General description:
The Orca is famed as being “one of the fastest ships ever to sail”. According to the flavour text her crew achieve this notoriety by working hard to keep her looking like a merchant ship. Not sure how these two are linked, but what a good job they do. She certainly looks deliciously fetching in her resplendent black and white stripey uniform.
A pretty little two-masted ship that will look the part docked at your home island when the starting whistle is blown.
Uses:
With that famed speed, we must be looking at base S+S+S speed, right? Well, kinda. Her speed is S+S, but check out that ability “When this ship carries no cargo, she gets +S to her base move”, so as long as you’re not carrying anything, sure enough she’s got all the moves.
So what are you going to do with them? Dash to the nearest wild island and fill up with treasure, right? Wrong. Count the one cargo space. One. That’s one piece of treasure and she’s limping home at S+S.
She’s not a goldrunner then. So she must be a gunship? Wrong again. Cannons are 5S and 4S, so even if you decide to sacrifice an S move each turn to have a Captain on board and then get up close and personal with your opponent, you’re looking at a 39% chance each turn of a single hit, or a roughly 6% chance of both cannons hitting. Add a Musketeer for a 56% chance of a least one hit, but you lose the move and shoot.
Strategies and game play:
Well given her next to useless cannons, and her S+S speed when carrying crew, we need to look at what she can do on her own. An escort ship perhaps, blocking line of sight and taking a bullet for an otherwise vulnerable high-cargo goldrunner? She could wait near your home island and distract gunships long enough for your goldrunner to get home. If you’re really clutching at straws she could act as a cheerleader for those ships which get +1 for friendly ships within S. The possibilities are far from endless.
She becomes much more useful in a sealed deck tournament, where yer get what yer given. At 6 points you’re still not getting much bang for your buck, but a ship which can move S+S+S without a helmsman in those situations is quite valuable. She could explore wild islands for you, although of course that will take a turn without an explorer, but at that speed hopefully she’ll have beaten the opponent there. And if there’s a really choice piece of treasure there she could snap it up. A super-explorer would be nice, but the Pirates don’t have one.
Alternatively she could chase and harass your opponents’ goldrunners. She won’t do brilliantly in a scrap, but if a gold-laden enemy ship can be slowed down it could be worth the risk.
Combos with other miniatures:
Well with that one cargo space there’s not much room to get the best from crew. If you added a Helmsman you’d get, erm, S+S+S, so don’t do that. Her cannons aren’t good enough to justify losing an S segment for a Captain or Cannoneer crew. An Explorer would slow her down too much to justify his bearth. So, no combos.
Ways to counteract it:
Wait until it comes alongside and sink it. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Alternatively just ignore it and hope it goes away.
Strengths/Pros:
Cheap and fast in a sealed tournament situation.
Weaknesses/Cons:
Poor cannons. One cargo space. Inefficient when carrying crew.
Artwork and aesthetics:
Very pretty black and white sails. Looks the part. Nice ship to use if you’re doing a demonstration of the game.
Overall rating:
This ship wouldn’t see action in a constructed fleet, unless it was a very big one. If you had nothing else it could have some use in a sealed tournament. So it gets a 2.
Miniature Trading
