Forts: Are they worth it?
Are Forts worth including in your fleet? Yes! Sure, WK hasn’t put out any new Forts since Pirates of the Revolution and Pirates of the Crimson Coast, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. There are pleanty of places online to purchase or trade for Forts, and since lots of player don’t use them, you can typically get them at a bargain.
For one thing, they are free! None of the Forts cost any of your build points, so there is no reason NOT to include one in your build. As long as you have a ship of the same nationality, you can use the Fort. And, with the right ships, you can build a fort VERY quickly, and grab that gold!
The rules for Forts are:
Forts are printed on two cards and are assembled like ships. Fort flags represent cannons, and you can customize a fort by placing flags on either its corners or walls. Forts are not placed during setup; rather, they are purchased and built during the game on wild islands you have explored. A wild island may have only one fort on it at a time.
Building Forts: To build a fort, the following three conditions must be met:
· You must have the fort in your collection.
· You must have an amount of gold points on your home island equal to or greater than the fort’s gold point cost.
· You must have a ship docked at a wild island you have explored in order to build a fort there.
If these three prerequisites are met at the end of one of your turns, you may build the fort as a free action. Take the gold used to pay for it from your home island and place it inside of the assembled fort; this gold still counts toward winning the game. Place the assembled fort on any wild island at which you have a ship docked. The fort must be placed on the island such that two of its opposite corners are completely on the island.
Treasure: If there is any face-down treasure on the island where the fort is built, move that treasure inside of the assembled fort; it is now yours. You may use a ship to load treasure from a fort and move it to another fort or to your home island, but a fort must always have a number of gold points inside of it equal to or greater than its gold point cost.
Shooting: Forts may be given only shoot actions. Shooting with fort cannons is just like shooting with ship cannons; use the indicated ranges and ranks on the flags and measure distance from the flags. Lines of fire drawn from forts are not blocked by other ships or islands.
Abandoned Forts: When a fort is hit, its player eliminates a flag. When all of a fort’s flags are eliminated, it is abandoned and may not be given actions.
Destroying Forts: If an abandoned fort is hit, remove it from the game and place all of the gold that was inside of it back on the island, which reverts to an unexplored wild island.
Imagine this scenario:
On the first turn of the game, you use Hidden Cove to put one of your ships, the Rising Sun, at the nearest unexplored Wild Island.- Using the Rising Sun’s action, you un-dock and re-dock, and then reveal the Explorer on board, and Explore the gold on the island.
- Grabbing the 2 coins with the largest value, and assuming one is worth enough to buy a Fort, you then use the Rising Sun’s ability “When this ship is given an explore action, you can swap a treasure on the wild island for a crew on any friendly ship.” to transfer one coin back to another ship at your Home Island, and put a crew (probably an Oarsman) on the Wild Island.
Then, at the end of your turn, you use the gold that is on your Home Island to “buy” a Fort, either the Devil’s Maw or Dead Man’s Point, and put it onto the Wild Island where the Rising Sun is docked. - All of the gold on that island, along with the gold spent, is put inside the Fort, and is protected from your opponents gold runners.
With a properly built mixed Nationality fleet, you could probably built Forts on a couple of islands early in the game. This will severely hamper your opponents ability to grab gold, especially if they few (or no) gunships. Plus, some Forts, like Paradis de la Mer, are very tough to destroy.
Now, remember, even though the gold in a Fort counts towards Victory, even if you have more than half the gold stored in your Fort(s), the game doesn’t end until you get more than half to your Home Island, or you sink/derelict all of your opponents ships.
Good luck!
Pirates of Morevi Cards!
Recently, the guys over at MiniatureTrading held a “Press Gang” contest. One of the members put up a bunch of blank crew card templates, and contestants created new crew cards.
Since I’ve been listening to the Chronicals of Morevi, I decided to make crew cards for Askana, first Queen of Morevi, and Captain Rafe Rafton. I used the artwork of Carrie Seidman. Click on the images for a closer view.
In addition, I updated 2 cards that I had created earlier and entered them. First off, we have “Captain Ed,” myself as a reverse-Captain. And, we have “Wee Vikings,” which is my son, Daniel, in his Viking hat.
