Design Notes
I'm running a scenario at my venue to hype the new Pirates of the South China Seas expansion with the stipulation that each player has to build an 80-point fleet entirely out of cards from South China Seas.
Strategy
This fleet makes great use of linked crew, particularly aboard the Grand Temple. Grand Temple only has 3 cargo spaces on the deck plate but Sensei Xu is a huge bonus on Grand Temple because he's linked (i.e. +1 cargo space) and takes up no cargo himself so this gives Grand Temple 4 cargo spaces. Adding Shap-'ng Tsai leaves 4 cargo spaces available since his link gives the Grand Temple one more. Fill two of those cargo spaces with Katsura Chan and Li Quin and then use Sensei Xu's ability to bring a helsmsman on-board and you've got a great set of crew. Katsura give you the ability to move and shoot and his re-roll ability gives you two chances at getting the same action twice with Shap-'ng Tsai
The Headhunter will also yield you extra actions on Black Heart. Unfortunately, due to point restrictions, I could only fit two crew aboard Black Heart that were "disposable." I would have loved to have thrown an extra oarsman aboard. Still, even if you run out of disposable crew The Headhunter's not useless since he gives you a cannon bonus to all non-Pirates ships.
El Alquimista is there as a gold runner, pure & simple. With it's extra 2 gold when you unload treasure it could be a game-breaker.
Samedi's Curse is in the fleet more or less as an experiment to see how the new "Fear" Keyword affects play. I haven't decided whether I'm going to have it accompany El Alquimista or one of my gunships. The basic strategy of this fleet is, through extra actions, have Black Heart and Grand Temple run circles around my opponent moving and shooting all the while while El Alquimista stays away from the action and quietly collects gold.
Miniature Trading
