Hell yeah, it’s a mechanics blogpost!

Let’s talk about the boat mechanics for Freebooter’s Fate: they’re technically part of the advanced rules because boats are complicated (and they were introduced later in the life of 1E) but you can’t have pirates without cool boats. There are some great scenarios that teach players how to use boats, as well.

Hiring Boats

Boats are hired just like crew members: you pay the doubloon costs and get the boat. There are a wide variety of boats usable in Freebooter’s Fate, though no real rules for the larger sailing ships – these are strictly rowing powered boats. They are variably in production, so maybe find them when you can. I’m working on sculpting a few proxy boats to release via digital sculpt, but considering it’s a lot of hard surface sculpting, I can’t promise anything anytime soon because I’m a slow sculptor for that. You can also hire boat-specific equipment, including some stuff that’s restricted based off of your main crew’s faction: the Brotherhood won’t buy a cannon, for example.

Important note for boats, too: you must name any boat that you hire for your crew. An unnamed boat is unlucky, after all.

Much like models, boats have movement, vitality, and toughness. Unlike most models, however, boats have a seating chart indicating their capacity – in order to activate a boat, it needs a crew, after all. While their vitality is close to what has been seen before, the equivalent to morale is handled through the boat’s water level. This water level fills up from the bottom of the card, just like water seeping in through the bottom of the boat, and at certain breakpoints, it causes movement penalties for the boat. There are some other stats that you’ll find on boats, like their maneuverability and steering, but that’ll come in when we’re talking about actually moving the boats around.

But How Do I Make It Go?

Boat movement is – unsurprisingly – a bit difficult at first, but once you realize how it functions, is pretty intuitive. To make a boat do stuff, you need to have models crewing the boat: looking at the seating chart, you’ve got four crewing options:

• Rowing: This gives the boat movement.
• Steering: This allows the boat to turn.
• Rowing/Steering: This seat allows the boat to move or steer.
• Ordnance: If the boat has ordnance, this is where someone can fire it!

Each seat in the boat has a facing and a crewing type – in order to contribute any Boat Stuff, you need to have models in the appropriate locations. Every model in the boat is a passenger, but not every model is crewing the boat – models who are crewing the boat can contribute their actions according to which seat they’re in and do not get a separate activation from the boat. Accordingly, a model cannot take their active phase and then contribute to the boat phase, as it takes their full attention to do anything boat-related.

So, now that you’ve crewed the boat, what happens next? Well, it’s time for the Boat Active Phase – the boat is like a character made up of all the crew members, all of whom contribute their simple actions to the Boat Action pool, and when the boat is activated, so are all of the characters. At the beginning of the Boat Active phase, the boat’s controller declares what all of the crew are doing, which is pretty self-explanatory:

• Rowing gives the boat movement points to spend during the turn.
• Steering allows the boat to turn. A boat turns up to its Steering so long as it moves at least its Maneuver in cm between each turn (and so long as someone is steering it!)
• Firing Ordnance should be self-explanatory, but yes, it means firing a weapon the boat is equipped with.
• Bailing removes a point of water from the boat. You’ll generally want to keep water on the outside of the boat.
• Landlubber Actions are any normal simple actions that the character can take when not in a boat, such as orders, aiming, or reloading a ranged weapon. Note that only one model can take one of these actions each turn, so use them wisely.

So, once you’re in a boat, you’re performing Boat Actions, and when you perform a Boat Action, they all happen at once when you activate the Boat.

Determining base-to-base contact with boats is similar to how you determine it in the main game. There is also a specific Boat Action which consists of leaping from a boat (or land) onto another boat, attacking a person in said boat, and then displacing them from the boat. Yes, you can steal your opponents’ boats – you only control a boat if you control at least 50% of the models in the boat, and boarding makes it a lot easier to remove opponents.

But What Scenario Works For Boats?

For an introductory boat scenario, I have to recommend Stranded (TOL#5 12-13, 2 crews, 500+ doubloons) for the absolute basics. You just need a single Pinassa, and everyone will be fighting over the boat! Boats can also be added to a lot of scenarios.

Other good starter scenarios with boats are going to be Evacuation (BRB 92-93 or TOL#5 22-23), The hunt for the XO (TOL#7 9-10) or, should you prefer a cooperative scenario, Here be tentacles (TOL#8 24-25). They all take a little extra in terms of stuff – you can find what you might need on the Scenario Finder page.

Hobby Progress

Strangely, I haven’t painted a boat yet, but I am thinkin’ boats. I’m also working on painting some Pirates as I finish up Locura for a painting competition, but they’re slightly on the back burner right now.