If you have an account over at Miniature Trading, go over and VOTE FOR MY CARDS!
Enjoy! I might have another card or two to post in the future.
The 80pt Fog of War Fleet
The basic idea for this fleet is hit-and-run: pop out of the Fog Cloud/Smoke Cloud when it dissipates at the beginning of your turn, shoot at anything within range, and then duck back into a new cloud.
Morevi – Pirates of the Caribbean Meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
For the past few months, I’ve been listening to Tee Morris’ audiobook/podcast of Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword. It’s the story of a fantasy-realm dwarf who falls through a portal and finds himself in 1929
Anyway, that story has nothing to do with pirates. But, Mr Morris would occasionally mention his plans to rebroadcast another of his books, Morevi: the Chronicals of Rafe and Askana. Unfortunately, he never really mentioned exactly what Morevi was, and I assumed from the title, that it was just another fantasy novel. Since I really wasn’t looking for a fantasy book right now (I’m already partway through listening to the
That was my mistake.
Earlier this month, I finished the Billibub story, and Mr Morris has not started podcasting the second book, The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant. In the Billibub podcast feed, Mr Morris had put the introduction chapter of Morevi, and on a whim, I listened to it.
Why the heck didn’t Tee mention that Morevi had pirates in it!?!
I was instantly hooked. The story includes a 15th-16th century privateer’s ship that goes through a portal near the
So far, I’ve only listened to the first few chapters, but I really like the story so far, although I wish Mr Morris would make things a bit clearer. I’m intrigued about the Portals that are mentioned, and the suggestion that Captain Rafe can travel through the Portals easily, where others can’t. Hopefully, things will be clearer as I get further into the story.
Real Piracy is Alive and Well in the 21st Century
I was going to write about the new Switchblade ships in Fire & Steel, but WizKids hasn’t updated their card gallery, so I don’t know which ships in the new set are Switchblades. I hope to get that article up by the end of the week.
Instead, I read an interesting series of new stories last week. The French cruise liner Le Ponant was hijacked off the coast of Somalia by 6 gun-wielding pirates. Continue Reading »
PotCS: Fire & Steel – Bombardier Ships
Bombardier. This ship has a special bombardier cannon that is not associated with a mast and can’t be eliminated or targeted by effects. Before the game begins, announce whether the bombardier cannon will be an artillery cannon (using the artillery cannon piece) or a flamestrike cannon (add the flame piece onto the artillery cannon piece); this choice can’t change once the game begins. Use the range/rank die printed on the artillery cannon piece for both the artillery cannon and the flamestrike cannon. Equipment (see my next post – Ed) abilities can’t affect shots made by a bombardier cannon.
The artillery cannon has the Double Shot keyword.
The flame portion of the flamestrike cannon physically measures S, so you can use it to measure range to enemy ships. When a flamestrike cannon hits, replace one of the target’s masts with a fire mast. If the cannon roll for either version of the bombardier cannon is a 1, the cannon jams and can’t be used again until the ship is given a repair action specifically to fix it.
The new set will have 4 Bombardier ships: one for the Pirates, one for the British, and 2 for the French. So far, WizKids has revealed 2 of the Bombardier ships, the Draconum for the Pirates, and the Bombardier for the British.
The Draconum, being a prototype stolen by the Pirates, isn’t that great. With only 3 cargo, a base speed of L, 
, and a #3 bombardier cannon, she is hardly fearsome. Plus, you have to eliminate one of her masts when she rolls a 1 on any cannon roll. At least this ship is cheap at only 13pts.
The British have a nice ship in the Bombardier, though. A base move of S+S, 3 cargo, 
, 
, a #3 bombardier, and the ability to choose which mast is eliminated on a successful hit makes this a scary ship. This ship costs 18pts.
So far, WizKids has not revealed what the 2 French Bombardier ships are, but my guess, from looking at the Fire & Steel checklist, is that they are the Conquerant and the Grand Vainqueur, both at 21pts. Hopefully, they have decent stats and abilities to support those prices.
