January 16, 2006 |
| Blackbeard |
| Results | ||||
| Player | Pirate(s) | Notoriety | Net Worth | Result |
| Dan | Kidd | 103 | 6528 | Still Active |
| Mike | Blackbeard | 72 | Recently Lost | Still Active |
| Dan | L'Olonais | 26 | 621 | Sunk by Warship |
| Lee | Low | 24 | 425 | Sunk by Warship |
| Lee | Spriggs | 12 | None | Still Active |
| Lee | Vane | 11 | None | Died of Scurvy |
| Dan | Quelch | 6 | None | Still Alive |
| Mike | Misson | 3 | 20 | Still Active |
Notes: We hadn't played this bad boy in a long long time, and we managed to get Lee to play it with us. We got a few rules wrong. For example, we forgot to make people stuck in the same space as a warship fight the warship again when a random event was drawn, and I thought that a Letter of Marque kept warships of that nation from attacking somebody. Oops. It may have meant the game, as I was involved in some D&R when the "Warship Attacks Most Notorious Pirate" was drawn, but it was British, and, well, I'll get to that.
It was a long, good game. Lee sent out Pirate Low early, and he did some good sacking, though no one was scooping up the great loot. Low and L'Olonais were competing back and forth for most notorious pirate while Edward Teach fought off a bout of scurvy.
L'Olonais and Low were the two most merciless pirates in the game, and their notoriety was piling up something fierce. It was done almost exclusively with Merchant ships, though both men captured and sold some hostages. Soon, though, Teach was glad he was behind, as L'Olonais was attacked two times in succession, and his Sloop soon found the bottom of the ocean.
No one mourned the Frenchman, though, but Low soon found the price for being too notorious - death. He, too, met the bottom of the ocean from the guns of a warship.
We continued our pirating, with Teach staying ahead of Quelch, Kidd, and Vane. Vane started out looting and pillaging a lot, getting the Spanish to hate him (everyone had the Dutch after them), but he, too, caught scurvy (along with all the King's Commissioners), and Lee gave up on him and focused on Quelch for the rest of the game. Spriggs didn't do so hot.
For a while, there were no merchantships except off the Ivory Coast and in the Indian Ocean, and with all the King's Commissioners around (not moving) no one wanted to chance meeting them.
Teach finally got over his bout with scurvy and managed to bribe the governor of Virginia to take in his money for a safe haven. I stashed 823 net worth there and pondered retirement, but then I kept sailing. Soon Teach was most notorious but his letter of marque preserved him from two British Warships - mistakenly, as it turns out. (Letters of Marque only help upgrade ports in terms of sale - they don't do anything against warships.)
Things plodded along until William Kidd managed to capture a Brigantine. The bigger ships - Brigantines and Three-Masted Riggers - are much better for two reasons: 1) they help escape King's Commissioners and Warships much much more easily, and 2) they make sacking a port much easier.
Thus William Kidd, whose base of operations went from the Gold Coast to the Indian Ocean, ravaged the eastern coast of Africa, terrorizing, sacking, and destroying the port of Ethiopia. This helped boost his Notoriety some, but he was still 30 or so behind Blackbeard, whose 4 cruelty boosted his rating much more than Kidd's, whose 1 cruelty hardly does anything. A bout with scurvy was quickly despatched by Kidd, too.
Teach then started torturing prisoners, as his sailors were getting too close to talking mutiny. I spent a couple rounds on D&R and activated Misson, just to keep from getting bored. It was here that a British warship approached and left us, thanks to my letter of Marque (which shouldn't have mattered). The tortures got me some good information on some ports in Africa and Arabia - half the world away. Blackbeard passed and killed the hostages anyway.
Teach was acquiring notoriety but no money, and when Kidd sacked Ethiopia with his big Brigantine, Teach was eager for a bigger ship. A war in Europe had recalled the King's Commissioners, so travel was possible to the East, but a Three-Masted Rigger fell into Teach's lap and he had to try to capture it. With the luck of an Irishman, he took it and claimed it as his own (I rolled double 2's).
Teach went straight for Kampeche, the weakest port with a 3 die booty. Unfortunately, Kidd had just come across two of the richest ships ever seen sailing in the Indian Ocean, and reaped in 2500 and 3000 in booty from them both. The sale of the two in his safe haven of Kilwa (Kidd was the only pirate not at war with the Portuguese) boosted his notoriety into the 80's. The sack and destruction of one more port would guarantee eternal infamy.
Lee, at this time, using Spriggs, was struggling to fend off weaker ships, and it seemed to be Kidd's game. Teach's only hope was to sack and raze Kampeche, then get enough booty to boost his notoriety to 100. It was going to be tough. I managed to obliterate Kampeche, but the three dice I rolled were 1, 2, 2 (I must have thought I was playing Pirate's Cove). Even with the sack I was only at 72. The razing would bring it to 86, and the booty would only put me at 91. Had I rolled a 13 or 14, things might have been different.
As it was, Blackbeard's turn didn't come up again. Dan (who seemed to get about 50% of the turns towards the end) sent Kidd over to Mocha and sacked and razed it in two straight turns to boost his notoriety to an eternally infamous 103.
It was fun, though Lee was kind of frustrated by the end. It's a difficult game, and the key is to get a better ship (at least a Brigantine, hopefully a Three-Masted Rigger) just as one gets powerful.
| Domaine |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 33 | 1 | |
| Mike | 26 | 2 | |
| Lee | 18 | 3 | * |
Notes: After Blackbeard, Lee and Dan were still up for another game, so I brought out Domaine, which is simple in execution and mechanics, but tricky in strategy.
I made a few early mistakes. One, I expanded in a stupid direction when I had the first Domaine created. I thought I'd get another gold per turn, but it was a duplicate mine. It's better to go for those later in the game, and it looked like I'd be able to claim it soon anyway. That wasted a bunch of money and turns.
Also, I placed all my possible domaines near the edges of the board. This allowed me to make them pretty quickly and easily, but they never got very powerful. Dan managed two big domaines in the center, one worth a lot, the other not worth quite so much, and I made nice inroads into both of them with my powerful, 3 knight domaine. A betrayal card made my best domaine unsusceptible to losing land.
Lee started off okay, and had a lot of money early, but was outmanuveured by Dan later in the game. He made an alliance with my powerful domaine, crippling my chance to gain money and VPs early, but it did direct me towards Dan.
My other problem was that my expansions only took over...plains. Those are nearly useless, and one of my castles never created a domaine. It also hurt that Dan got all the late wall cards and managed to make an end-game wall that gave him an insurmountable lead. I managed to get most money (with Lee in second), but Dan had won the game.
I'm starting to wonder if auctioning the cards might work better...hmmm. I'll have to read the rules to Lowenherz (the original game) and see if there's a way to implement them.
I have to say, though, that I love the simplicity of this game and the desire to more than you can each turn.