Mike Haverty
United States
Owasso
OK
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This is the sixth session report in my ongoing Solitaire Journey, coming relatively soon after the Lord of the Rings report -- go me!
The Game
"German surface raiders of World War I" + "for 1-4 players" = SOLD! Or in my case, obtained via a math trade, but anyway. I first saw this on a trade list, in fact, but it took a couple tries for me to get it, I think. It had good remarks on the site and I was intrigued by the theme. The fact it included explicit solitaire support was just gravy, so I knew I had to get it for the Journey.
The game consists entirely of cards and dice. The cards are split into decks -- merchantmen, warships/raiders, actions, and a solitaire deck. The dice are d4, d6, d8 and d10, color-coded for easier recognition (icons on cards), and the d4 is actually a d8 marked with 1-4 twice, which I thought was nice since I've always thought tetrahedrons were fiddly to handle, roll and read. I was a little disappointed the d4 is red and the d8 is green -- the only dice with the same shape were given the most commonly problematic color-blind colors -- but once I looked at the cards I saw it was pretty easy to tell the icons for the two apart.
The game also includes a nice cardstock action card reference, duplicating the explanatory notes in the rulebook proper, which was a nice touch and especially handy for the solitaire game because the solitaire cards include references to multiple actions and thus only include titles and icons, necessitating frequent consultation until one becomes familiar with their variety.
The Play
The Kaiser's Pirates (TKP) is one of those games in which each player plays both sides of a conflict. In this case, you have three warships/raiders that you use to attack opponents' merchantmen, and you have three merchantmen that are attacked by opponents. Generally, you'll be scoring points for sinking or capturing merchantmen, but there are plenty of opportunities to hound warships/raiders with British intercept cards or springs surprises on them when they attack your merchantmen. I suppose one could try to focus on just attacking warships/raiders, especially as they are worth quite a few points, but when scoring at the end of each round you can't score more warships/raiders than merchantmen, randomly discarding the excess before counting them up.
At the end of each round (once through the action deck), each player counts up his points and Round Points are awarded based on that ranking, e.g., first player (in a 4p game) gets 4 RP, second place gets 3 RP, etc. down to 1 point for last place; a player who scores no points during a round gets 0 RP, though. Most RP after three rounds wins the game.
The solitaire game pits a Living Player (LP) against a Phantom Player (PP). The core gameplay -- actions and their resolutions -- is pretty much the same as in a multiplayer game, with the solitaire deck used to determine which actions the PP takes on his turn and how he might respond to your actions. As in the multiplayer game, the LP and PP earn 0-2 Round Points for three rounds, with high score winning the game at the end.
Going into the game I was wondering how significant the luck of the dice would be, and likewise if card draw would matter much. Every action card is dual-use, though. Each has an action on it, and *every* card can also be used as an Intercept card, so it seemed like the luck of the cards would be much less than for the dice.
Round 1
The PP's starting merchantmen were the British Troilus (7562 tons) and Lovat (6102 tons) and the Swedish ship Thorsten (1862 tons). His starting German ships were the corvette raider Leopard, 4652 tons, packing 5x 15cm guns, 4x 8.8cm guns and 2x TT; the corvette raider Wolf, 5809 tons with 6x 15cm guns, 1x 10.5cm gun and 4x TT; and the frigate raider Greif, 4962 tons with 4x 15cm guns, 1x 10.5cm gun and 2x TT. Actually, I don't know for a fact those are the ship classes, but the card indicates the names of the captains and their ranks were Fregattenkapitan and Korvettenkapitan, heh. Also, all that stuff is just historical notes (tonnage, weaponry) -- that stuff is all abstracted into dice values assigned to Attack, Defense, etc. and the Victory Award value of each ship.
His German ships were all raiders, which means they normal travel in disguise as merchantmen. Raiders can't be attacked by British intercept cards until they are "recognized" through card play. Warships are German ships that are obviously German ships of war; they are permanently recognized and can be attacked at will, although they also generally have much better defense dice and thus are more difficult to damage/sink.
My starting merchantmen were the British Brecknockshire and Lundy Island, and the Belgian (I think? I'm not that great with my early 20th Century European flags) Luxembourg. My German ships were the raiders Seeadler (sail-powered!) and Meteor, and the frigate Karlsruhe, which packed a whopping 12x 10.5cm guns and was the most valuable ship on the table at that point.
By the way, I was using the optional rules for Coal Pile (some ships more susceptible to becoming Limited Supply), Sails (for the slow Seeadler), Wolfchen (the Wolf carried a small float-plane used for scouting), and Fast Raiders (five of the German raiders were converted fast passenger liners).
I decided to take the first turn. I played an Intercept on the Karlsruhe plus the action assist card Shipping Lanes, which lets a warship make an intercept against all three of an opponent's merchantmen with a single Intercept, rather than just one of them.
