Story Ore Blog: pirate ship tattoos

Saturday, October 15, 2011

pirate ship tattoos

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On September 14, 2009, collectible maker NECA announced the purchase of the Wizkids name and properties from Topps, specifically including the Pirates line. No official word has been given on the return of Pirates, but unofficial information from insiders indicates it is possible we will see a return sometime in 2012 - though it would probably include changes to the core game (such as new rules or Clix style game pieces). Several third-party companies have picked up second-hand packages for resale at Target stores.

The general goal of Pirates is to collect more gold than your opponents, or with variants, to achieve a given objective or destroy all enemy ships (numerous scenarios written by WizKids and others have vastly extended the playability of the game). The game's pieces include ships, forts, sea monsters, crew, islands and other terrain markers, events, gold and other treasure tokens.

The action takes place on a tabletop or similar flat surface rather than a pre-set game board; before play begins, players take turns populating the play area with various pieces of terrain like islands, fog banks, and sargasso seas. Face-down gold or treasure tokens are then placed on each island. After creating the play area, players then place their fleets and gameplay begins.

The game is primarily sold in "game packs", foil-wrapped packs of randomized styrene cards and other game components roughly the same size as a pack of baseball cards or other trading card game packs such as Magic: The Gathering. Each pack includes a randomized combination of two constructible game pieces: ships (including forts and sea monsters), and various crew, treasure and terrain. These game pieces are numbered and collectible, and come in multiple levels of rarity designated by a color-coded triangle on each card's corner - the most common rarities for standard booster pack items are : Common (white for generic crew, red for ships), Uncommon (silver-grey), Rare (yellow), or Super Rare (black). Other rarity designations for non-pack ships include "Special Edition" (green), a one-off Promo (purple), and "Limited Edition" (copper) for tournament prize ships.