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[hughes]

Pirate Ship in 2 player games is pretty bad and probably should be avoided as a buy.   Pirate Ship in 3+ player games seems to me to be so overpowering as a strategy that it gets promoted to 'must buy'.

Not too much analysis here, just talking from experience.  I tried to slog through a friendly game by eliminating all the treasure from my deck before my opponents pirate shipped it all, but since they ended up getting tokens from each other I was left behind.

Anyhow, rant off for now.  I just wanted to hate on pirate ship.

[guided]

I have played a lot of 4p Dominion with Pirate Ship, with a group that had already played a lot of Dominion together before Seaside came out. At first, it led to degenerate games where everybody bought it, and these games were boring slogs, and we hated the card. But eventually we realized that on most boards you can play around it with +coin effects and say "thanks!" for the free copper trashing. Now, even on those boards somebody is going to buy Pirate Ship, and most of the time if only one player buys it that person will win. But if 2 people buy it, it's anybody's guess whether one of the Ship players or one of the non-Ship players will win. If 3 people buy it, probably the 4th person will win.

Even once we got to this strategy equilibrium, we occasionally would see a board with no viable alternate strategy that didn't require a bunch of treasure cards, and so there were still occasional degenerate Ship games. But they were rare.

I have to say, in 2p, I really love that the card exists, because nothing delights me more than finding some new and interesting way to absolutely crush somebody who opens Pirate Ship against me. One time I got rid of my draw pile by turn 4 and won by about a zillion points

[Kuildeous]

Usually, when Pirate Ship comes up, I try to make it a goal to win the game without buying one, especially since I can be certain that someone else will.

I don't have hard numbers, but I can it's been hit or miss for me. When I do prevail, I remember those games fondly. And usually they work out with the +Coin cards (though another player may play into his trap by buying treasures).

But, sometimes the cards come up where I'm really better off jumping on the Pirate Ship bandwagon. The fun part there is to know when to stop fishing for coins because everyone else has their treasures depleted.

[Glooble]

I like Pirate ship because it often makes big money not viable, which makes for more interesting games. The fear that your treasure will be trashed has lots of little effects on many different strategies.

[tlloyd]

I played a 3-player game recently with Pirate Ship, City and Saboteur. I got my Pirate Ships up to +8 coin and had no treasure in my deck, but the other players tried to overcome my early lead with Saboteurs. My provinces started turning into duchies and I was reduced to a single Pirate Ship. Every time I got the Pirate Ship I got a Province, but if it ever was sabotaged I was going to be in trouble. I won in the end, but it was a crazy game.

[rrenaud]

I have played a lot of 4p Dominion with Pirate Ship, with a group that had already played a lot of Dominion together before Seaside came out... Now, even on those boards somebody is going to buy Pirate Ship, and most of the time if only one player buys it that person will win. But if 2 people buy it, it's anybody's guess whether one of the Ship players or one of the non-Ship players will win. If 3 people buy it, probably the 4th person will win.

Even once we got to this strategy equilibrium, we occasionally would see a board with no viable alternate strategy that didn't require a bunch of treasure cards, and so there were still occasional degenerate Ship games. But they were rare.

I think this is a reason to prefer >2p games.  You get these nice complex mixed equilibrium strategies.

[chwhite]

I've slowly become more and more convinced that the various card powers in Dominion are actually best balanced for a 3-player game, and Pirate Ship is one of the main reasons- it's useless in 2p, occasionally degenerate in 4p, but with 3 it's usable but not overpowered.  Minion is another card with similar effects, in the opposite direction of course.

[Donald X.]

I've slowly become more and more convinced that the various card powers in Dominion are actually best balanced for a 3-player game,

I can't say if this is true, but it's definitely the intention. Ideally any card is balanced regardless of the number of players. When a card varies in power level noticeably with the number of players (but is still worth making), it typically either gets better with more players or gets worse with more players. So the way to make it as balanced as possible is to balance it for 3 players (yes we supported 5-6 but those games aren't typical).

That said, Pirate Ship would not be my example. I do not think there is a number of players that makes it overpowered.

[Axe Knight]

I've slowly become more and more convinced that the various card powers in Dominion are actually best balanced for a 3-player game,

I can't say if this is true, but it's definitely the intention. Ideally any card is balanced regardless of the number of players. When a card varies in power level noticeably with the number of players (but is still worth making), it typically either gets better with more players or gets worse with more players. So the way to make it as balanced as possible is to balance it for 3 players (yes we supported 5-6 but those games aren't typical).

That said, Pirate Ship would not be my example. I do not think there is a number of players that makes it overpowered.

Welcome, Donald X.!  Glad to have you here.

[guided]

I do not think there is a number of players that makes it overpowered.

I agree, but like Thief it's somewhat underpowered with 2 players. More like Pirate Ship is "normally powered" with 3 or 4!

[nemryn]

But eventually we realized that on most boards you can play around it with +coin effects and say "thanks!" for the free copper trashing.

Yeah, this is usually how I play it too. The thing is, Pirate Ship is itself a pretty good +coin effect.

[Silverback]

@donald x.
My heart made a little jump when I read your name. It's great to have you here.

[Donald X.]

My heart made a little jump when I read your name. It's great to have you here.

thx guys. Just try not to be intimidated into not saying how much you hate Pirate Ship or whatever. I can take it, honest. And here's a little more on the Pirate Ship front.

Pirate Ship originally was an action-victory card worth points based on the stolen treasures. That card wasn't attractive enough and one day I replaced it with essentially the card you know.

We tried it for the first time in a 3-player game. We all bought it. One of us won. Afterwards someone said, well that was obv. broken.

I argued with them for a bit, then we played again with the same 10 cards. This time I didn't buy Pirate Ship and I won.

This has been the story of Pirate Ship from the beginning. Most of the time you can beat it handily, regardless of the number of players or how many go for it. They trash your Coppers for you! That's a significant penalty. You don't need to go treasureless to beat it either. Nevertheless some groups think it's unbeatable, everyone buys it, someone who bought it wins. It lends itself to this behavior by being an action that makes money that makes you want an action that makes money.

Arguably balancing cards for experts isn't the be-all end-all. A card that's too powerful for beginners may be worth changing just for that reason. I try to pay attention to this, and to avoid cards that defend too well vs. themselves, but some get out, and there's Pirate Ship. If it's bumming you out, try beating it, that's my advice.

[drg]

It's rare that I buy a pirate ship, but you can find a board where I'll buy it - usually with a village of some sort and a bunch of really useless actions.  Your odds of getting a token just go up in a 3 player game, it doesn't increase in value *that* much (yes, some, thief goes up much more though).  It's really not that good a card, you just can't open silver/chapel and trash down to a 7-10 card deck against it that is all silvers and golds, or you're killing yourself.  On the other hand, if you trash all your coppers and get stewards, markets, conspirators, etc the guy with the pirate ships will never leave the dock.  Or on an average board, you can get a mix, get a lot more  before he has any, let him trash a bunch of your coppers and eventually a silver or gold or two, and beat him to the provinces.


Of course, the first time I ever used the card and we misused it in a 4 player game to give 1 token for every player that trashed a treasure... *then* we thought it was ridiculously overpowered... didn't take long to realize we were doing something wrong with it though.