Pirates of the Crimson Coast is the stand-alone expansion (sound familiar? ) to Pirates of the Spanish Main. It adds the French, schooners (and special rules for them), new English, Spanish, and Pirate ships, new crew and treasure pieces, forts, and terrain (other than islands). I just picked up a couple of packs today, and here are my new ships:
Can you give me an idea of what the schooners and the forts add, and do you like them?
When you say "stand alone expansion", does this mean that all the Spanish, English, and Pirate ships in the main game are duplicated? (If so, I may stop buying Pirates of the Spanish Main and go straight to Crimson Coast, since I'll still get all the rest of the ships.)
-S'Cipio
what I mean by "stand alone expansion" is that one pack will contain all of the same kinds of pieces that a Spanish Main pack contains, (except you might get a fort and a ship instead of two ships). However, it does not contain the same ships that are found in Spanish Main packs. If you want to collect all of the ships, crew, and unique treasure that are listed on your Spanish Main checklist, you have to keep buying Spanish Main packs.
Schooners are ships with fore-and-aft rigged sails instead of the square-rigged sails found on all of the ships in Spanish Main. As a result, they are extra maneuverable. At the end of a movement, a schooner can rotate in order to face a different direction. This means that you could sail a schooner straight towards an enemy ship and then rotate to face all of its guns toward it in the same turn.
I don't have any forts, so I haven't tried them out yet to see if I like them or not. They seem difficult to master, but very effective if used properly.
At the beginning of the game when you're selecting your ships and crew, you can choose to use some of your points on a fort. However, you do not get to place the fort at the beginning. Instead, you have to collect enough gold to cover the cost of the fort and deposit it on your home island. Then you dock at a wild island, place your fort there, and move the amount of gold you had to collect from your home island to inside your fort along with any gold on the island that is on the island with the fort (You do this instantly, You do not have to ferry over the gold from your home island to the fort). Must always have at least as much gold in the fort as the value of the fort. The gold in your fort is counted like the gold on your home island. Each fort has a certain number of flags, which are also cannon mounts. Fort cannons are identical to ship cannons except that its line of sight cannot be blocked by land or ships. When a fort is hit, one flag is removed. When all flags are removed, the fort is abandoned. It is then removed from the game and the gold inside the fort is left on the island.