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Well, I didn't take many pictures, and I don't think we had a web cam in
the room, so I won't be able to do a turn by turn re-cap of the game, so
I'll just free associate about the game...
First off, as has been mentioned before, this was absolutely the best
game we have played so far. Some contributions to this were:
- We were able to setup Friday night.
- Almost all of the participants were able to play the whole game.
- I was somewhat better rested, and at least had Friday to recover from
hectic travel.
- I really simplified island play. Instead of having major scenario
islands, most islands just had some buried treasure, or a stranded
pirate or two or three. The most time spent on any island was about 5
turns (3 separate islands). None of those islands required heavy
interaction with me.
- With more treasure to be had on the islands, several folks made it
into port to sell captured ships and treasure and buy more gear or
better ships.
Some things which may not have gone so well:
- The only larger ships were three class 2 ships I brought. We were
severely lacking when Scott Quirk (?) got a big treasure haul.
- I probably made gems a little too valuable (they were word 1d6x10
gold, if a 6 was rolled, they were worth 1d6x100 gold, and if yet
another 6 was rolled, they were worth 1d6x200 gold).
- I had talked about using a deck of cards for island contents, I think
this would be a good idea.
- We didn't have enough range sticks. A combination of the K-8 not being
out Friday, and the sparseness of it meant we had to improvise a bit. I
am thinking about having some 2x4s engraved with numbers to use for
making some range sticks.
- We were almost short of island material, though Lindsay came up with a
couple clever ways to use all the palm tree bits Chris had brought
amongst which was only a single palm tree fork. Duplo 2x2 bricks
actually worked out to make nice little rocks (which tended to not be
very interesting, though one chain made a handy way for some pirates to
swim from one island to the next, and reduce the chance of attracting
sharks).
- NPC ships are just a pain, I suspect this is one reason Steve runs
only battle games now. I put Lindsay in charge of one of the merchants
at one point. Actually, I think neither merchant really did much (except
the 2nd one got a good shot on Larry), though the 2nd one may have been
captured near the end (the 1st got off almost unscathed, despite sailing
right at Shiri...). The Islander catamaran wasn't too much of a pain to
run because it didn't last long.
- I needed to think a bit about the islands which were a little more
interesting. The shrine was pretty easy when Kai Brodersen blew up the
statue's head with a cannon ball (each pirate who spent a turn searching
found 1d6 gold, with a 6 meaning a gem instead). On one large island,
Lindsay stumbled into an alligator. On another, Larry found some silver
worth mining (unfortunately, his ship and captain were killed and
someone else [durn, forgot the name] captured the silver). On a third,
some islanders were present, and put up a bit of a fight (and launched a
catamaran which proceeded to nearly sweep Larry's new ship of crew,
fortunately he was right next to an island populated by three stranded
crew, and then headed to Strawberry Island to collect some giant
strawberries and some more crew).
I'm thinking that most islands should be small (the 16x16 printed
islands work great, but a few built up islands like the shrine or
Strawberry Island [built from about 10 Duplo bricks - this provided
cover for Larry once] would be nice also). The larger islands are harder
to deal with since they can take several turns to explore. The island we
used as a pirate base turned out to also provide some separation of the
ocean which worked well.
When Scott realized he wasn't going to be able to crew all the ships he
had to buy to spend his money, he negotiated with Shiri and (?) who were
not in the best of shape. They helped crew his ships and the combined
armada stood a good chance of sweeping the ocean had we more time. Of
course Chris Weeks and Larry had joined in common cause, and Kai was
potentially going to join them, which would have made it a close fight
(but still with the advantage to Scott's fleet).
Some of the notable moments:
The time Kai knocked his ship over and sent two crew flying. Followed
shortly by knocking the top of the mast off.
Blowing up the statues head.
Lindsay and (?) capturing one ship, starting to tow it home, and then
the other player back stabbing Lindsay just as Scott's fleet was about
to set sail.
The time two ships both destroyed each other's cannon (I think this was
Larry and Shiri).
Frank
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