by RedBlueOx
Loving Seafall. My four-man crew has sailed through seven games so far, with four boxes opened, so spoilers abound in the below. Kinda wish I would have written more of these, but didn't join here rather than lurking until I needed some dice charts to see if I could pull this off...Spoiler section, boxes 1-4:
[o]Out of the four of us, I had been the one to go first on colonies, and focus on a raid strategy. So, when Patmos/Ker was unveiled late in Game 6, it hit me hardest. The Province in last place in Game 6 used his 4 pre-game bonuses to explore a tomb, found a colony, and get two milestones (tomb unscathed and finding patmos) in the same game-year. We never got to winter as he discovered Patmos/Ker in what would be the final turn, destroying us all for the game glory, but I had followed him into the tomb and found four glory in the process so I was in second for the game by a lot (17-8-3-2) and climbed into the Prince spot in the process. But Ker really threw a monkey wrench in. I ended up with six enmity stickers on it compared to four for the aforementioned winner, and the other two guys had only the one enmity sticker each!
So then we have the roll to take enmity back and I manage to score on all five of my dice, with one permanent success upgrade on my province sheet allowing me 6 successes, so I take back 3 stickers at the end. Everyone else takes one off, so we ended the game with 3, 3, 0, and 0 enmity on Patmos.
Looks like a rum deal for me (The Wokelands) and Drewidia. The other two guys, Cloud and Avalor, don't have any motivation to take down the Ker colony (i mean besides the four glory milestone), and probably if they do, they think they have time. Because until someone does, Drewidia and I will have 3 enmity on every island, making buying and selling pointless and raiding very tough. Also, almost none of us have huge raid numbers. So it's theoretically a chance for the other guys to make up some ground in a grind. With Ker having a garrison of 3 and being a 6 dangerous site, in order for me or Drew to take it down, we would need six successes, and we'd be docked six dice. So you need 12 at the minimum. Seems ridiculous at first glance.
But before rolling those enmity rolls, I went out on a limb and added one raid power to my ship The Stranger (instead of an explore) and a +2 raid sticker on The Grizzly Veteran. Now, as others have pointed out, Ol' Grizzly is the right man for this job. The perfect one. He gives you two fortune tokens when he becomes your active advisor, and he also lets you use up to *four* of said tokens at dangerous sites. You don't really get that with anyone else. Also, with my sticker, he had a +5 raid. The Stranger (my ship) had five raid. With a support ship and the Grizzled Vet I'd have 11 dice. So I need to upgrade. But how much? Do I need to save up for the Deadly -2 option, or combine it with Terrible -1? That's when I needed the dice charts, and they really helped. I realized that Terrible was all I needed. One more die. With 12, I could subtract the six and have a roll of six dice. Of course I needed them all to be successes. But I had the ability to use four fortune tokens so I could take that many blanks. What are the odds of getting two successes of any kind out of six? Turns out it's in the high 90s so I went for it. First turn, get an iron piece, second turn, upgrade, third turn sail and tax, and fourth turn I sailed to Ker and took it down. Out of the six dice I ended up with four successes, used two tokens and claimed it. Not only did I get that colony and milestone but I also claimed the Three Active Colonies milestone at the same time. So it was a great round.
The strange epilogue is that I didn't actually win the game, because Cloud Province came from behind discovering two temples and two islands (he's an exploring beast) and we ended up tying for the lead at the end of the game. Still, I wouldn't give it back. Was a great feeling to lift the curse and claim the milestones super early, when everybody else admitted they had no idea this was possible. They all figured it would at least remain for one full game. But I was able to take it down in only four turns, get the two province upgrades, and end the game with four colonies.
That is the power of the Grizzled Veteran, in case you didn't know. OK, that's it for now. Thanks for reading.
oh yeah ps. I renamed it "ker-plunk!"
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