Cadet-Captain Mike's Guide to Basic Piracy
Part 8: Glossary
How to pick a good ship or crew? You can get a clue by reading other gamers' comments on ships in the various Pirates forums. But some of the terms and abbreviations they use may not make sense to a beginner. Here are the most common Piratisms.
- Canceller means the ability to keep one enemy ship or crew from using its special ability for one turn. It usually is limited to an enemy within S range at the time you use it.
- Combo Fleet is a fleet of ships where some are set up for fighting and some are intended to grab gold. You can make such a fleet from any faction, but the Pirates and the French are probably the best at it.
- Death Match is a battle where gold is not in play. It's a shooting battle where the last admiral with any functional ships is the winner.
- Exclusive Explorer is a ship or crew that can mark a nearby island as explored, and make it unexplored for all other players.
- Gunship is a ship with good cannons (mostly 2-rank, maybe with a 3-rank or two) and an ability that is aimed at combat. The word usually implies "big," as in 4-5 masts.
- Hostage means a crew with the Ransom keyword, who is worth 5 gold if the enemy captures him/her, or 1 gold if his/her ship is sunk.
- Reroller is a ship or crew that can reroll one die roll per turn.
- Reverse Captain means your ship can move after finishing a Shoot action. According to WizKids, Captains and Reverse-Captains don't stack; you can move and shoot, or shoot and move, but not both in the same action.
- S-board is the ability to board a ship within S range without touching it. The target ship usually cannot use any boarding bonuses.
- Sac Captain is short for "sacrifice captain," a crew that combines a Captain with the ability to sacrifice one of your ship's crew in exchange for an extra action.
- SAT means "same action twice." You can give your ship the same orders (move, shoot, explore, or repair) twice in one turn. A ship with a Captain can shoot after each Move; a ship with a Reverse-Captain can move after each Shoot.
- Speed Fleet is a fleet where all the ships are very fast; S+L is about the slowest you'll find in such a fleet, and (with added Helmsmen) they can go up to S+S+S+S.
- Support Fighter is a ship that's built and crewed for combat, but which doesn't have enough masts to take on an enemy flotilla single-handed. Instead, such ships will raid enemy gold ships, finish off enemy fighters that your big fighter has damaged, and guard your flank. Ships with 2-3 masts are often used as support fighters.
- Swarm is a fleet of many small, inexpensive ships that will try to grab all the gold by sheet numbers. Some factions, like the USA, don't have enough cheap ships to make a decent swarm, while the Pirates can pack as many as eight ships into a 30-point fleet.
- World-hater is the ability to give +1 on cannon rolls against any ship or fort from a different faction from the ship or crew in question.
- I'm open to additions to this list, as long as the terms are in common use.
Back to the Pirates page