Pirates of the Spanish Main : Deeper Look

Pirates of the Spanish Main is a game in the spirit of Hero Clix and Discwars. Which, in turn, were birthed in a marriage of collectible card games, pogs, and miniature games. The goal was to create portable games you can play with simple rules and game mechanics but deep strategy.

The first part of this review can be found here... and if you haven't read it yet, I suggest you give it a go.

Further Playtesting - More Than Just a Gimmick

At first glance, Pirates comes across as a cute little tabletop game with nice three-dimensional pieces that are pretty fun to put together. In the annals of game design, there are tons of these. Like Milton Bradley's "The Omega Virus" (board game with a talking box in the middle) or any one of a dozen X-Men licensed games with "authentic miniatures cast in rubbery plastic."

Alot of the rules seemed, at first, a little shallow and there were several instances of "how in the world did that get past the playtesters?" I'm both happy and unhappy to say that most of those anomalies vanished as our fleets grew and we tried out different strategies. There is still a feeling of haves and have-nots but, at least, some of the more glaring problems resolved themselves. Oh, and they did post the multiplayer rules. You can download them right here.

Balance - Captain on the Bridge

In a small set, the player with a Captain is unstoppable. Plain and simple. Laserfish and I went over scenario after scenario with the ships we had at hand and, in every instance, the Captain came out on top.

How is that balanced? Why is this 3 point crew so incredibly powerful and so impossibly cheap as well? We found out when a pair of our experimental fleets went head-to-tail. A fleet without a Captain has almost no chance of fighting a "light and fast" fleet. Without Captains, every game would devolve into "grab the treasure and avoid each other" since moving into anyone else's firing range is asking for pain and failure... since doing so gives them the first shot (assuming equal or near-equal ships). Unless, of course, you're faster and...

Tactics - Ramming Speed!

Another maneuver that made no sense in our smaller set was ramming (and the subsequent pinning and boarding). With our eyes newly opened to a Captain's balance, we learned about how vulnerable they really are.

Ramming requires that the bow of your ship be in contact with any non-bow portion of your enemy ship. Ramming pins the rammer (unless the other ship goes derelect)... rendering it immobile - but leaves the rammed ship free to move and fire. Originally, this was obviously the height of lunacy. You ram a ship and, if you roll higher than the number of masts it currently has, it loses one mast. Afterwards, boarding actions can bring about the death of a crew or the stealing of a treasure (each player rolls and adds his remaining sails - highest roll wins).

The question was... why ram someone when, at most, you will eliminate one mast while most likely being pinned (and in great range for a full broadside the next round). The answer is: when you're looking to assassinate dangerous crew, steal a unique treasure, or cripple a key ship (a 3-master or smaller) with an un-Captained ship. On at least two occasions, ramming has taken a ship with the capacity to be a deadly menace and transformed it into a crippled, crew-less hulk. While, on paper, it looks like lunacy, it's actually a smart tactic in the right hands and strikes fear into the heart of smaller ships who can ill-afford to lose a mast.

Due to ramming, we've determined that no ship with 3 or fewer masts should, as a general rule, be assigned a Captain. It is too easy to kill him while eliminating his bonus through ramming. There is probably a counter to this somewhere but, until we find it, the Captain goes onto the big boys where those extra masts can protect him from scurvvy sea dogs!

Not a Card Game - A Board Game in Disguise

In many card-based games, it's easy to distill the value of a card because they are almost universally based on abstracts. Some of them (Deadlands CCG, for example) utilize the concept of location but rarely takes maneuverability into account. But most, like Magic: the Gathering, use the general "attack," "defense," and "block" system.

That's why Pirates is not a CCG, despite its packaging and the fact that its parts all come from cards. Pirates of the Spanish Main is, for all intents and purposes, a board game. While it's pretty obvious to most, it was not so to me at first. In fact, after a half dozen or so games, I'm starting to think of it, almost exclusively, as a board game. The next two points are possibly unforseen flaws in the design... when you consider it a board game.

Maneuverability & Speed are King

For starters, there's a minor imbalance. More important than almost anything else is maneuverability. The game is fast-paced and the goal is to uncover all of the treasure, returning it to your home island. That means there's an elegant dance of ships jockeying for position, trying to corner each other into firing range, and screening cargo-laden ships.

That means any ship which sacrifices speed for any other advantage is probably getting the short end of the deal. Furthering the have/have-not divide are some point costs that simply do not justify their actual value in practical gameplay. This does not only matter for treasure-grabbing fleets but any ship that wants to be proactive (read: wants to sink other ships or grab treasure better) will need to be equally fast or faster than its opponent.

Which One is That?

The second is that, the more ships we add to our fleets, the more we can see which are duds and which are great... but only by looking at their statistic cards.

Many of the ships look identical aside from their nameplates. The only difference being the tiny dice represented at the bases of their masts. Now, if this were a Collectible Card Game, this would not be a terrible issue. After all, each card holds a unique value and everything is spelled out on it. It sits in your hand and in your deck which makes proxies (or forgeries) a very, very bad thing.

In a board game, however, all you need is a game piece which looks close enough to authentic to represent the stats on a sheet (or card) in front of you. What is the difference between the H.M.S. Dover and the H.M.S.King Edward? A quick visit to the Pirates of the Spanish Main website and a printer... or even a pencil.

As our fleets bulk up with nondescript ships we never intend to use, the option of sort-of refitting the useless hulls becomes more and more attractive. We've already done it with the basic crew (ignoring the nationality limits on the back due to our limited set and a desire to test them all out)... is it such a bizarre thing to logically trade a situationally useful (and ungodly expensive) hull like La Furia for the inexpensive but almost identically-cut El Picador if your fleet calls for it?

Even further... since the game is so unmoorable from its card-based foundation... why not just design stats and abilities for your hulls and build on the foundation this board-game-style system has provided? If you stick to the posted types, the point cost is relatively easy to estimate.

Verdict - Fun to Play

In the end, Pirates of the Spanish Main is a really fun game to play every once in a while. It's not demanding of time (matches take anywhere from half and hour to 45 minutes with a 30 point fleet) and, as long as we keep on feeding the beast a couple of packs before each round, it stays fresh. It's relatively inexpensive and the ships are still pretty fun to assemble and display but I would suggest a collection of no less than six packs and a relaxed stance on (generic) crew and mixed-faction ships to make it flexible and enjoyable without the need to purchase a box or two. But I'm afraid a full collection could be formed from ten packs if you choose to do it on the cheap.

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Note: All images were borrowed from the official Pirates of the Spanish Main site.

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