Miniature Trading

captain_arrr · **Subject:** Hey, there's a use! **Posted:** January 5, 2006 02:15 pm

Hey, it could make a great coaster! Or something to write a girl's phone number on.

**Subject:** Useless . . . yes **Posted:** January 16, 2006 09:19 am

At least they explain why Jake's new card is one point more in the flavor text on back. Spending time with missionaries made him a bit soft. Although, why anyone would use this instead of the normal one is beyond me.

woelf · **Subject:** **Posted:** March 24, 2011 08:51 am

A bad card is no excuse for a bad review.

lordstu · **Subject:** **Posted:** March 24, 2011 07:57 pm

A little over-the-top in terms of negativity, but considering the review is 5 years old, there's not really much to say, it is what it is.

However, from the point of view of someone who plays single-set games fairly often, I have to say this card could come in handy for a Corsair player using the one or two BC ships that allow pirate crew - I guess everything's relative.

This version of Bloody Jake is also better at Duel-ing than the 3pt version.

lordstu · **Subject:** **Posted:** March 27, 2011 04:29 pm

I think there must have been a glitch in the voting or something, as I can't help but notice my vote was cancelled for this review.(It was a 1, btw.)

...Maybe woelf's vote, too.

woelf · **Subject:** **Posted:** March 27, 2011 07:49 pm

Yep, my vote (also a 1) was "cancelled" too.

I asked about it and was told that the comment/explanation I gave didn't appear relevant enough to the review and seemed to be more a rating of the gamepiece than the review itself. I guess I can buy that since viewed all by itself the comment I gave was somewhat vague, although that doesn't explain why your rating&comment was removed or why none of the other ratings with vague comments or no comments at all were left intact...

lordstu · **Subject:** **Posted:** March 30, 2011 04:03 am

I sent a message to admin, so hopefully my vote will be re-instated soon, or at least my "right-to-vote".

lordstu · **Subject:** **Posted:** April 2, 2011 06:25 am

I got a reply from admin saying my vote could be re-instated providing I give an adequate explanation as to why I commented that this review was "from a different era", something which I thought was obvious. Basically my explanation for that was that this review was clearly written at a time when there was a certain amount of - shall we say - dissatisfaction with the direction the game was going and that today most of us are just glad we have a place to come and talk about Pirates, trying to find the best sides of whatever pieces we might review, rather than dwell on what a poor job some WK game designer did years ago. As I said in my first comment, in a pure-BC game, this Bloody Jake would come quite in handy for the Corsairs if they have an ability allowing them to use Pirate crew, since boarding is one of their mainstays and they don't have any other 4pt crew with boarding bonuses. A combo with Jack Hawkins and perhaps the Fire Djinn should at least have deserved an honorable mention.

I also recommended there should be some kind of lockout to these older reviews that might possibly prevent them from being voted on altogether, yet still allow for comments to be made or something, as most of the time they just get slammed when they make it to the surface, anyway.

woelf · **Subject:** **Posted:** April 4, 2011 08:25 am

Here's why I rated this a 1...

1) This "review" is nothing more than a complaint about Wizkids, and provides no useful information on the game piece.
Other than giving this crew's point cost (which is already provided on the left side by the website itself) absolutely no other useful information is given. Not even the slightest attempt was made to explain how this crew could used, and in fact the ability wasn't even mentioned at all. Like the point cost the ability is listed on the left, but that's no excuse to ignore it completely and talk about something else entirely. The ability, point cost, and nationality are the three critical defining features of a crew card; ignore those like what was done here, and the rest is meaningless. LordStu's brief comment above (dated March 24, 2011) provides far more useful information about the crew card than this review.

2) The writer completely disregarded the established format for reviews, and did nothing to make up for it with alternative content.
It's perfectly okay to go away from the established format, but doing so makes it more difficult for the readers to judge the review relative to others that have been posted. If a writer does go away from the "script" they need to put in extra effort to make up for the parts that have been taken out and/or changed. That clearly did not happen here. This might work as a comment/reply to a review, but it's certainly not enough to qualify as a "review" of any game piece, much less this one.

3) This review is extremely negative in tone, and no attempt at all was made to find a positive side to this game piece.
Like I stated in my earlier comment, a bad card is no excuse for a bad review. There are countless other "bad" ships and crew in this game, many of which are far worse than this one, yet when those do get reviewed those writers almost always try to find some positive aspect to it, or at the very least find some way the items could still be used in a fleet.

4) Despite what this review claims in the title, really there are worse crew in the game.
Yes, the previous version of this crew is better because it provides the exact same ability for a lower cost, but that doesn't make this the worst crew ever made. Far from it. In fact, if it wasn't for that previous version this one likely would have gone completely unnoticed. A very brief search of the gallery (set "Type" to "crew" and put the word "boarding" in the "text on miniature" box) shows that there are several other crew in other nationalities with this exact same ability and point cost, yet those are not even acknowledged in the slightest. 4 points is the standard cost for this ability and has remained so from the Barbary Coast set and on, and crew like this are far from useless. That cost may be "tainted" slightly because the base set included three crew with this ability that cost only 2 points each (also never mentioned in the review), but players have managed with them just fine. It also neglects to take into account any of the truly useless crew that cost significantly more but do less (or at the very least don't come close to justifying their point costs), in particular Marques Miguel Antonio.

Individually each of those things may be forgivable in a review (excluding the first one, of course), but collectively they add up to a very poor review. I feel that a rating of 1 is completely justified given the lack of, well, anything useful in this review.

lordstu · **Subject:** **Posted:** April 4, 2011 01:58 pm

I think I can safely say that if this review or a post like it had been posted on the WK site 5 years ago, it would have been removed by the admin, instead, so maybe that's also something that should be taken into account here - I know I never would've gotten away with saying the designers were "on crack".

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miniature review Bloody Jake: Worst crew EVER!