Pirates Constructible Strategy Game is a game that was publish from 2004 to 2008. It is a strategy game that straddles the line between being a collectible card game (CCG) like Magic: the Gathering and miniature wargames like what I usually cover here. It came in random packs that you punch out cardboard pieces to make the ships(I say cardboard but I suppose its more like plastic as it feels similar to credit cards). I never played or collect it back in the day but I did have friends that were big fans of it. I don't think I got into it because I was getting tired of CCGs in general as well as I don't like the random aspect in a miniature wargame. The random aspect was also why I didn't get into the first version of Monsterpocalypse. I also wasn't as excited about cardboard models as I was with metal/plastic ones. Which is a little strange as at the time I dislike painting and would have preferred to have prepainted models. That preference has completely swap since then.
So why am I bringing up a out of print collectible game? Two Fridays ago a friend was showing me his Pirates collection and that got me thinking about and looking into the game. I couldn't stop thinking about it over that weekend so I ordered some packs on the Sunday. I figure the price was just too good for something I had so many uses for. I've already had ships on the mind off and on for a while now. In the last year or two I started assembling the ships in the Dreadfleet boardgame. I stop when I screwed up gluing together one of the 2 main ships in the game. It had 3 pieces that needed to be glued together and it was really awkward trying to hold all 3 pieces together. So I glued two pieces together first but that meant that the third piece no longer fit. All 3 had to be glued together at same time. Even called Games Workshop for help but was told since the game was out of print, there was nothing they could do to help. Since that was one of the main ships, that killed my interest in finishing Dreadfleet. I still planned to go back to it. I had put 4 ships together and there were another 5 waiting to be assembled. On top of that I've been looking at Warlord Games miniature ship line. I think their line is in a similar scale as Dreadfleet so I could buy a box and either put the ships together as is or convert a few to be in the same high magic fantasy style as the Dreadfleet ships. I've also gotten a tip on how to fix my glue mistake that I haven't gotten around to trying (it work on a Chaos Giant model that I also misglued). In other words, I've been on the verge of having a miniature fleet collection for a while now.
A Pirates pack on Amazon averages about $10 each, guaranteeing 2 ships each. Some expansions were price much higher than that while other were cheaper. Not a bad price for miniatures I have a lot uses for. Since I've never played Pirates before, it would normally be a little risky investing into an out of print game that I might not like when I actually played it. But I can use the Pirates ships to expand the play ability of Dreadfleet. Of course I've never played Dreadfleet either. In the event that I don't like Dreadfleet either or the ships are too small for it, I can still use the ships the next time I run a miniature fantasy campaign game where I can put a major seafaring aspect to it. Also with me exploring running more pen and paper role-playing games with Pathfinder and others, I could use the ships in a pirate heavy theme campaign. Lastly failing all that, I plan on doing comic book style stories using miniatures here and that requires a large collection of as many different models as possible. I hope I end up enjoying the game but if I don't it will still be worth it to invest in it.
To make it more interesting for us, my friend and I decided to invest in different expansions. He stayed with the sets he already had packs for which was Spanish Main, Crimson Coast and Revolution. I went with South China Seas and Barbary Coast, which was probably a mistake given that South China Seas is one of the rare and most expensive sets for the game. For my first purchase I got 1 pack of South China Seas and 15 packs of Barbary Coast. The one China Seas pack was half of the cost of the 15 Barbary Coast! Here is a picture of some of the packs and one pic of my English ships.
After actually having a few ships assembled in person, I really love the looks of the ships. I will be playing my first game of Pirates and really of any war game in person today for the first since the pandemic started. Of course with masks and social distancing. I will be discussing more about Pirates in future posts. Whether it be as a collector or as a fan of the game will depend on my first few games. Until next time, stay safe.
