The Baochuan Humbled - A Pirates Yarn
07.10.07 / 12:25AM / Joe
Did a two hour Pirates battle last Friday, making full use of my expensive sculpted islands and pretty-pretty ocean playmat. Tony had a Cursed fleet, two ships and one squid. Josh comboed two Jade Rebellion ships (a big, slow junk and a small Korean turtle ship) with the Cursed submarine I picked up at Wizard World. My fleet was one ship, the Baochuan, pride of the Jade Rebellion, that gigantic 10-master that I was all hot over a year ago.
I made a super-big looping animated gif of the entire game, assembled from pictures I took at the end of each round. SO you can check that out if you want to, or just gaze at Josh's closeup shots of all the action.
Right out of the gates (dock?), Tony split his ships to head for treasure islands. This won him the game (SPOILER!) I aimed the Baochuan more or less at the center of the sea, anticipating some epic skirmishes, while Josh sent his sub after me and his ships towards treasure.
The first exciting clash was squid vs. Baochuan. Tony sent the monster below the waves, then surfaced for an all-or-nothing attack. This is what squids do. Meanwhile Josh brought the Locker in on my starboard side. We decided that if the sub and the squid ever met while both were underwater, then could fight each other just as if they were both on the surface. It never happened, but it sure sounds cool.
What's fun about squids is that they can swim around underwater and then pop up right beside the victim for FIVE short-range attacks. Tony scored four hits out of the five, which greatly reduced the Baochuan's intimidation factor. I turned the squid to pulp, but it took me two turns.
Big ruling conundrum of the night: if you declare a smokepot attack on an enemy ship - which generates a fog bank - can you still fire off your remaining cannons at the enemy now stuck inside the fog (ships in a fog bank can't shoot and can't be shot at)? Does all of this happen simultaneously? I figured it does, and allowed Josh to fire his cannons at the Baochuan AND send it into the fog. I think he missed the cannon rolls anyway.
The fog was fun... ships have to exit the fog bank in a random direction, so the massive Baochuan ended up exiting the fog in the exact direction from which it entered!
Then Josh sent the Locker back around to ram the Baochuan, which killed all of my crew.
While all of this is going on, Tony is getting rich off the outlying islands.
Once Tony ran out of treasure to hoard, he double-rammed Josh's poor turtle ship.
By then, the game was academic. Tony had it made in money and he had more functional ships on the table. I limped the Baochuan around towards his home island, but the crippled behemoth had no fight left in it. Here it is, entirely derelicted...
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