The Troilus was up first. Each time a Phantom Player ship is attacked, he gets 1 draw off the solitaire deck. Each card has a response section with a 50/50 chance of nothing or a listed response; many times, though, the response doesn't apply to the situation (e.g., Minesweeper against a non-mine attack) so the response rate is actually much lower than 50%. The Troilus drew/rolled a no-response.
The Karlsruhe rolls blue/green/white on attack (d10/d8/d6) against the merchantman's green defense die. Only the single highest value is kept among rolled dice, so obviously any contest could go either way but larger and more numerous dice give better odds. Unfortunately, I rolled poorly and the intercept failed. Any time an intercept fails, an undamaged merchantman may check for Safe Passage. This is done via another contested roll, with the Challenge (success dice) and Respond (fail dice) indicated on the merchantman's card. The Troilus rolls white challenge and green respond, so the odds are a little against safe passage, and it failed (no repercussions for that).
The Thorsten was next and it went the same -- no response from the solitaire deck, the Karlsruhe failed to intercept and the Thorsten failed to make safe passage. Finally, I resolved the Lovat, which also got no response, but the attack roll of 9 was double the defense roll of 4, resulting in the Lovat sinking. (Just exceeding the defense roll but not doubling it results in a damage cube). I put the Lovat in my victory pile and ended my turn. You can actually play as many cards as you want on a turn, but you must commit them all at once before resolving any, and you only draw 1 card at the end of your turn, so playing too many cards results in fewer options later, especially the useful reaction cards that are usable on an opponent's turn. All players are returned to 3 merchantmen at the end of each turn, so the PP received the Norwegian ship Storebror into his line.
The PP took his turn. He rolled a d4 and got a 3 on his first solitaire card - Heavy Weather. This has a chance of each damaged ship foundering, but I had none so it had no effect. It didn't indicate ET (End Turn), so he went on. He rolled a 1 on his next solitaire card, which is always ET, so I drew his replacement action card and moved on. The PP draws and discards face-down one action card each turn, just like a normal player, as the action deck is also the round timer.
On my turn I tried to intercept the Troilus with the Karlsruhe again. There was no response but this time the Karlsruhe did its job and sank the Troilus, moving it to my victory pile and replacing it with the Cumberland, a stout British ship at 9471 tons and sporting a blue (d10) defense die.
The PP rolled a 1 on his solitaire card, ending his turn without any action.
I sent the Karlsruhe after the Cumberland on my third turn, sinking it for 9 points (the highest value on merchantmen), replacing it with the French ship Guadeloupe and ending my turn.
At this point I felt like I was running away with it. The AI, as it were, hadn't done much so far. The Karlsruhe was a beast of a ship and I didn't feel like there was much downside to it; as a warship it hadn't been attacked by the British yet, and I hadn't seen any supply-related actions come up yet. It has the "Coal Pile" icon which means it is more easily put into Limited Supply, per one of the optional rules I was using. Would it just ravage its way across the seas for the whole round?
On the PP's turn he rolled a 4 on his action card - Rendezvous Missed (ET). Speak of the devil, it was a supply card. All my warships/raiders had to check for supply and both the Karlsruhe and Meteor failed, receiving a Limited Supply cube which, like a damage marker, puts a -2 penalty on actions (actually, only on intercepts, and not also on defense like damage). The Seeadler, though slow, does get a bonus when checking for Limited Supply and easily passed.
On my next turn I sent the Karlsruhe again - despite the -2 it still had the best odds, I thought. It went after the Guadeloupe and failed, and the merchantman passed its safe passage check and went into the PP's victory pile. It was replaced by the British ship Voltaire.
The PP's first action was Second Chance (ET). Second Chance basically gives a player another full turn, so this basically sped up the round. His next action was Deception (ET). That's pretty annoying -- it makes the opponent play a random card from his hand and end his turn, and if the card played is illegal it's just discarded for no effect. On my turn the random card was Good Hunting, an assist card and thus illegal by itself.
The PP's next turn gave him a "Intercept Merchantman with a Raider" action. Any time an intercept is made, the PP gets draws off the solitaire deck, this time checking for the intercept action corner of the card, drawing until he gets a duplicate or a blank. In this case he got a Surprise Attack, which prevents certain defensive reactions and gives a +2 to the attack. I chose the Wolf to be his attacker because the Wolfchen optional rule doubles the Surprise Attack bonus for the Wolf, making it +4 to attack. I sent it after my most valuable ship, the Brecknockshire, but the roll was 9-5, only damaging it.
There wasn't an ET on the action and it was resolved, so the PP got another draw/roll, this time getting "Intercept Warship, Raider or Prize Ship" using the British attack value listed on the card. I sent it after the Karlsruhe as the most valuable target, with blue/red against its blue/green/red defense, which didn't seem too bad on the odds... and they sank it. That was 23 points into the PP's victory pile from that ship alone. The PP's next result was a 1-ET, so that was it for now.
