Pirates Ahoy

Lately I have been painting whatever came to mind.  Mostly steam tanks and other Victorian sci-fi stuff.  In contrast we have been playing in a very different era.

Pirates have been firmly on our radar for a month or so lately.  We identified a number of games we owned, and planned to get a number of games played to try them all out.

Cutlass (by Black Scorpion) started things off and proved to be enjoyable with some nice unique touches.  The activation system was slightly too controlling for our liking though. We found that it was dictating the actions of the whole crew each bound, which meant it could stop individuals from acting if the group action was not doing what they wanted to do.

On the seven seas (by Osprey) came next and proved to be too slow for us.  The mobility and actions in the game left us feeling like we were constantly waiting just to get there.  On the prescribed table size we fired our first shot only after about 30min of play…

Our last game was played using Legends of the high seas (by Warhammer Historical) sadly now out of print when Warhammer Historical stopped publishing, a real shame.  This rule set is the largest book but is actually the simplest of the rule sets we have tried.  Its one down side (something all the sets have in common) is its somewhat short movement distances and weapon ranges.  This slows the game slightly but this is made up for in its fast turn sequence. Combat is decisive and brutal and reminds me of the system used by Westwind’s Empire of the Dead.

We plan to get some more pirate action in when Coronasan returns from his Gin soaked holiday.  While he is away though, I will be looking into how to populate a somewhat empty harbour, so that boats can start to feature in our upcoming games.