Saturday Night Shenanigans

During the week I was away supervising a school camp. It was a great experience, but the 18 hour days have taken a toll; I am pretty wrecked. When I returned, I organised a little gaming session with the usual suspects: Jimmy, KuriboGoomba, Heinz, Wade and Del.

We started off with a three-way game of Pirates of the Spanish Main, followed by two missions of Imperial Assault. Wade recently blagged a whole heap of pirate ships on eBay for a steal, and kindly shared his doubles with me. He also got a whole heap of new captains, crew and unique treasure which we were keen to try out, including a treasure piece called The Black Plague...

My little fleet consisted of HMS Lord Algernon captained by Calico Cat; a ship that slow benefits from a captain that allows it to double its movement, and a 10 shot 2+ broadside is incomprehensible.

Meow.

I also took the Wycliffe, which is resistant to ramming and packs three mean cannons. The other guys had fleets with smaller ships, including some very maneuverable ones.

Early on in the game, we focused on pillaging the islands closest to home. I used the Wycliffe to transport gold back to my home island, whilst the Lord Algernon acted as the ultimate deterrent. Doing so, I quickly scored 10 pieces of gold out of the 50 on the board, needing just 15 more for victory.

Yarrr, put yer back into it ye scurvy dogs.

Sensing that they would need gold from each others islands to compete with me, KuroboGoomba and Wade quickly engaged each other. Wade maneuvered his ships spectacularly well and raked Goomba's raider with dual broadsides.

Dual broadsides: a captain's nightmare.

At the same time, Goomba managed to find the plague on one of the islands and immediately sought ways of spreading to everyone. Soon he had contrived for it to be on his fastest ship and he powered towards the Lord Algernon: blaaaaargh!

Goomba resorts to biological weapons. I resort to sailing away as fast as possible...

Having put myself into a comfortable lead through the threat of incredible force, the guys decided to team up against me with ships that were immune to my long range cannons (two Batavian Bats). This put me in an unwinnable position, which I had hoped to avoid. Even with the support fire of the Wycliffe and an effective Marksman, I couldn't prevent the Lord Algernon from being made derelict. Bloody pirates!

Proof that there is no honour amongst thieving pirates.

I did as much damage with my short range cannons as I could, but it wasn't enough.

After disabling my best ship and destroying the Wycliffe, Goomba and Wade took stock of what they had left and decided to call the game a draw. They were content that the biggest ship was sunk and everyone else was starting to arrive for Imperial Assault.

The group of guys I game with have been playing through the campaign in Imperial Assault on a fortnightly basis. We have an interesting situation whereby we have a few too many players but not everyone can make it to every session. As a result we swap in and out between missions, or play as allies instead of heroes on occasion. I have already missed the first two scenarios, so it took me a bit of time to settle in with my Bothan Agent. By the end of the session though I got into a good rhythm of finding the best firing positions, combining buffs and relocating to avoid assaults; maintaining that vital 4 square range.

In the first scenario we were joined by Chewbacca and a bunch of comatosed Wookies. Our mission was to prevent the Imperial troops from capturing the Wookies by protecting them and unbinding them if they have been previously restrained.

I sniped quite a few Stormtroopers and managed to wound their Commander, forcing him to seek cover. Goomba charged his rebel soldier in and tried to use his weapon's blast to take down multiple enemies, but he was very unlucky with his rolls. Jimmy, the GM, has a depressing knack of rolling the maximum result for any roll he needs, whilst we were knee-deep in ones. We had a lot of trouble finishing off enemies, which are quite capable of doing maximum damage regardless of the fact that they are on their last wound. We came very close to losing this one, but clawed back a great victory through careful tactics.

In the next scenario we needed to access three terminals around the playing board to obtain information about General What's-his-name (Weiss). I started the game by taking a sneaky/jammy firing position against an E-Web gunner and giving him hell.

Our failure to finish things off was taking its toll. Time to upgrade our weapons; we need more dice!

Still, I couldn't knock off that last wound and was assaulted before I could finish him off. Thanks to some exploding probe droids and ridiculously good rolling by Jimmy, we were soon playing to not lose. The Imperials would win if all of the characters were wounded, which was looking quite achievable early in the game. We split up so that we could not concentrate his efforts or catch more than one of us with exploding probe droids.