Unlike merchantmen, lost warships/raiders are not replaced automatically, so I was down to the Meteor and Seeadler. I did have a Breakout card though, which I played, and the roll was good enough to give me 1 draw off the pirate deck, getting the Konigsberg into my lineup, another frigate only slightly less armed than the Karlsruhe with 10x 10.5cm guns, 10x 3.7cm guns and 2x TT.
The PP got another ET roll and I just passed on my following turn to try getting some bonus cards so I could make a big attack eventually.
The PP had another action-packed turn. First he played a night intercept against the Konigsberg but failed. Then he got a merchantman intercept and sent the Greif against the damaged Brecknockshire. I had actually chosen the Greif rather than the Wolf because I felt it was sufficient to take it, and I thought it might be smart (for the PP) to hold back the more valuable Wolf... as, perhaps not so coincidentally, I played a Trap reaction card.
Trap indicates the merchantman was actually armed and allows a simultaneous attack from it against the warship/raider attacking it. The Greif got a damage result against the Brecknockshire, which was basically ineffectual since it was already damaged, and the Greif was actually sunk by the armed merchantman. Woot for me as I finally got some points after a long dry spell.
Next, the PP got another Heavy Weather and the damaged Brecknockshire foundered in the violent seas, going to the discard pile and replaced at the end of the turn by the French Prince (oddly, a British ship, heh).
The round continue much like this with only modest success on my part, while the PP continued to rack up points. My raider Meteor went after two ships (thanks to Good Hunting) and not only did he failed to intercept either, they both made safe passage into the PP's victory stack. The Meteor continued to have bad luck, failing to sink anyone with a mine-laying attack a couple turns later and the same result on another Intercept + Good Hunting a turn after that.
When I finally exhausted the action deck, the score was at 51 for the PP to my 40. In a 2p game, that would be 2 Round Points for him and 1 Round Point for me; I'm not sure you need really need to count RP in a 2p game since it'll essentially boil down to a best of 3 rounds contest.
I played a second round, but wasn't in the mood to keep logging the play by play detail, heh. I was crushed in the second round. I lost a nice warship early (the Konigsberg), then the PP captured (via the Boarding Party card + a successful Intercept) one of my merchantman as a Prize Ship (worth double points if it survives till the end of the round or makes safe passage); I eventually Recognized it so I could attack it, but failed and it made a successful safe passage check. The PP rolled a Submarine Torpedo Attack solitaire card and I happened to have a Q-ship response in my hand. I failed the check to lure it into a gun duel and it sank my ship before I could roll the Depth Charge attack, netting 11 points for it (more than the original merchantman target was worth). At the end of the round the score was 44 for me and 77 for the PP. Set and match for the Phantom Player!
The Verdict
The flow of play is actually fairly straightforward, even playing solitaire. After a few turns I found I was able to play at a pretty good pace. The luck of the dice was, indeed, a big factor, but the fairly wide range of actions and response cards made me feel like managing my hand was significant to my gameplay. I think I used response cards for the Intercept action too much in the first two rounds and plan to value them higher in the future.
TKP works pretty well as a solitaire game. I wouldn't call it deep, but it was fun deciding which target to send each ship after and weighing the pros/cons of using an intercept (about the only way to earn points, really) vs. using it for the action/response/assist purpose. That said, I'm really looking forward to playing it multiplayer. I suspect the game will be much more interesting (not surprising, I suppose) with live opponents due to a little more attention paid to hand management, dice odds, and "take that" action play.
It's been a while, but I think I enjoyed this more than Naval Battles; I think the fact that every card can be used to intercept is a big factor, as that is the heart of the game. My rating after one solitaire play is 7.
Notes on the Journey
Total plays, and (plays since last report in parentheses). I've adjusted the LotR number down, as I figure I shouldn't count multiplayer plays on the solitaire count, whereas once I write a session report for the CCG Journey I'll count both solo and multi plays in that tally.
Lord of the Rings LCG = 4
Free Trader = 4
Field Commander: Alexander = 4
Space Hulk: Death Angel = 2
Pocket Civ = 2
The Kaiser's Pirates = 1 (+1)
Edit: for various typos.
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Sisyphean Gamestacker
United States
Taylors
South Carolina
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Thanks for this write-up. I think the TKP solitaire deck does a great job of playing the game and provides a challenge for the real player. It gives a good rendition for the solo player, even though the game is more fun to play with real people, especially in a 3-4 person game, where there's a real tension between the decision to go after ships and the danger of leaving damaged ships behind for your opponents to pick up. The solitaire (and 2-player version) can't mirror this.
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Yep, the solo varient works really well for me too.
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Posted Mon May 16, 2011 6:49 pm
