Pirates CSG Podcast #37: Optimizing and Using Lesser Ships and Crew | Circle of Blood Review

Question of the Day: How do you get lesser ships and crew into action?

“thoughts on optimizing less/not utilized ships"

-MUST have speed, so helmsmen pretty much always necessary (especially since a lot of lesser ships are slow).  Beyond that, try to find a niche use for specific game pieces. For example, 1 cargo and fast speed? (Dark Fox)  Scout explorer with crew or S-Explorer. OR, flotilla tug with surprise crew face down (canceller/captain/etc).

Slow with high cargo - home waters hybrid to get nearby gold and protect HI, potentially use with navigator.  Could also use with gold factory bonus strategy, especially in case of Spanish “treasure galleons” such as Isabela, Concepcion, etc.

-Keep in mind that your competition will not want to dumb things down (people like to win and often use the same OP ships all the time), so have realistic outcome expectations and propose alternative game ideas like “make worst fleet possible, pass to other player” to get lesser ships/crew into action.  Other than that, more points = more points to use on gimmicks and suboptimal experiments

“Rules variants to get the ships on the table.”

-Require specific base move - Challenge of Snails, all L, etc.

-Require all cargo holds to be full during setup - force players to make tradeoffs on when to dump crew - right at start, at wild islands (making them accessible to other players), or go with total war/all combat strategy?  Con-exacerbates how OP Sac already is.

-Require each player to use ONLY ships AND named crew they’ve never used before (for starters, look through what you’ve never punched out!), or a pure faction fleet from a faction you’ve never played.

-Look through Fleet Challenge Archives to find fun restrictions http://www.miniaturetrading.com/im/forum/viewtopic/t=8492///

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