A critical component to any game is the layout. A chess board is elegant and serves a multitude of tasks such as regulating movement. A miniature wargame layout has the added requirement of being visually appealing so as to add to the enjoyment of the game. Still, the board acts as a limiting factor requiring us to literally think outside the box for actions going on “around the board.” This can be such things as “off board” artillery or reinforcements that can come on in unknown places.

Click on any of the images in this post to Enlarge.

Several years ago I ran a pirate game at a convention. The board was fairly long but ships at one end could never really get to other end in time to fight each other. The was plenty of shooting but darn little strategy. I was always plagued by the fact that no matter how long the board, we were limited by the six foot width.

Thinking “outside the board” is hard to do when the ships are constrained by wind direction and a limited amount of time to play any game. Moreover, I have a hard and fast rule in my convention games, that almost every player is moving on the first turn and shooting and killing stuff by the third turn at the latest. Who wants the be a reinforcement that doesn’t show up for an hour?  The only way to comply with this requirement was to bunch both sides close to one another and have at it. Playtesting produced a jumble of ships and darn little movement and zero fun. Back to the drawing board.

Much thought produced the theoretical donut board.  A giant round board with the ships able to get at each other by circling round the lagoon. Naturally such a board would be gigantic. So I flattened out the world like a Mercator projection and came up with the idea that a ship sailing off one end of the world would appear at the other end. Distortions of distance at the north and south were ignored.  There isn’t  much new about this; old video games let ships re-enter the world from the opposite side.

The game board ended up 6 foot wide and 24 feet in length. The two feet at either end were “transit zones.”  When you got to one end you were effectively at the other end as well.  You pick up the ship and move to the other side and away you go. We didn’t allow ships to fight or shoot in the transit zone.

If a ship sailed off the long sides, I would allow the ship to return from the exact spot of exit, albeit facing in the inward direction three turns later.

By using these conventions there was no longer an “edge of world” and folks could sail about worrying only about the occasional sea monster.

By having an ‘endless world’ I could have the ships fight over islands. Whoever held three islands at the end of the time limit won the game. The Pirates of the Caribbean card game uses a variation of this.

And so I was set. The game board design let my boats sail about shooting and boarding each other which is the point of the game.

Having amassed hundreds of pirates and more than a  dozen fully rigged ships set the stage for the pirate extravaganza at Nashcon. The problem was that so many folks wanted to play I needed more ships.  The Sea Lord provided.  Scott “Wingnut” Christian emailed me asking  if he could bring four ships to the game. One look at his fleet was enough. He and his crew were in.

I posted the rules online and advised that whomever appeared appropriately dressed got first choice of ships. There was no shortage of folks to play. What was in shortage was transportation. My son, Ben,  and I took two cars to load up all the stuff for  the game.

The game went 20 turns over three and half hours. The Red Pirates held off a counter-attack on their third island and just barely won the game. Perhaps half the ships were sunk or set afire.

The home island concept did not work as I intended. People were afraid to attack each other’s home island although each was only held by but 10 guns. In future games there will be no “home” islands which should move things along. On this score I must confess I was ruthless in making folks move and shoot as fast as possible. Somebody who worried about some stupid angle of fire or blocking terrain was attacked by a sea monster and some of their crew was eaten alive. That ended tardy play.

So here are the photos from the game. The photobucket slideshow will let you see all the photos. If your browser will not accommodate the slideshow, the photobucket list will work just fine.

There is no one photo of the entire board. It is just too long. The first photo is taken from one end; the second form the other end. The rest of the photos are eye candy. The Rules are HERE. The Ships are Out of production Old Glory, some new Old Glory, some custom ships and several display models I waterlined. Many of the pirates and several of the ships are painted by Rhea Baskette who came in full pirate attire and whose photo is on the right

David Raybin

Tags: 18th Century Warfare, Photos, Pirates