So I picked up a few cases of various Pirates of... constructable strategy game produced by Wizkids to use the ships and sea monsters for 3d representations on a battle mat when doing ship chases.
But as I went on my opening frenzy I saw the treasure tokens to use for the Plunder points the PCs will find during this AP.
Then I started thinking about using the crew squares as NPC tokens for ship to ship battles. The islands are easy enough to use as well as the fog banks. I mean might as well use what I can since I paid for the packs.
Now the idea which I may ask help with for all you creative types are the rare/cursed treasures that came with it. Not sure how to implement them for S&S but will probably use them in future games.
Anyone else planning on picking these ups to use? or what are you using for your game?
|
I had bought a few of these back in '05. The ships are pretty cool for what they are but aren't "to scale" with the ships as they are laid out in the Sk&ShPG. So I doubt I will use them much, if at all.
As you find ways to utilize them, please post. They're a nice resource for the resourceful (read: people with time to think this through).
My first idea... ended up creating two magic items, the regular and the cursed version
Barrel of Monkeys: cursed treasure.
Detects/identifies as Barrel of Fish. Once opened you unleash 3 monkey swarms on your ship. The swarms instantly separate(taking up separate squares with no overlap) and begin attacking anyone near by (10 feet and not in another swarm), if no one is near by the swarm heads up into the rigging of the ship, rigger actions are unable to be taken while a swarm is active in the rigging.
Created from Barrel of Fish: The barrel of fish is a magical item that allows for less food storage on long journeys. It holds enough pickled fish to feed a crew of 20 for a day at a time. It refills itself every day at sunrise.
Craft Wondrous Item, create food and water, Purify food and water, CL 7th 8400gp (16800gp retail)
I am interested in this also. Let us know how the use of the ships works for you! I like the idea that you can have junks and long ships using the Pirates of the Crimson Coast ships!
Yeah, and I got three Catamarans from some mega-packs I bought too.
I plan to use them also. I figured I'd use the cut-out shapes from the player's guide to represent the size and use the larger models on top to give some 3D realism to it.
Also I can't wait to use a sea monster or giant shark or kraken or giant crab! Even if it's just to scare the living daylights out of my players!
Director of Game Development
|
The ships would work really well for the mass naval combat Fleet Battles rules that are coming up in PF#59. When we were playtesting them Rob and I were talking about how cool it'd be to have a ton of those ships for just that purpose. I've been looking around for cheap bundles online since then.
|
|
I have a *ton* of Pirates! CSG ships and Azmyth does too. We were going to use them for S&S and may yet; however, Azmyth picked up a copy of Dreadfleet on clearance and Cherry has been painting up those GW plastic minis so we will probably be using them instead.
The Rolls Royce naval miniatures to use are the 1:1200 minis made by Rod Langton at Langton Miniatures. Signal Close Action uses these minis' scale by default. These minis were also used as the default base minis assumed by Games Workshop Historical in their surprisingly good naval minis game rules, Trafalgar. (The secret to making Langton minis look awesome is not the painting. They are easy to paint. The secret is to take the time to use rigging thread on the mini properly.) Regrettably, Langton minis are pretty expensive to buy. A decent selection of Langton squadrons + sails will set you back a few hundred at least. They paint fast enough, but rigging is a little fiddly.
Some pointers on using Pirates! CSG ships:
- 1. Store the ship flat on its card (deconstruct it and put the pieces back in the card holes) when not in use. The plastic dries out and breaks over time when under stress at the edges - as it will be if you leave the pieces curved.
- 2. Edging the ship dramatically improves its visual appearance. To edge a ship, put it together as you normally would. Now, take either a black or a brown Sharpie (or both, as the part you are edging may prefer) and quickly run the side of the Sharpie tip along the exposed white edge of the card, permanently inking it and covering up the exposed white edge. This takes only 15 seconds or so per ship to do and improves the appearance of the ship on the table greatly.
