Free Captains Regatta issues?

[Zhadum]

Okay I will list my issues on this one.

1. Every single player count calls for 8 locations. Making you use all 8 enemy ships. 6 from base set and 2 from character add-on deck. So game owners without the character deck are SOL and need to proxy cards to make this scenario work.

2. I don't understand why how this was meant to scale with 8 locations regardless of player count. Seems to me that more players is better on this one period. I can't even imagine trying to duo it.

3. Since it is implied locations should not be closed, I wish this would have been clarified. Based on community posts that we had to read before playing the scenario due to confusion. We determined locations are not closed. If this is intended, I would have liked this to be stated on the card.

Clarification would be nice.

[Andrew L Klein]

1) That's definitely odd, and probably something that shouldn't be done as it is

2) Certain scenarios work better for more players than less. In general, larger groups have the downside of having less turns per location to win a scenario, so one scenario in the opposite leaning direction doesn't seem that bad

3) There's nothing to put on the scenario. You can still close them if you want, but it will prevent you from being able to win. Things like that aren't for the scenario card, they're for you to look at the scenario and say "Oh, that's a bad idea to close them". If the scenarios weren't allowed to be closed it would belong on the card, but notes on what you should or should not do for strategy is not what the scenario text is for. You need the ships on top of each location, it's up to the players to realize when they're about to try something that makes that impossible.

[Hawkmoon269]

#1: Oops. That seems like an oversight.

#3: A wise man described this as an example of a "Doctor, doctor" problem in the design. From Smith & Dale:

Man: Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Then don't do that.

[Mike Selinker]

We are looking into #1. At first blush, it looks like we just forgot about this scenario when we assigned the Enemy Ships to B and C. But we'll get back to you after the holiday on this.

[Frencois]

Mike Selinker wrote:

We are looking into #1. At first blush, it looks like we just forgot about this scenario when we assigned the Enemy Ships to B and C. But we'll get back to you after the holiday on this.

First, good turkeyholiday for all of you on the West side of the pond.

This said the number of enemy ships in the regatta is a good one for the weekly not-this-Mike can of worms contest.

Until an official answer is given, I would suggest in that scenario that you could directly shuffle in each location deck a random ship card rather that an enemy ship henchman card with same effect (and thematically it's even better because you actually race against a set of given ships).

By the time you get to the regatta (AP3) you already have at least 14 ships in the box, so that's enough for 1 ship for the characters + 8 locations + 5 to draw randomly for in case you encounter a card that requires you to.

And by the way, you can also add enemy ship henchman cards as part as the "regular" henchmen (representing "other" contestants in the regatta). The point is just that the winning condition is to get the 8 ship cards on top of their location respective location decks (not the henchmen).

Actually we may try that version of the scenario just for fun (even if i do have the character add-on)....

[Mike Selinker]

Ships don't have normal card backs.

[Frencois]

Mike Selinker wrote:

Ships don't have normal card backs.

And that's a new instance of the "Me stupido" idea... Definitively wouldn't work. Hopefully Mike is still here to put some ense in our deliriums.

[Dave Riley]

Any other henchman would work though, provided you can remember the very-complicated Enemy Ship text. :D

[nondeskript]

Dave Riley wrote:

Any other henchman would work though, provided you can remember the very-complicated Enemy Ship text. :D

In that case use 5 enemy ships and 3 other henchmen, keeping one ship aside to reference when you hit a proxy.

[Dave Riley]

We hit this exact issue in picking up a set of RoRL to play with friends over Thanksgiving. After sifting through all the cards and building five character decks, I'm stopped dead when I remembered the base game is only 4 players, and we didn't have enough bandits.

Ancient skeleton did a bang up job as a placeholder, though.

[Ironvein]

Zhadum wrote:

Okay I will list my issues on this one.

1. Every single player count calls for 8 locations. Making you use all 8 enemy ships. 6 from base set and 2 from character add-on deck. So game owners without the character deck are SOL and need to proxy cards to make this scenario work.

2. I don't understand why how this was meant to scale with 8 locations regardless of player count. Seems to me that more players is better on this one period. I can't even imagine trying to duo it.

3. Since it is implied locations should not be closed, I wish this would have been clarified. Based on community posts that we had to read before playing the scenario due to confusion. We determined locations are not closed. If this is intended, I would have liked this to be stated on the card.

Clarification would be nice.

1) For simplicity, I'd omit the last two locations since the order of locations is usually predetermined by the scenario and the number of players. Another thought would be to randomly pick 6 of the 8 locations; this might make in most intersting if you need to replay it (can't exactly plan based on the previous locations; the race route changes every year or something).

2) The point of the scenario is just to get Enemy Ships to be the top card of every location deck, since it gives us a free peek (and optional shuffle); we can avoid a lot of bad situations. Overall wouldn't take as much time as a 'hunt for villain' scenario.

