PIRATES (Aaaarrrggghhh!!!!)




All good crews get a flag

 


Monkey Pete digging around in the dunes

 


Two of Monkey Pete's finest have spotted something - treasure or a native girl (you decide)



The Barbary Corsairs, possibly on a slave raid in deepest Cornwall



"you put your right arm up, your right arm down..."



Big Yousuf glowers for the camera



Cap'n Morgan, who is as blind as a bat given his last outing with the gun at Stafford Games on 13th October, seems to have got lucky nevertheless



Purser Barclay asks Roger for some help with the accounting



Monsieur le Sieur de Fense de Fumay, his first mate and current squeeze all looking menacing




"CHARGE!!!"

 

Allez maintenant vous Cochons!!!



"Zut alors! Je voudrais le nouveau armoire, je pense"



I love pirate games in the (Spanish?) Main. What better chance does one have to let rip with entendres, general bad behaviour, deviancy, skullduggery and other nefarious traits without risk of imprisonment? So far, however, we have tried out just two sets of rules, namely Legends of the High Seas (LOTHS) and Cutlass. For my money, I prefer LOTHS.

Cutlass has some good bits and give a good game, but I have reservations about the multi-moving bit based on initiative (I reckon there will be a tendency to ignore the lesser figures and the heroes will get too much of the game) and I think it is a slower game than LOTHS, harder to track and not quite "it" for me. LOTHS has its quirks, as with any Wrahammer system IMO (don't get me started on how gross spear users can be), and career progression can be a bit rapid and potentially over-powering, but it is simpler than Cutlass and, I think quicker. You pays your money, I guess..........Or more likely, robs it from some lackey of the local Governor, end up with a price on your head and spend the next few years touring sundry, sweaty, malaria-riddled holes before dying in a brawl brought on by your tongue, made loose by your dependency on vast quantities of rum. Either that, or you fall foul of the law and spend a few hours in a dank cell before they walk you out to the gallows.....

It is a great shame that Hollywood spent so much time making Westerns and so little on pirates. Then again, it is no doubt so much easier to drive out to some part of Arizona or New Mexico, knock up a few wooden shacks and a saloon, roll a few balls of tumble weed about and race a few horses around to create more dust than it is to fly to the Caribbean, build a galleon or two and blow up half an island with various barrels of powder. But Western gunfight scenarios translate pretty well to pirates and both genres are ideal for multi-player outings, so pirates will be here to stay in the G armoury.

In any case, I have just painted up another 20, with a few more (and a ship!!!!) still to come. That makes 62 and counting, surely enough for a jolly decent, multi-player, massed punch up in some far off dive.....................