My collectible dilemma: Pirates CSG

A few years ago, when Wizkids' Pirates CSG was new, and the Crimson Coast set had just been released, I happened to discover the game while walking out of Target. My love of the pirate theme instantly had me giddy over the game. I looked the game up online, viewed the flash tutorial, and before 2 days had passed, I had stopped by Toys R Us to pick up my first two booster packs. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Up to this point in my life, I had never invested in a collectible game before. My only experience with collectible games had been from playing Magic: The Gathering with my friends who had collections. One thing I know now that I didn't know then is that there is a certain type of person who should invest in collectible games, and there is a certain type of person who should not. Here are some features of a person who should invest in collectible games:

1. Being a kid or teenager
   
2. Being single
3. Having expendable income
4. Having friends who want to play the game with you
5. Having friends who also collect the game
6. Having time to play
7. Having time to keep up on the news and events surrounding the game

The more features that apply to you, the better suited you are for collectible games, in my opinion. Herein lies the first problem: when I became interested in Pirates CSG, the only items that applied to me were 4, 6, and 7. This would have been a warning sign, had I known what I know now.

I lacked everything but time and friends. When I bought my first packs, my friend Jack bought a couple packs as well. We were both fascinated by this new "constructible" idea that Wizkids had introduced. The character art was interesting and somewhat spooky; the little ships looked amazingly cool; there were stats and abilities and 4 factions to choose from - everything about the game was a draw for me.

Back then, my wife was also willing to play with me, while the game was as simple as two packs. At the time, I only had one very small child and much more time for following the Pirates community forums. I was up on every hot topic and found lots of answers to rules questions. I was not yet into much board gaming beyond Settlers of Catan, so Pirates was my main game.

Jack and I continued to buy packs and receive them as gifts, growing our collections. Jack, a maximizer of value, decided to focus on just one faction (Pirates) to keep things simple, while I was intent on collecting everything in the game. We bought batches of singles online and searched ebay regularly for decently priced "money" rares. Jack, already being an avid collector of Magic: The Gathering, soon decided to quit collecting Pirates. He felt he could only comfortably and reasonably manage one collectible game. But he assured me that he'd still play with me. By this time, my wife had also begun to turn down my requests to play Pirates. The Pirates game had become too big for everyone but me.

And yet I continued collecting. Looking down the road, I saw my familial posterity benefiting from my full-bodied collection - surely my children would play with me when they were older. We would have a blast carrying out pirate battles! Wizkids released new set after new set, rapidly throwing new factions and mechanics into the Pirates game. Soon, I found myself overwhelmed. I was playing with no one, and had no money to invest in keeping up with each new season.

Then, when I finally did have some money to blow, I bought a booster box for Pirates of the Barbary Coast, hoping to sell them on ebay, as I had made a habit of doing with my extra Pirates cards. My goal was to flesh out my Corsair faction before selling off the doubles. Unfortunately, I seemed to be one of the only people actively collecting Barbary Coast. I couldn't get much to sell and ended up with a load of unused Barbary Coast cards (which I still have).

At this time, the reality of my wasted time, money, and effort was becoming heavy upon my conscience. How was there any wisdom in amassing a dust-collecting lot of game pieces? When was the last time I had actually played the game? Who was I kidding? Pirates had become nothing more than a collectible item, like bottle caps or shells. I had designed my own custom islands, and put together sizable collections for every faction up through the Barbary Corsairs, and was working on my stash for the Cursed faction. It was like anything else: if you don't have anyone to share it with, it quickly becomes worthless.

So where am I today? I still have my collection, boxed up in official Pirates tins, each item sleeved, organized by faction. I have all my custom homemade islands stashed in a closet, and a length of fabric that my wife cut and sewed for me to use with Pirates as a table cloth that looks like an ocean. Most of my efforts in the last year have been to keep my collection of trade items up to date on MiniatureTrading.com. Every once in a while people have contacted me about trades. Even those are rare now. I'm just a chump with a sweet, barely-used Pirates collection.

Some of you who experienced similar or dissimilar adverse experiences with collectible games such as MTG are probably chuckling at me now, and with good reason. Back when I got started, you are certain, had you been there, you could have tried to steer me clear of the fascination that led me to my current predicament.

What am I going to do? First of all, I will keep waiting for people to contact me about trades and buys. I need to get rid of my excess Pirates stuff. Then I'll eventually need to decide what to do with my personal collection. Do I keep it to play with my kids - even in light of the huge board game collection I have to keep us occupied? Do I sell it for far less than I spent on it? It's a collectible game after all - it doesn't hold its value. And when you don't have friends investing in their own collections, that just takes away from some of the fun of the game. Collectible games are designed so that each player can piece together their own competitive collections. As it is, anyone I play with with just be using my collection.

I really don't know the best answers yet. I still like browsing the collection. I somewhat enjoy building fleets. I like playing, as long as we don't build big fleets - then the game just takes too long. Over the years, my interests have shifted, I have more kids to invest time and energy in, and I have an adequate supply of interesting board games to keep my family engaged. I just don't know what to do about the Pirates stash.

Feel free to comment and advise. I'm interested to hear what readers have to say.

