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Mark and Jason came over Saturday for some gaming. Dave was unavailable, so it was just the three of us, and we went for a ‘long game’ of Blackbeard.

I went for the same pattern as our previous three-player game, and deployed two pirates at the start, one in the Atlantic and one in India. Mark put one in India with me, and another in the Caribbean, while Jason just deployed one in the Caribbean to start with. The good news is that I had drawn Edward Teach (Blackbeard) as one of my three, and kept him in reserve at first.

I managed to swoop in and take the merchant that had started in India before Mark could, and he ended up sailing for the Gold Coast. I managed to get a decent start on VPs with a couple early retirements, and brought out Edward Teach in the Atlantic. Jason had taken the lead with a very nice retirement on his Caribbean nest egg, but I managed a very good career with Teach, living up to his name by taking prizes up and down the Atlantic coast, and getting a decent amount of ransom. He successfully retired with a Notoriety in the mid-20s and a decent net worth, which shot me  up to ~120 VPs, and well past Jason (Mark had been somewhat even with me).

Further retirements pushed Mark and Jason past 100 VPs, but I was climbing into the high 100s. As the game was coming to a close, Jason’s latest captain did very well in the Caribbean, getting a good amount of Notoriety and several high-value cargoes, as well as staying too strong to be challenged by warships and King’s Commissioners. All this time, I had been holding a Duel-4 captain to possibly get someone else’s ship, but I didn’t have the Piratical Ambition card. I finally drew it in between the turn that Jason converted all his booty to net worth and bought a safe haven, and the turn where he used it. With four dice for the duel, I rolled poorly, burned a Cunning and re-rolled just about as bad, and then used his last Cunning to re-roll a 15, which Jason couldn’t match on a 3-die Duel rating. Sadly, all I got was an empty ship with poor crew loyalty, and a captain with no Cunning left, but I had kept Jason from retiring with 7900 Net Worth. Between that and double Notoriety, he would have gone well into the 200 VP range.

My previously-active captain was on the Atlantic coast, following in Blackbeard’s footsteps (wake?), racking up a decent score, but I got the third draw of the General Pardon card on the turn that he would have gone in and retired, getting me 12 points for his Notoriety instead of 24 for that and ~14 VP for Net Worth. My final score was 210 VPs, while Jason had 104 and Mark managed 111 at the end.

One really good retirement put me in a strong lead, and I managed to do fairly well for the rest of the game to keep it. Getting that duel to wreck Jason’s main chance really shows how powerful keeping the right captain in reserve can be. I think Anti-Pirate activity was overall down from our previous game, though I certainly gave it a few tries. I pretty much ended up sticking with the Atlantic coast the entire game, but there were consistently merchantmen to be had there, which made up for the poor cash value. I should probably try concentrating on the Caribbean next time, as I’ve never really done that, though it tends to get attention from everyone else.

Got the gang over for gaming yesterday. Had five people total, and ended up playing Blackbeard.

Had the usual painful beginning as setup is fiddly, and there’s lots of different things to do, all of which work a bit differently. But things sped up by lunch, and we finished off the long version by about 4.

I went with a start I considered a bit risky. I only put out one pirate to begin with, and him in India. India has the richest cargoes, but there’s only so many ports there. If no merchant ships showed up there or in East Africa (not nearly as valuable), I’d be stuck a long way away from anything to loot.

As it was, I got lucky and two merchantmen showed up off of India to start. Patch had placed a pirate off of East Africa, and he moved in to get one of them, but I still got the other. I got a rich haul, ransomed a passenger, and then set out for East Africa.

One thing that happened in there set a trend for the rest of the game. We had been neglecting die re-rolls through Cunning, because we’d forget about it. When my initial spot attempt on a merchant failed, I re-rolled it since I figured even blowing it on that was better than not remembering it at all. That kept it in everyone’s mind, and a fair number of re-rolls were done through the day. That particular attempt did nothing for me, but I used up the pirate’s other three cunning points, and they all turned low rolls into high or max rolls.

Jason got off to a good start, and was the first to start really maneuvering to retire a pirate. I tried stop it with a Piratical Ambition card, allowing me to try and take over the ship (and kill his pirate) by winning a duel between him and the second (unused) pirate I had been dealt. The odds were against me, 4d6 to 3d6, but I managed a tie (which continued the duel for a second try) before failing. Having him in reserve because I was concentrating on one pirate was a nice side-benefit of my strategy.

