WarGear Wiki

A fairly straightforward map. Lots of chokepoints. Lots of bonuses. The only tricky thing is the one-way borders leading to and from the pirate ships.

Every island or country earns units at a rate equal to the number of territories in it. Pirate ships are worth +3, and double that if you own all 3 (i.e. +18 total for all 3).

The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 16th century and died out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1660s to 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas.

In the latitudes of the Caribbean, the prevaling winds are the Trade Winds, which blow from East to West. The captain of a sailing ship seeks a course along which the winds can be expected to blow in the direction of travel. During the Age of Sail the pattern of prevailing winds made various points of the globe easy or difficult to access, and therefore had a direct impact on European empire-building and thus on modern political geography. For example, Manila galleons could not sail into the wind at all.

Inspired by “Pirates of Malta” on ToS and this thread on wargear

Be aggressive!

There are slight differences in the gameplay depending on how many players you have.

• 1st player gets 3 units. 2nd player gets 6.
• Cards go 6,9,12,…
• High Neutrals.

• 4-6 units for each player (later positions get more)
• Cards go 6,8,10,12…
• Low Neutrals

• 4-6 units for each player (later positions get more)
• Cards go 6,7,8,..
• No neutrals (except scenario ones).

Same setup as the scenarios above, except light fog and simultaneous territory selection and simultaneous unit placement.

It was inspired by “Pirates of Malta” on ToS and this thread on wargear. I'd been thinking of a good analogue to the Mediterranean, where there was some dead space in the middle, and territories around the edges, and one day I was looking at a map of the Caribbean and noticed it had a similar setup. Making “Pirates of Malta” into “Pirates of the Caribbean” seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Gameplay is straightforward, so map development is not too interesting. Primarily I wanted to make a simple map that wouldn't take me months to make and test. I was very happy with this map in that regard, because I made the entire first map in just a couple of days. The graphics are some of my best, and considering how quickly they came together, I feel like my photoshop skills are improving.

I did make one additional change to the map after release, when I added 'circles of influence' to the pirate ships. I feel like on any 'standard' big map wargear map, the best fog/view levels are medium+ fog with view borders. None/Light fog tends to lead to stalemates on big boards (although I think Pirates of the Caribbean will not suffer from this too greatly, due to the very tight chokepoints), and Medium/Heavy/Total fog can be too influenced by luck because as a player you often have very little idea what your opponents are doing. Medium fog with view borders straddles these two extremes, allowing enough fog to help keep the crab game in check, but enough view borders in strategic locations allows players some idea of the global state of the board. This 'medium+view' is something that I use in almost all of my big standard style boards.