Anyway, owing to a strange concept known as "school," the number of able-bodied pirates who gathered for battle tonight was lower than usual. We took this as a mixed blessing; maybe, with fewer combatants, we could fight to a conclusion instead of running out of time. Mike set up a map with two rings of six islands, with two treasures on each isle in the outer ring and three on the inner ring. In the empty center of the map, he placed the longship Asgard, which he never uses and wished to give away. It was an abandoned ship; the first player to explore it could add it to his/her fleet. In addition, if the game ended with the Asgard at someone's home island, that player got to keep it. Mike thought this would add some new wrinkles to the usual strategies. We played with 40-point fleets.
That center had become a hubbub of activity, as the fastest ships from three navies (Fire Blossom, Bosun Zach, and Almirante Antonio) converged on the Asgard. It turned out that Aimee's Bloody Jewel got there first, and she took proud possession of the longship. Her first act as its temporary owner was to turn its cannons on the other two ships that were docked to her, and she swiftly turned Le Pique and El Chico into derelicts. She then sailed away toward Mike's fleet (she seemed to think he would protect her or something), while her other ships maneuvered to keep anyone else from catching her prize.
As the other admirals tried to pursue her, more battles broke out. Paul and Antonio apparently had some kind of truce at the start of the battle, but as their fleets approached the center and mingled, somebody called somebody a rude name, somebody else made a rude face, and suddenly the cannonballs were flying. The Divan's Punishment and Cat's Claw led the charge for Paul, but their shooting was poor and they hit only one mast on the Rusty Harpoon. That ship swatted the Cat's Claw down and did some damage to Paul's galley as well, then joined the Diamond Strike to smash Aimee's Cursed Blade before that ship could load some nearby gold. They also crushed Zach's Boston, just because she was in the way. The Lady's Scorn tried to avenge her fleetmate, but with two four-masted ships against one, the result was a shorn Lady's Scorn (shorn of her masts, that is). No one wanted to finish her off, knowing that she was Eternal, so there she sat.
At the same time, Le Pique had used her Shipwright to get back in the battle. The Divan's Punishment closed in on her and began peeking on Le Pick. No, sorry, she was picking on Le Pique. Her gunnery was better this time, and the little Frenchman became the first ship to actually sink. Jake's HMS Nautilus also joined the party, knocking a mast off of Paul's Bloody Jewel.
It was at this point that Mike's longships got close enough to start picking targets. The Cadet-Captain uttered his war cry, "What a beautiful brawl!" This brought a chorus of "Uh-oh's" from the others, except the Fire Blossom, who still thought Mike was on her side. The Asgard sailed right between Mike's two ships, a prescription for disaster if there ever was one. But Mike always was a sucker for the dames, and he held his fire.
But not for long. The Hlidskjalf veered to starboard, trusting in her defensive ability to keep her safe, and began plinking at anything within range. She quickly reduced Jake's Nautilus to one mast, then none, then began knocking pieces off the Divan's Punishment. Both ships fired back for as long as they could, but their marksmanship was wretched. It wasn't until the sixth shot that Paul could finally crow, "Hit!" To which Mike replied, "Miss!" and revealed his longship's ability. Frustrated, Paul's Bloody Jewel rammed the little Viking, but not hard enough; she did no damage. In the boarding action that followed, Mike lost his Cannoneer. He was still accurate enough to sink the Lady's Scorn, though, which made Aimee happy; she began repairing her Eternal flagship the very next turn.
At the same time, the Huginn turned to port and engaged both the Diamond Strike and the Rusty Harpoon, both of which had taken some damage. But now, they found out what "damage" really meant. "I'm just going to give you a big Hug...inn," Mike grinned. His gunnery was dead on target, and both of Antonio's four-masters became no-masters in one turn.
