Yo! Ho! Ho! And A Bottle of Rum!

My second game to learn the game system. The game flowed much smoother this time round as I realised I missed a couple of important points because they were embedded in a chunk of text. Should’ve been bullet pointed but oh well.

I forgot to roll for deployment. Sigh.

Any way, the Jamaican Pirates and Crown Forces were more or less laid out like this while I waited for my 3D printed barricades to finish.

Then the action started, hot and furious! Because there was a tie for initiative, I had to roll for an Event. Rain. +1 to all Shoot and Reaction tests. Sigh.

The Crown Forces got Initiative, drat. But instead of grabbing the loot, decided to shoot my Captain instead! Casualty! Whatta revolting start!

But that was it as most of the Crown Forces now decided to grab the loot instead of shooting. I thought I got my own back by downing a Marine. A good start, right?

However, as my Brawler Pirate charged the Crown Forces, they managed to get a Reaction and promptly shot my Pirate dead!

That forced me to end Round 1 with a Disadvantage in Strike Points (4 to 1) that can trigger a Morale Check in future end phases of each Round.

For Round 2, I made sure to pay a Fortune token to prevent more ties for Initiative, as that meant I had to roll for more events and potentially trigger a downpour with... pretty disastrous penalties for shooting and reactions and even moving.

I started by shooting the Marine and thought I got a really good attack roll with 3 successes... but the Crown Marine managed to block all of them! It did mean he took enough Fatigue tokens to be Shaken. When you’re Shaken you can't do anything else except Rally or Move. And since his side had the advantage in Strike Points this turn, that meant they'd be cautious. He rallied.

Surprisingly my Landsman (that I only took because of the cheap cost enabling me to fill my crew with bodies) managed to make the Crown NCO a casualty! Only way: by rolling a natural 10! (He hit last round but the NCO shrugged it off. It did mean the NCO got a Fatigue token, making it easier to hurt him and make him a casualty on subsequent Rounds.) And it worked!

And turn 2 ended like this, with 4 models a side and my Pirates having a disadvantage in Strike Points (8 to 4, ignore the dice in the photo, I miscalculated). That forced me to make a Strike Test (why can’t they simply call it a Morale Test I’ll never know!) with my Quartermaster since my Captain was already off the table as a casualty. I passed! Phew!

The next two rounds just flew by! My Boatswain - instead of shooting the Crown Soldier with all those Fatigue tokens practically guaranteeing a death sentence - took down the Crown Marine Captain instead. I figured with the NCO out of action, taking the Captain out would force the Crown Forces to automatically fail the Morale test at the end of the Round. 

Not so fast! The Crown Marine next to the downed Captain passed a Reaction test and managed to make my Boatswain a casualty! What?!! (This time I played correctly and the Crown Marines took advantage of their Disciplined Drill to gain a bonus to their Shoot. Ugh.)

In another part of the map, my Quartermaster charged the Shaken Crown Marine unopposed since he was too shaken to React. With all the Fatigue tokens, getting a hit in that wasn't cancelled was probably a death sentence for the guy. And sure enough...

At the end of Round 3, no Morale Test was required for me as the difference wasn't 2x. Phew! But I was still at a Disadvantage in Strike Points (10 to 8). In this game, the fewer Strike Points you have, the better.

Then on Round 4, even though I paid a Fortune token to prevent a tie, the Crown Forces went first. At first I thought it was bad until... I discovered because they STILL had a positive net balance in terms of Strike Points from their earlier successes compared to me, they decided to be gung ho and got closer in to my Pirates. Big mistake! (The remaining Crown Marine was Shaken so could only Rally.)

The gung-ho-ness on the part of the Marine gave me the opportunity to use my Quartermaster, a melee Brawler, to charge the Crown Marine and take him down. Yes! My Landsman rushed towards the last Marine. My Freebooter took a shot at the Shaken Marine and STILL couldn't take him down! He was standing out in the open and I kept NOT being able to deal the killing blow! I think he survived 3 or 4 shots in all!

But it was now the end of Round 4. At this stage of the game, if any side has more Strike Points than the other, they need to take a Morale Test and finally with all the loses, the Crown was finally at a disadvantage: 12 to 10! With NO officers left, the remaining Shaken Marine ran for his life!

The Jamaican Pirates emerged victors but with only 2 loot tokens. The Crown forces didn't manage to grab a single one this time. The other 3 loot tokens were left on the field of battle.

TL; DR: I still kept making mistakes, despite modifying the Quick Reference Sheets and adding more info to the AI activation charts (the info was all over the place).

• Forgot to roll for deployment type and ended up with my first game: confused and scattered deployment.
• It turns out that the AI OpFor has a chance to make a reroll on failed tests (even though they don't draw a face card that's a Club). This is to simulate the use of Fortune tokens (which I have and the AI OpFor doesn't) for rerolls. I twigged on that the final round.

Misunderstanding: so even though the Crown Forces didn't have any officers left on the table, my disadvantage in Strike Points was so great that they were immune from taking a Morale Check the Round I put down the Crown Captain. I had to play a 4th and final round.

Now that I've got another game under my belt, I can see that the fact the OpFor (when carrying Loot tokens) don't necessarily have to have a separate home brew rule to account for that.

• The AI OpFor are there to make things difficult for the player. So even though there were all those Loot tokens lying around for the taking, I just couldn't grab 'em all because each model can only carry one. So that's the spoiler role of the OpFor.
• Then I finally read the OpFor AI activation table properly/correctly. If the OpFor has fewer Strike Points (meaning they have the advantage over me) they will play more aggressively. If they have more Strike Points then they will play more cautiously/conservatively.
• The random card draws to determine what each model does when they activate is really good. You can get semi-random bonuses from the card drawn to either get one more action (total 3 actions) or unlimited re-rolls. And if they don't get the desired outcome, there's still a 25% chance of them getting ANOTHER reroll (to simulate paying Fortune more points.).

All in all, this second game was a fun game and now that I understand the rules better, I'm enjoying myself more. The AI Activation/Action chart is really well done and the randomised card draws ensures even I don't know what the OpFor will do when they activate.

Also, now that I generated an Event and I've played with one (Rain) I can say: my initial assessment still holds. It's fun that you can mix up the battlefield conditions and mess things up for yourself and/or the OpFor. You can even give a sort of personality to the OpFor leader (optional rule). However in the end the objective still remains to grab as many loot tokens as possible.

So I still think some sort of narrative-based campaign is called for, and the collecting of loot is so you can level up and upgrade your crew and recruit more crew members. (NOTE: Firelock Games is sponsoring an annual global play event and some folks actually wrote up some specific scenarios in honour of this. It's still not a dedicated narrative campaign, but I'll take what I can get.)

The fun lies in the post-battle segment where you perform campaign tasks. It'll probably take you like 10-15 minutes. Roll for casualties. Mooks have a 50/50 chance of a full recovery for the next battle... or they died of their wounds. Officers are more nuanced. You CAN die, but it's overwhelmingly likelier to get a permanent injury instead. Then you can level up and see how much gold those loot tokens are worth. Then you can level up your models because you now have XP, and flush with cash, you hire more men or buy better weapons/supplies.