All pictures are pictures I've taken and posted on BGG. They all include items from Jack's and my collections. The dark tablecloth is his, the light-colored one is mine. The 3D islands are the ones I constructed and painted myself.

Lunch session: Maelstrom

Today, Jack and I got together for a 45 minute game of Maelstrom during lunch. This typically isn't enough time to finish a whole game, in my experience. But we went at it anyway and had a great time playing.

For those of you who are familiar with Maelstrom (aka Vortex), we've been using 15-tile forces. The reason for this is that we thought it would make for shorter games. I still haven't tested larger forces to see if this is true. Opinions?

Jack played the Brood and I played the Draconis.

Rather than recount the entire session for you, I'll mention the highlights.

After the first couple rounds, the board looked like this:



If you haven't played Maelstrom, the red swirly thing in the middle is the vortex. Our goal as players is to summon minions and strongholds to control sides of the vortex. Controlling more sides is the key to victory. Early in the game, each player will typically control 3 sides each. During the game, we attempt to destroy each other's tiles and put our own tiles adjacent to the vortex. After 3 turns of having fewer tiles adjacent to the vortex than your opponent, you lose.

To the far right, you can see that Jack played a Thlotas Worm Tower. None of my minions with 1 Combat (attack power) may move next to it. That was problematic because my stronghold on that side was only able to bring in small guys. My other two strongholds were used to bring in my big guys. So that Worm Tower was a good placement for Jack. It kept me from wrapping around that side of the board (called the "mass") with my small minions.

Before long, I pulled out a really tough minion - the Draconoid Battlelord. Typically, something this powerful is very useful if you can get him our early in the game. That was my plan, but I made a big blunder on one of my turns. I should have moved my Battlelord in and started destroying things. I wasn't looking ahead at his potential because I forgot that he could use two minions to attack at one time.It started like this:



Here, Jack is moving his Gallag K'rol adjacent to my sweet little setup of tough guys. Soon after, he also brought his Gallag T'ral, who is quite powerful. Before I knew what was happening, he attacked my mighty Battlelord with both of his Gallag minions. Fortunately, I got to counterattack and take down his Gallag K'rol. The aftermath looked like this:



So I was bummed to have lost my Battlelord that quickly, having never pulled off any damage. Grrrr.

To my benefit, all the necessary components of my best combo became available to me. Once I had saved up enough energy counters, I put my plan into action. The was my only hope of recovery. So, I played an event called Waking the Ancients, giving a -2 to the cost of summoning dragon minions for that turn. I used a combined total of 3 output from two adjacent strongholds, and added 3 energy counters for a total of 6 output. That was enough to bring out this guy:



This badboy is an 8-cost Legendary minion called Dnotai Battlemaster. He is a dragon minion with Flying, Overpower, and Attack Mastery. In other words, this dude is hard to stop. See those stats? The 3s on the left and right are high stats. You want 3s on a minion- they are very good. Had I not achieved this lucky combo (Waking the Ancients + Dnotai Battlemaster), I may not have lasted much longer. Jack was making good decisions, especially on the other side of the mass.

Jack was chipping away at one of my Fiery Peaks. He soon destroyed it, consumed the energy it left, and summoned his own Thlartaras Tangler in that space.



This is one messed-up creature. Looking at his numbers, he's nothing special, but there's a reason he costs 3 output to summon. Look at that ability: "Adjacent enemy minions have zero combat". This means he can only be destroyed by minions with a ranged attack, or by some other form of non-combat damage. Ranged units are very rare in Maelstrom, and I have none in the Draconis force I was using. So this guy was invulnerable. Jack had guaranteed himself a nice position on the vortex. I was now down to 2 tiles on the vortex. At the end of my turn, I lost an essence counter - the first of the game.

I soon got another Draconoid Battlelord out on the table and was able to use a my minions on that side of the mass to regain a slot on the vortex. When our time was up, the board looked like this:



We were tied in terms of slots on the vortex - 3 and 3. I had lost one essence counter; Jack had lost none. Since we were both almost out of tiles, we decided to mark out what we would have done in subsequent turns to see how the game would have panned out.

With my Dnotai Battlemaster, I had destroyed his most powerful unit - Soul Captor. Because of the Battlemaster's Overpower ability, I had taken no damage in the exchange. I thought Jack had a strong hold on the vortex with his Tangler, but he felt like he was out of options. With the huge Battlemaster out there, it was only a matter of time before the Draconis minions would ravage the lands and take control of the vortex. Either way, we had fun. Now, we're looking forward to designing 25-tile forces and seeing how those play out!

If you haven't played Maelstrom, but are interested, I'm sorry to tell you that the game is out of print. The good news is, there are still a few boxes floating around out there. I got mine on Amazon, believe it or not. There are also people on BGG who have copies for trade. Expansions might be harder to find. The expansions contained all the "rare" tiles, including Relics and Events. If you look hard enough, you could probably round up enough stuff to have a playable collection. It's really a bummer the game went out of print because it's fun, unique, and has many good features from other games jammed into one. I would link you to sites but it seems most of them are shut down now. If you're interested in this game at all, nab it while you can because it's getting harder and harder to find!