General description:
A bottle of rum at a pub in New Providence is swept off the table by a rusty hook and shatters on the wall. Two surly looking characters rise to their feet and exchange harsh words. Fifteen minutes later a small crowd has gathered outside the bar to watch the pair finish the argument with blood. At the count of ten, both reach for their sides, pull forth their weapons, and roll their d6. As the small cloud of dust kicked up by the two dice hitting the dry soil clears, one of the combatants falls to the ground mortally wounded.
Uses:
Duel is used to pit one crew against another. It is a good way to get rid of a critical crew used by your opponent, but it often comes with a risk to your crew.
Strategies and game play:
Simply put, use duel when the potential gain outweighs the potential loss. In some cases, there is no risk (King Blackheart 12 points vs. Vicompte Jules de Cissey 0 points) but often you will need to risk a fairly expensive character to use duel. Also, when dueling, pick an opponent who has a low point value, but is critical to the game. You are paying five points for your opponent not to have something, so choose wisely.
Combos with other miniatures:
Expensive crew are excellent to use in duels. Davy Joneses, 8 point possessors, King Blackheart, Yeshaji Angria, and Marque Miguel Antonio are all good. You can pretty much choose any low point cost crew to die when you have one of them. The downside is that between the duel and the duelist, you've used much of your fleet. Make sure the duelist has another purpose...don't use Antonio.
Cheap, useless crew are also great for duels. Amos has little other purpose after he has been used, so you might as well risk him against an enemy. Also, zero point crew that give you +5 to build your fleet are great for duels. If you win the duel, the enemy dies. If you lose, you remove a crew from the game that otherwise was a liability. (Note: eliminating a Ransom crew gives you one point. Removing them from the game gives you nothing! It's all in the wording. 
) This allows you to bring in five points after seeing your opponent's fleet, and kill their crew or not have the liability of ransom crew without costing you anything from the original build total other than the use of a different Limit crew.
Target cheap, but important crew such as captains, helmsmen, Luis Zuan, rerollers, shipwrights, and same-action-twice crew. Don't go after cannon specialists, no sense killing the firepot when you can kill the captain and render both useless. Three point crew make nicer targets than two point crew, due to the fact that only castaway can bring them back. Although riskier, doctors and crew than cannot be eliminated are good targets that allow yet more crew to be destroyed.
Ziotoo4 also has added that "Pacifiers" such as Anamaria and Brother Virgil are excellent targets! I couldn't agree more, if you take them out, multiple crew lose functionality.
Perhaps the best possible crew to target with Duel are point reducers. Take out Jonah or the Stump and you take out at least one other crew as well.
Ways to counteract it:
If you have an opponent who likes to use it, have a crew on hand like Amos or Padre Francisco to replace a slain crewman under 2 points. Also, split abilities between crew when you are able to do so. (Captain and Comandante Antonio da Silva instead of Duque Alfonso de Castilla.) You are more likely to lose one, but less likely to use both. Odds are your opponent is using a high cost crew such as Davy Jones anyway. Also, plan redundancy into your fleet. have two ships with captains instead of one. Favor of the Gods can help usually. One caveat, it's often a first turn event, so if you don't go first FotG won't touch this one. Drop in castaway as a backup if you worry about losing a three point crew and will be running gold.
Strengths/Pros:
Duel is a certain way to get rid of a crew member, hopefully your enemy's. It cannot be stopped by any crew-protecting abilities, so it can be highly valuable in certain situations.
Weaknesses/Cons:
It usually risks your crew and always costs 5 points to play, unless you have that one mysterious island that lets you add events.
Artwork and aesthetics:
It is a fairly neat little fighting scene, but if you look at it closely you notice that one of four things is occurring:
1) The man being stabbed is a giant.
2) The man stabbing is a midget.
3) The sword being used to stab is unusually long.
4) The "stabbed" man actually isn't being stabbed. The sword is stopping far short of touching him.
I like to think 2.
Overall rating:
I give it a 7/10.
Just for fun:
Here is a list of duels I want to see just for the fun of it:
El Pescador and Merrow - catch of the day just got a little more serious!
Castro's Loyalists and Lucky the Parrot - what do you mean the bird killed them all?
Captain Whitebeard and the Inquisitor - Now who believes in Santa?
Skuld Blood-Axe and Vicompte Jules de Cissey - Use your imagination...
White Crew and David "Bones" Wiley - "Whoa, no need to get angry! These dice? The dice are made of...er...um...plastic? Yes, that's right, nice white calcium-based not-from-a-fellow-skeleton plastic!" - The last words of David Wiley.
Got any other fun ones? Post 'em!
Miniature Trading