On no less than 5 occasions, Jimmy rolled the equivalent of a 6 for defense. We equaled that with 1's.

Somehow in the midst of all that, Del's smuggler and Heinz's Jedi managed to activate two terminals, unleashing all manner of nastiness on the characters in the open. They were the last unwounded characters at the start of the second last turn and we threw everything into defending them. In the last turn, when it appeared that we would make it, I advocated for some really conservative play that turned out to be unnecessary. I think next time I will go at it a little harder and support players when they stretch themselves.

This can only end well...

All in all, a very fun homecoming. I'm looking forward to playing through some more scenarios and sleeping for more than 3 hours at a time ;-)

See you across the table,

M4cr0

P.S. I did a mad 4 hour mission into Sydney to visit all the major gaming stores today. I managing to find a Y-wing and Millenium Falcon for my X-wing collection and a Carcossone expansion for my wifey. I also bought some Space Marine Centurions for my Iron Snakes...

Pirates of the Spanish Main

Hi folks,

In case you missed it, last Friday was international Talk Like a Pirate Day. It reminded me of a game I played a while back, circa 2005, called Pirates of the Spanish Main. My bucks party that year had a particularly… pirate-esque theme. My close mates bought a broad spectrum of rum and a bog-load of Pirates of the Spanish Main booster packs. We divvied them up, most of us having absolutely no idea what to expect, and constructed our fleets. You generally get two ships per pack, though I managed to get a real monster, the HMS Lord Algernon, which took up a pack all by itself. I also snaffled a nasty Pirate Captain called Blackheart. I have no idea how that game ended, or who won, it was that kind of night.

Anyway, I managed to find my fleet whilst cleaning up my garage the other night, so I cracked it out and had a game with the wifey. The game itself is quite simple. Each player chooses a fleet of ships and can choose to take special crew members. Islands are placed around the playing area, each with a secret quantity of treasure. To win the game you need to get at least half the available treasure to your home island.

 

Each ship has its own:

1)      movement characteristic based on the edges of the card stock (S/Short Edge, L/Long Edge or any combination)

2)      Number of masts (which act as hit points),

3)      Storage space (used to transport treasure and crew)

4)      Cannons which vary in power and range

5)      Special abilities

HMS Lord Algernon, for example, has S manoeuvrability (blaaargh), 5 masts (wow), 3 storage (not bad), two short range cannons and three long range cannons that all cause damage on 3s (amazing) and the ability to ignore the first mast lost result each turn if it has not lost any masts previously. In short: this ship is an absolute tank.

 

 

For the game we split my fleet in two. I took HMS Lord Algernon and the Zephyr, a highly manoeuvrable boat that is good at boarding raids. Wifey took the Batavian Bat, which is a reasonably fast three master which is resistant to long range fire, and the El Ladron, a close range monster with three masts.

Early in the game I zipped the Zephyr forwards to grab some loot, but she was sunk fairly quickly by El Ladron. HMS Lord Algernon replied by stripping the Batavian Bat of its masts over two turns of brutal fire.

 

El Ladron and HMS Lord Algernon docked at opposite ends of the treasure island and spent a few turns loading up gold. Both ships fired some long range shots as we pulled away and headed for our respective home islands. El Ladron lost two masts but used its superior speed to pull out of range to undergo repairs. Wifey flipped her treasure pieces and found that she had recovered a whopping 5 gold; 1 gold away from victory. HMS Lord Algernon crawled into harbour to unload 3 gold, then headed straight back out.

 

 

The race was on, I decided to forego the opportunity to repair in order to make it back to the island before El Ladron. I captured the last pieces of gold but copped a deadly broadside that took me down to two masts. After weighing up the options I rammed El Ladron, taking down its final mast and leaving it derelict. As I pulled away, a sniping long range shot finally sank it.

 

 

After the game wifey and I did a quick search to see if we could buy some more packs. Considering the fact that the game is no longer being produced, there are quite a few online shops with boosters still in stock. Maybe sometime in the future we’ll pick up another fleet so that we can play a proper game against each other. In the meantime, I know there have to be some fleets hidden away in my mates’ collections. Have a look guys, it would be great to hoist the colours one more time.

See you across the table,

M4cr0