3) I'm concerned about this too. Would closing a location actually cause you to fail the scenario? What if we hit the other henchman; it'd be faster to close then than trying to find Enemy Ship. Should the scenario text have 'you cannot close any location' or 'If the top card of every OPEN location is Enemy Ship....'?

[MikMik]

Mike Selinker wrote:

We are looking into #1. At first blush, it looks like we just forgot about this scenario when we assigned the Enemy Ships to B and C. But we'll get back to you after the holiday on this.

Are you still on holiday?

[Mike Selinker]

MikMik wrote:

Mike Selinker wrote:

We are looking into #1. At first blush, it looks like we just forgot about this scenario when we assigned the Enemy Ships to B and C. But we'll get back to you after the holiday on this.

Are you still on holiday?

We are still looking at this issue.

[ryric]

My fiancé and I managed to duo this scenario - barely, but we did it.(Feiya and S&S Lini, btw)

As far as the closing issue, one "mental rule" I have about this game is that in general closing is for fighting the villain - if your scenario doesn't involves cornering a villain, there's no need to close anything. Well, unless instructed otherwise.

If you're brave you can really farm this scenario for plunder as you can repeatedly encounter the same Enemy Ship card. You just risk losing and shuffling an already "finished" location.

When I pick back up my solo Jirelle playthrough I'll be interested to see how this goes alone.

[Pyrocat]

ryric wrote:

If you're brave you can really farm this scenario for plunder as you can repeatedly encounter the same Enemy Ship card. You just risk losing and shuffling an already "finished" location.

Played through this with Lini/Oloch/Damiel/Olenjack. We ended up with 31 plunder cards. Lini had a hand of 5 animal allies that she used to encounter the same enemy ship henchment over and over, and put the allies back on the top of her deck so she always kept the same hand of allies. Almost all (or all?) the ships had Wisdom/Survival as a check to defeat, which Lini has a huge advantage to. I think there were only a couple ships that even required her to roll, as my roommate had maxed out Wisdom with every skill feat.

Despite 31 plunder, most of which were weapons, not a one of them was the Venomous Dagger+2 :(

[Ilpalazo]

Pyrocat wrote:

ryric wrote:

If you're brave you can really farm this scenario for plunder as you can repeatedly encounter the same Enemy Ship card. You just risk losing and shuffling an already "finished" location.

Played through this with Lini/Oloch/Damiel/Olenjack. We ended up with 31 plunder cards. Lini had a hand of 5 animal allies that she used to encounter the same enemy ship henchment over and over, and put the allies back on the top of her deck so she always kept the same hand of allies. Almost all (or all?) the ships had Wisdom/Survival as a check to defeat, which Lini has a huge advantage to. I think there were only a couple ships that even required her to roll, as my roommate had maxed out Wisdom with every skill feat.

Despite 31 plunder, most of which were weapons, not a one of them was the Venomous Dagger+2 :(

That's a new record! We got 29 plunder cards doing the same cycling trick, not a single useful boon though! :(

[Mike Selinker]

So, some thoughts on this, and why we're probably just going to take our lumps on this. Vic is still working on how or whether to address this in the FAQ, but I'll explain why I did not recommend a functional change to the card, the obvious one being "use 6 locations with 1-4 players, and 8 with 5-6."

This is a really weird scenario. Progressing in this one is not like progressing in others, because how you leave each deck after you progress is critical.

You get 30 turns in this scenario. In those turns, you need to get a henchman atop 8 decks. Here's what that means.

On average, if you do nothing except inspect then defeat/acquire/banish 1 card per turn, you will discover the henchman atop each deck 40 turns in. That's 10 turns too late. So you must push ahead and risk shuffling the decks when you don't want to. You need Spyglasses and Alahazra's power and other tricks to get extra card examinations. You need to avoid Hirgenzosk. You need luck and skill and strategy. Having more players doesn't help, except that resource drain is spread among more characters (which is not trivial, but is also not as powerful as in normal scenarios).

If you need to get a henchman atop 6 decks, it's a bit different. Now you average success with minimum effort. You still need luck and skill and strategy, but only to try to guarantee success. Making 4 players face only 6 locations moves it from a challenging scenario to a much easier one.

So this is the rare case when the best "errata" is to change the allocation of cards in the Base Set and Character Add-On Deck rather than anything written on the cards. But I can't easily say "That Werecrocodile? Errata its name to Enemy Ship, and all its text and art too." So we need an answer that allows you to play the game without disrupting the delicate balance of cards in the game.

All that said, Vic will have an answer when he has one. But for now, proxy in Shipwrecks if you don't have the add-on deck.

But hey, apropos of nothing, can I interest you in a very awesome Character Add-On Deck? It's got some very cool Enemy Ships in it.

[Vic Wertz]

Added to FAQ.