The Captain's Logbook

Someone over on the WizKids boards managed to get their hands on a preview pack of the next Pirates set: Fire and Steel, and they posted pictures!

First up, we have a new Spanish 5 masted ship: the Trinity. Not a bad ship, with lots of cargo spaces, but it’s slow.It’s special ability of “This ship gets +S to it’s base move if it has all of it’s masts” helps, but you’ll probably want to add a Helmsman if you plan to run gold. The ship has 5 #3 short guns, so using it as a gunship would be ok, but there are better choices for Spanish gunships.

Next up is the Tower, a British Flotilla. It has2 #3 guns and 2 #2 guns, all short range (but doubled because of it’s ability).

In addition, the Tower has the ability to eliminate crew when it hits, making it more useful. You could tow this Flotilla behind another ship that also kills crew on a successful hit, like the HMS Granville, and eliminate twice the number of crew.

Now, I have a soft spot for Flotillas (or as someone online called them, Gunzebos), mainly because I can see lots of potential in the figures. But, so far in the 2 games where I put the Flotillas in my fleet, both were sunk before firing a single shot. They really can’t stand alone…but, having a fast gunship tow one around might be worth trying.

Also in the sneak peak is Montana Mays. He’s a Loyal American Captain that has the “This ship’s crew cannot be eliminated unless this ship sinks” ability, which can be useful against crew killers (like the Tower above). 7pt is kind of expensive, so I don’t see myself using him much, unless I need to protect another crew on the ship.

I can’t wait to see more ships, crew and treasures from the new set, which is supposed to be release April 9th. In the past, WizKids has done a number of sneak peaks before the release, but we will have to wait and see what shows up in the next few weeks.