I’m a bit hesitant to say that Bombardier ships are going to be useful. I really want to see the definition of the “Double Shot” keyword before I pass judgement. But, with the right crew, if might be fun to run around in the Bombardier and set other ships on fire. 
2008 Pirates Convention Pack Sneak Peek
Someone has leaked the 2008 Pirates Convention Pack, which appears to include 4 ships and 4 crew, all Pirates. In the pack are:
- Royal Rover: a 12pt ship with the “If this ship wins a boarding party, she can take as much treasure from the other ship as she can carry” ability.
- Queen Anne’s Revenge: Blackbeard’s ship. IT costs 12pts with the “This ship may dock at an opponents home island and load one treasure. If able, she must leave on your next turn” ability.
- Amity: 10pts with the “When this ship carries no cargo, she gets +S to her base move” ability.
- Minerva: 9pts with the “Once per turn when this ship hits an enemy ship, also eliminate one crew from that ship” ability.
- Bartholomew Roberts: 6pts, “Captain, Loyal:Pirates, After looking at a treasure on a wild island, you can trade any one treasure from that island for a random treasure on any other wild island. This ship must load the traded treasure.“
- Blackbeard: 10pts, “Captain, Loyal:Pirates, If this ship wins a boarding party, she can capture the crew with the highest cost instead of eliminating it. A captured crew becomes cargo worth its point cost in gold when unloaded at your home island.“
- Thomas Tew: 7pts, “Captain, Loyal:Pirates, Once per turn if this ship is touching another ship, reveal all treasure aboard the ship. This ship can take as much unique treasure from the other ship as she can carry, even those that can’t otherwise be removed.“
- Christopher Moody: 8pts, “Captain, Loyal:Pirates, If this ship succeeds at a boarding party, she can eliminate all of the other ship’s crew.”
Pirates, and Horroclix
I’ve played quite a few games in the past week, including 3 Pirates games and my first Horrorclix game.
First off, we had a sealed pack Pirates game last Wednesday. Each player opened 4 packs of Rise of the Fiends, and built a 40pt fleet. The winner was whomever brought home the most gold. I did pretty well, but only came in second.
On Saturday, I went over to Itsnotacon for a couple of hours. I needed to get out of the house for a while, and there were a couple of Pirates games planed. As it ended up, there were only 3 players, but we had fun.
The first game was a 40pt constructed game called “The Wreck of the Black Galleon.” All of the gold was placed onto a wrecked ship in the middle of the board, and we had to go get as much as we could. Of course, with lots of ships in close proximity, a few fights broke out. 
Unfortunately, after putting 2 fast gold runners in my fleet, I only had a few points left, and I could only afford the 2 masted Executioner for protection…and it didn’t last too long. I was able to sink one of the other player’s gold runners first, though. And, I had some bad pulls on gold, and only ended up with 10 gold or so at the end (the winner had 24). At least, because there were only a few players, I was able to get a prize ship.
After that, the guy running the events had a Horrorclix game planned, so I hung around and played that. I’ve only played a demo of Heroclix before (which is similar), so this was pretty new to me. I was setup with a team of 5 figures, including the Razorvixen seen here. The goal was to kill as many victims as possible…and to kill the other player’s monsters.
Overall, I had fun. I’m not ready to get into another collectible game right now, and I really couldn’t afford one, but it’s still a fun game. The Clix mechanics is pretty simple: when your figure takes damage, you click down the figs baseplate and their statistics change. Some figs actually get better as they take damage, and some have abilities that only function at certain levels on their click wheel. the other Privateer at our venue also plays the MechWarrior Clix game, and I may just have to try that one out some night.
After that, there was a Pirates sealed pack game. Since it was still the same players, and the guy running the game didn’t want to buy more packs, me and the other player bought 3 packs each and had a short gun battle. I didn’t pull anything really special, and we had 3 ships each, but I was able to get her fleet into a position so that I could sink 2 of her ships. After that, my 2 remaining ships had to chase down her one remaining ship, the USS Kentucky. Eventually, I sank it, and got another prize ship.
Scorpion Ships in PotC:RotF
Another of the new ship types in Pirates