<\/div><\/p>\n
It needn’t be belabored that this game throws naval ranks around kind of recklessly. And honestly, I get it. They’re not saying I am a Midshipman(woman), they’re saying I command the same level of respect the average Midshipman(woman) in the Caribbean(!) would. And as anyone who reads Hornblower knows, it’s a rare teenager in the Navy who hasn’t had occasion to singlehandedly murder forty pirates after winning a sporting championship.<\/p>\n
No, my in-game policy for career advancement is much the same as it is in real life: plug on, pay my dues, and whenever possible get completely smashed on Captain Morgan.<\/p>\n
<\/div>Oh, there he is.<\/p>\n
Morgan was alive during this year of history, but for the same reasons I identified in my breathtakingly joyless tangent about privateering he wasn’t a free agent but a contractor in the service of the English. But this is <\/em>the same as saying he was a member of the pro-English “Brethren of the Coast,” which is what they call the pirate faction in this game. But when I defeated the last Brethren ship, my reputation with the English increased, which implies that—<\/p>\n Actually he was never defeated by a Blackjack-sharping granny either, so let’s set aside this game’s documentarian efforts and pop off some culverins.<\/p>\n The game really needs to make it obvious which way the wind’s blowing before I engage a ship. Conducting ambushes without the weather gauge is kind of like trying to mug someone riding towards you on a motorcycle. Almost the best thing that can happen is they get away.<\/em><\/p>\n Whatever. I’m too lazy to disengage and then sail around the back, so I guess I take today’s idiot prize for being bad at the sea. Let’s just go ram into a wooden wall.<\/p>\n Although nearly all of his ships would be an improvement on at least something <\/em>in my flotilla, I’m just gonna go for his Frigate and put cannons to everything else. My goals are “find quality ships” and “grind reputation,” and anything not directly pertinent to these goals is matchwood as far as my impatient trigger-finger is concerned.<\/p>\n But first things first. I give his Frigate a couple of lazy broadsides, and when he inevitably pulls in for the hug, I’m ready for him.<\/p>\n He outnumbers my boarders 2 to 1, so naturally he thinks he can gang up on me. And he can! It’s just that the gang itself is the lynchpin of my depraved strategy.<\/p>\n I hope the fishes like casserole.<\/p>\n It’s working for me right now, but I don’ t mean to overstate the terrible, terrible<\/em> efficacy of these bombs. You really do need to throw the right size at the right place at the right time, or else all you’ve done is throw a very expensive fireworks show for your enemy’s victory party. And god help you if your arc’s one degree too friendly, or else you’ll wind up on the deck yourself, struck dumb with horror as your crew Keystone Kops into certain defeat. And they will. Keep in mind, this is what victory <\/em>looks like.<\/p>\n And I made sure to get the trained sailors.<\/p>\n My new Frigate in tow, I demolish what remains and pick the flotsam for glimmers of gold and china. No vessel leaves these desolate waters save my own, and no sailor is spared the sharks else he beats to my quarters.<\/p>\n Except Henry Morgan, who naturally escapes. Which, okay. I’ve never actually seen a scholar claim that Morgan was not <\/em>a mermaid.<\/p>\n NEXT WEEK: A DUEL WITH BLACKBEARD THE CHRONOMAGE<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I guess I’m hitting over my weight class, because every time the battle screen rolls off nowadays I plunge into a ball pit of XP and treasure. Before that blackjack comeup I was a chronically indebted vagrant granny pushing a rotten rowboat through a valley of looming trash mobs. Now my ship’s slick, my crew’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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