- 3. It would have been better to remind Paizo staff of this during development of the rules, but a square grid is actually *better* for naval play than a hex grid. In an old Naval game from the early 70s, Fighting Sail, the designer Joe Balkoski realized that by using the corners of a square as a direction as well, a square grid can represent the 8 cardinal directions on a compass rose.
Since that time, most naval games which use squares use the corners to indicate a bearing as well, leaving you with the 8 directions of N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW. Using the map in this manner imparts a far more satisfying and "nautical" feel to maneuvering a ship on the play surface than to simply use N,S,E,W or the directions presented by a hex grid.
I wouldn't get too worked up about the scale of the square measurements on your play surface, just be consistent, eyeball and hand wave where you think you need to and convert as may be required when you don't want to hand wave it. Adjust the scale in the manner that seems best, bearing in mind what the default scale is supposed to be.
Even the HMS Victory, the most famous and among the largest Ships of the Line in the climax of the Age of Sail, was barely 200 feet long on the hull. Add in the bowsprit and it just measured to 226 feet. None of these ships are overlay large in length IRL. Using 1"=60' should work, more or less, for the entire Pirates! line. There are only a few of the Pirates Ships which threaten 3.5" in length. The only one that comes close to four inches is the Promo 10 Gun ship from Jade Sea expansion, which is not only a Limited Edition ship, but pretty silly, too :)
The ships would work really well for the mass naval combat Fleet Battles rules that are coming up in PF#59. When we were playtesting them Rob and I were talking about how cool it'd be to have a ton of those ships for just that purpose. I've been looking around for cheap bundles online since then.
Any clues as to how many ships will be needed for those naval battles?
The ships would work really well for the mass naval combat Fleet Battles rules that are coming up in PF#59. When we were playtesting them Rob and I were talking about how cool it'd be to have a ton of those ships for just that purpose. I've been looking around for cheap bundles online since then.
I got my cases from miniaturemarket.com
|
Director of Game Development
|
The ships would work really well for the mass naval combat Fleet Battles rules that are coming up in PF#59. When we were playtesting them Rob and I were talking about how cool it'd be to have a ton of those ships for just that purpose. I've been looking around for cheap bundles online since then.Any clues as to how many ships will be needed for those naval battles?
At least a couple dozen, probably more to have enough for both sides. It'd take quite a few, so using the counters from the Player's Guide would be ideal, but if someone had a big collection, they could make the battles much more visually appealing.
|
Director of Game Development
|
The ships would work really well for the mass naval combat Fleet Battles rules that are coming up in PF#59. When we were playtesting them Rob and I were talking about how cool it'd be to have a ton of those ships for just that purpose. I've been looking around for cheap bundles online since then.I got my cases from miniaturemarket.com
Thanks, I'll look around.
|
|
You don't care about the language on the game cards when it is just the plastic ships that you want. So get the German language Pirates! ones HERE. The price is super cheap and appears to be the main original set release. This is good as it gives a broad selection of ships. It's in the Shrink, so your chances of getting a HMS Victory three decker are decent enough, too and the plastic cards won't have dried out/or faded by being exposed to light for years.
If you wanted some other hull designs to add to those in the main set, you want ships from the following sets to expand your hull types:
Pirates of the Barbary Cost: Adds lateen rigged vessels with oars;
Pirates of the Frozen North: Adds more (and larger) Viking Style longships; and
Pirates at Ocean's Edge: Gives you some more ship sized Sea Monsters, Davey Jones styled Pirate ships and I think there may be some some Junk Rigged warships in there, too. (Mainly, its monsters and Pirates.)
Unless you are specifically looking for Junk Rigged ships, this should do you nicely. Junk Rigged vessels may be found in Pirates of the South China Seas on ebay.
If you are eBaying, if at all possible, I highly recommend getting one or two collectors tins released as part of the "Pirates of the _____" sets if you can. They are the perfect size for storing the ship cards. I picked up 6 tins of these on clearance as part of the Pirates of the Revolution release many years ago and found them to be VERY handy for storage and sorting - and they look nice on the shelf, too. The collectors tins typically come with 3 or 4 boosters in them already, if still in the shrink.