, bringing more terrain into the game. However, it was ineffective timing because most ships were docked or in a position where the “S away from other terrain and islands” prevented terrain from being placed directly underneath ships. Kyle round earthed the Terror and Beast’s Belly to the east, while in the center Xerecs had designs on Cissey’s Ransom keyword. The Coeur was rammed, but repaired on my next turn. Calim pinned the Kanoka, but exploding shot backfired to leave the squid headless! (I’ve been rolling exclusively 1’s with equipment lately…)
After many turns of redocking to mind control opposing ships, I finally had the Rover actually explore the gold-laden island her and Raninoidea were stationed at. Bad Maps yanked the island eastwards, dooming the attached Rover in a storm. Spencer is almost out of ships already with all of my storm and mind control efforts, but the Lady Newport has some gold aboard.
Unfortunately I don’t have more pictures from this game, but it was a total nightmare for anyone taking it seriously haha. Storms and MI’s continued to play a big role, eliminating more and more ships until Kyle and Spencer were nearly out of it. At one point I was able to yank Intermediaro into a storm as well. Raninoidea was “killed” but returned home via Eternal to repair an arm before heading back out for the endgame phase. Xerecs had gold-captured Jean Desailly from the Coeur in addition to Cissey for a nice payout of 11 total gold. Towards the last round I was trying to salvage a weird/flukey second place finish by capturing the Lady Newport and her 10 gold, but Xerecs sank the derelict with the Kanoka after Raninoidea captured it. Soon afterwards 2 of the 4 players had been eliminated, triggering the “half or more” endgame condition!
- Xerecs: 33 gold
- L0rdgingerbread: 6
- Kyky: 5
- A7XfanBen: 0
Xerecs got the win in this wild game a day before his birthday on the 17th, in perfect time to win a prize that Gazerbeam543 had announced before the game – a set of laminated deckplates for various Return to Savage Shores game pieces!
Thus concludes the 2022 Pirates CSG Weekend Marathon in the Pacific Northwest! 😀 Thanks again to all who played, and especially to Xerecs, L0rdgingerbread and Gazerbeam543 for flying up from LA to make it an epic weekend of pure pirating!! 😀
Thank you for reading! If you want to play Pirates you know where I’m at! 🙂
I had Robinson with Mycron on the Antelope, that helped greatly with some of my efforts. Most of the gold siphoned to the Marhi by Intermediaro was highly valuable, which also helped. We need to try storms and MI’s again, but with more players. 😀
They definitely make for a crazy game. A little too wild to do often in my opinion, but still fun from time to time.