I was the third one to retire a pirate, and I think it’s the first time I’ve done it ‘early’ (getting more common all around as we get used to the pace of the game). I had taken one prize, looted one port, my speed rating was down to zero, and my combat rating had taken a couple hits. But I got in to port before I could be stopped, and that one cargo hold was worth a lot; combined with Notoriety, I shot into the lead.

As usual, the end of the game seemed to come very suddenly, I had not done much with the new pirate I drew. But it had been enough. For the first time, I won, with a total of 99 VPs. Patch came in second with 79, Jason third with 63, Dave fourth with 57, and Mark came in last with 49. We’ve been spreading the wealth around: Patch one our first two games (one session), Dave the next one, Zjonni (who couldn’t make it today) the last one, and this was my first win, leaving only Mark and Jason without wins.

During lunch, talk turned to Onward Christian Soldiers and a desire to do the First Crusade with more than four players (handles up to seven), so we may be starting a game of that next month.

Had the gang, or at least some of it over yesterday to try out GMT’s Blackbeard, which Mark got some time ago. Due to schedule constraints there were four of us (the game supports up to five), me, Mark, Jason and Patch.

I’d played the AH Blackbeard a time or two ages ago, and while I remember that I generally liked it, I don’t recall much else. It didn’t take me long however, to realize that while this version is technically related to it, the relationship is quite distant. Offhand, I’d say the new one is much more historical and has a better flow as a game.

However, we stuck with the short game, and there are some definite problems with it. While the playing time is quite good (about 2-3 hours with four of us who weren’t overly familiar with the game), it seems to be way too short to feel like anything much has happened. You basically end up going through the deck of events once (possibly even 20 cards short of that), and it seems to us as if that’s just enough time for a pirate to loot a couple ships, rack up some notoriety, and retire—if he’s lucky. One additional note—a couple of us didn’t notice the lines separating the sea areas until they were forcibly pointed out to them. I don’t understand why, they were instantly obvious to me.

On our first go through both me and Patch took advantage of the second draw of the General Pardon card (the first does nothing, the third ends the game, only the second does the event on the card), to get to an English port and take the pardon and retire (converting all our notoriety and loot into victory points). Neither of us did anything much with the second pirates we activated right afterwards, and Mark and Jason never retired. At first we thought this left them with no VPs, but later review showed that they got a handful from accumulated notoriety. Patch had done better than I and won quite handily.

We went off to lunch at that point, and started a second short game when we got back. I don’t think it took any less time, but we started using parts of the rules to much greater effect. Most notably King’s Commissioners were quite active, and the bane of more than one pirate.

This time, it was more than some of us could do (including me) to retire a pirate before the end of the game. I started out well, picking off Patch’s successful pirate at the beginning of the game with my KC. After that it was all downhill. I took a gamble and started off the Gold Coast of Africa, where it turned out there weren’t any merchants. I moved over to the happy hunting grounds of India (about half the initial merchants were in that area. I took one merchant and got a valuable prisoner, but hardly any loot or notoriety (rolled ‘1’s for both on a +1 ship). The real problem was that my hostage was French, and the only French port with a non-anti-pirate governor was in the Caribbean.

So, I set out for the Caribbean, and that turned out to take longer than the game lasted. This was partially due to delays caused by my speed rating dropping below 0 halfway there from the combined effects of storms and events played on me. This left me at half movement in the middle of the Atlantic (transit box), and by the time I got to a port, got repairs and got close to my goal of a French port, I was drawing the last card of the deck (the General Pardon for the third time). Thanks to the early KC points, I again managed second, but not by a lot, and Patch was well ahead.

It seems like the only workable pattern for the short game is to cycle through pirates as quickly as possible. Catch a merchant ship, get a little loot and notoriety, and retire as soon after that as possible. Then start it again, and gain as much notoriety as possible, since that’ll convert to VPs on game end.

We actually had some time at the end of that, so we went for a round of Plague & Pestilence. Patch (as it turns out) and I have both played it before, but it’s been years…. Due to the Plague Ship showing up a bit late, and time constraints, we actually didn’t quite finish. I think I had the highest population (I’d managed to stay quiet and have good luck on the plague rolls, so I moved from a close third), though Mark had a seemingly endless supply of improvements, which could have kept him afloat. Both Patch and Jason were running pretty thin by the end of it.

Plans for next month are, so far, uncertain.