Now another threat loomed up out of the mist. Zach's last "ship," El Toro the giant crab, was paddling the water for all he was worth, trying to overtake the Asgard, and swatting Aimee's Bloody Jewel under the waves on the way by. He had a good angle on her, and if it had just been him and her, he would have succeeded. But Mike's Vikings saw the titan approaching and began shouting, "Krusty Krabby Patties for supper!" The Huginn, in turn, got a good angle on the crab, opened fire, and landed just enough hits to fill his lockers with crab meat for months to come. This is the third giant crab Mike has slain, which makes him the champion crustacean-killer in the Plainville Pirate League. Historians have still not figured out why he ran such risks to protect Aimee. It's not like she batted her eyes at him or anything.
All this time, the Dread Pirate Richard's ships had been shuttling back and forth, building up a steadily growing pile of gold on his home island. No one bothered him; they were all fixated on the Asgard. But once Richard got most of his ships home, he got bold and took some shots at Jake's Jaguar, which was creeping toward the action in the center. The Golden Peacock was surprisingly effective, landing two hits with two shots from her inferior cannons, and the Rattlesnake got the Jaguar's last mast. I never knew a peacock and a rattlesnake could kill a jaguar, but you learn something new every day.
Richard learned something, too — don't aggravate Jake if you aren't better armed than he is. Jake's remaining ship, the superb HMS Royal, caught the Neptune's Hoard with full holds and sent her to Davy Jones, minus half her treasure. Jake then jumped the Golden Peacock, which utterly failed to do any damage, and sent her down as well.
All this time, Paul's Shamrock had also been shuttling back and forth unmolested, using her ability to grab the best coins she could find. Some of those coins had gone into building the Devil's Maw fort (Richard had built the Thompson's Island fort, but it played no role in the battle). The Asgard was approaching her new owner's home island, escorted by the freshly-repaired Lady's Scorn. Mike's Huginn, with no targets left that he felt like shooting at, docked at a wild island, dropped her Shipwright to free some cargo space, and loaded one coin. "I don't want to be shut out," he explained to no one in particular.
There remained one last unresolved battle. The Hlidskjalf decided that it would be a lot of fun to chase down and sink the Shamrock. She cruised right next to the Devil's Maw, which was unable to target her. The Divan's Punishment still had her bow chaser cannon, but for some reason, Paul never tried to fire it. Instead, he maneuvered the Bloody Jewel so her long-range fore cannon was out of S range. But he didn't clear his fantail, which was still within S range, so the shot couldn't hit. Paul was getting very aggravated by now, and sent the Jewel to ram Mike's ship again. This time, he succeeded, and the longship became a derelict. Undaunted, the Cadet-Captain ran out the oars, waited until the Bloody Jewel moved away, and rammed her back. Now there were two derelicts, one with oars and one with a bad attitude towards longships.
At this time, the sun set on the battle, by order of the Dangerous Lady Lora. Aimee was one turn away from getting the Asgard home, and several sea lawyers said she shouldn't be allowed to keep it. But Mike ruled that, if they'd played until 9:00 like he'd planned, she would have gotten the longship home, and was thus entitled to make it her own. This made her quite happy.
In terms of gold, Richard ran away with the game. (It helped that Mike kept whispering to him, "Go for the gold! Go for the gold!") Paul came in a fairly close second, due almost entirely to the Shamrock. Mike was third, Jake was one point behind him in fourth, and the other three players were shut out. We couldn't award the Captain's Coin to Richard because it's still in the hands of its last winner, Admiral Abigail, who is taking a sabbatical from piracy.
Mike had hoped that the abandoned longship would be a distraction from the gold game, and he was right. Of the three players who tried to grab the Asgard (Aimee, Zach, and Antonio), not one of them loaded a single piece of eight. Mike spent his entire battle fighting, and picked up one coin as an afterthought, while Jake spent his battle dodging Mike, and got one coin from sinking Richard's ship. Paul did well on gold and not so well at fighting, but he managed a better balance of the two than anyone else. Of the 23 ships that began the game, only nine were still afloat and navigable at the end, and one of those had made an Eternal comeback after being sunk.
Between Richard and his gold, and Aimee and her new ship, who was the real winner? I'd say they both won. That's not something you see every day.