Port Royal

Yeah, I’m a shill for Firelock, what can I say. They make fun games, and what red blooded American doesn’t like pirates? I know I do. When I was a teenager (right after what we thought was the death of communism), I had dreams of buying an old Soviet destroyer and sailing around the world as a pirate. This was back in the days before the internet was a common occurrence, so I never ever researched it. I was probably influenced by Alby Mangels and his adventures.

Index

Let us start at the end. It has a proper index. What is nice about though is that it also has a few sentences explaining the terms.

This is very helpful when trying to learn a new game. Having everything you need in one place with the page numbers, and a short explanation made the game go much faster.

Combat

The combat system runs on a 3d10 system. Both players roll 3d10, in an opposed roll system, and they count the number of succsses. I was initially intrigued by the system, but after playing a game, I found it to be fun, but kinda boring. All we did was shooting, we didn’t do any close combat, but the shooting was less than spectacular. It took over 3 turns of combined shooting before we actually managed to remove a single figure from the table. Of course, this could just be do to our abysmal rolling.

Most of the shooting is a 7+ on a d10, so the average hits will be low. This is intentional, figures in the game only have 1 hit point, so successful damage roll will remove them from the table.

Damage Tests

A damage test stats at 10+ on d10, then you apply modifiers, such a -2 for a musket or a pistol, subtract the number of fatigue markers, and if you succeed, then the model is removed. I like this system. I feel like it very much rewards concentrating fire on a single model.

If you’ve played any other Firelock games, this one will be familiar to you. It’s not that hard to pick up.

Special Rules

One thing I don’t like about Firelock’s systems, are the proliferation of keywords. They are a lot to keep track of. There are 51 special keywords. I’m old. Keywords are a lot to keep track of for me. And some of the are so similar, I’m not sure they need to exist. What is the difference between Drilled and Expertly Drilled? That is a rhetorical question, unless you know the answer, which if you do, you probably aren’t reading this review anyways.

Weapons

There are a variety of weapons, with lots of different abilities. List building is a huge part of the game. This also gives you a variety of modeling options. There is a lot to be said for WYSIWIG in skirmish games. You can spend hours doing list building and modeling.

Scenarios

There are 252 unique scenarios that can be generated by using a d10 and a d5 roll. The scenarios are fun, and they have enough variety that I don’t think you’ll get bored any time soon. I like this versus something like Stargrave, where you buy a new book, you get 10 scenarios, and then you are done.

Campaigns

We haven’t really played any campaigns yet. I want to, they look like the can be interesting. You get your injury charts, your exploration charts, and your advancement charts. I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to house rule, and allow you to choose advancement when characters advance? I would need to play more games to decide which is better.

I really like the exploration charts. You can get everything from a treasure map to a weapon cache, to extra crew members.

Also you have to make sure you get enough gold, or your crew has a chance to mutiny. This is a flavorful addition to the game.

Multi-player, Cooperative, and Solo

I picked this up, solely for the fact that is has Solo and Cooperative rules. Then I promptly didn’t even use them. I was going to try it out solo, but then my daughters jumped up and wanted to play. I couldn’t tell them no. I also figured what was the worst that could happen. I will set up some solo games just to get better at the rules.

To play solo/cooperative, you need the face cards from a deck of a cards, and this determines the moves of your AI opponent. It looks like a decent system. Hopefully, I can get a game or two in this week and see how it goes.

Conclusion

Is this is a good game? Yes, I think so. It plays on a small table (2x2), it uses a small number of models, and the mechanics are good. Will I be adding this to my rotation of games? Yes I think so. I can’t wait until my brother-in-law comes over this summer. I think we will be playing quite a few games over the course of the week.

Oblig Picture Dump