INTRODUCTION
Avast ye scurvy scalawags, it’s time to plumb the depths of Fang & Fortune, another expansion for Ahoy from Leder Games. Ahoy is an asymmetrical game like Leder’s breakthrough game Root, but Ahoy takes place in an aquatic landscape that players build as they explore. In the process, players battle rival factions, recruit crew and discover uncharted islands in a race to secure fame and glory. The Fang & Fortune expansion introduces two new maritime menaces, the Leviathan and the Coral Cap Pirates.
AHOY BASICS
For those unfamiliar with Ahoy, it’s a naval game of exploration and area control for half the players (the Bluefin Squadron and Mollusk Union players), while up to two more players take the role of Smugglers. The Blufins play like a conventional navy (think the Marquise faction in Root, another great game by Leder), while the Mollusks spread by deviously recruiting new Comrades and shuffling them around the board, and the Smugglers transport theircargo from island to island. The Smugglers operate the same but ultimately it’s each player (or fish) for themselves as there can only be one winner. The base game has tons of player interaction, such as battles or Smugglers increasing the wealth of islands they deliver to (which makes them likely targets for the area control factions). Play is accomplished with a very cool dice round robin dice assignment mechanic and shifting first player which allows for clean up actions for each player in different turns of the game. For more information on the base game, read the excellent review here.
NEW FACTIONS
INTRODUCTION
Avast ye scurvy scalawags, it’s time to plumb the depths of Fang & Fortune, another expansion for Ahoy from Leder Games. Ahoy is an asymmetrical game like Leder’s breakthrough game Root, but Ahoy takes place in an aquatic landscape that players build as they explore. In the process, players battle rival factions, recruit crew and discover uncharted islands in a race to secure fame and glory. The Fang & Fortune expansion introduces two new maritime menaces, the Leviathan and the Coral Cap Pirates.
AHOY BASICS
For those unfamiliar with Ahoy, it’s a naval game of exploration and area control for half the players (the Bluefin Squadron and Mollusk Union players), while up to two more players take the role of Smugglers. The Blufins play like a conventional navy (think the Marquise faction in Root, another great game by Leder), while the Mollusks spread by deviously recruiting new Comrades and shuffling them around the board, and the Smugglers transport theircargo from island to island. The Smugglers operate the same but ultimately it’s each player (or fish) for themselves as there can only be one winner. The base game has tons of player interaction, such as battles or Smugglers increasing the wealth of islands they deliver to (which makes them likely targets for the area control factions). Play is accomplished with a very cool dice round robin dice assignment mechanic and shifting first player which allows for clean up actions for each player in different turns of the game. For more information on the base game, read the excellent review here.
NEW FACTIONS
Fang & Fortune gives Ahoy players two new ways to shake up their Ahoy experience. Both the Leviathan and the Coral Cap Pirates take the place of the Smuggler faction presented in the Ahoy base game. But unlike the Rivals & Renegades expansion where the replacement factions play similarly to the base game factions they replace, Fang & Fortune’s substitutes for Smugglers play very different than those cunning opportunists Ahoy players know and love.
First up is the mighty Leviathan, a multi-headed sea serpent that grows and becomes more devastating as the game progresses. The Leviathan’s heads can Slink along the seaways (like a Sail action in Ahoy), Dive and reappear elsewhere (as the Tailwinds action) and heals damage (Repair) with its action dice. But unlike the Smugglers it replaces, the Leviathan cares nothing for commerce, illegal or otherwise…the remainder of its unique actions are:
• Strike: Allows one of its heads to reach up to 4 spaces away based on the number on the action die assigned (including over blocking sandbars!) and attack with deadly precision, choosing a target rather than battling everything in the space;
• Feast: The Leviathan eats an unlucky crew from the market and gains the rewards on an Appetite card (drawn at the beginning of the game and the end of each round). Rewards range from gold to extra heads and bodies to Evolutions such as spikes or a breath weapon that allows it to spray every ship in a space with its Strike action;
• Devour: Our friends in the Mollusk Union (or the Shellfire Rebellion if you have the Rivals & Renegades expansion) aren’t safe from the Leviathan’s hungering maw; this action removes Comrades from nearby islands, providing a boost to Leviathan’s Speed (its movement stat) or Fangs (added to battles involving one of its heads);
• Grow: Pay the cost in gold for advancements to Speed and Fangs.
The Leviathan scores each round based on the longest continuous adjacent chain of heads and bodies, but must plan carefully…a head can’t enter a space that already includes a head or body (so if you liked the Snake game on retro mobile phones, you’ll love playing the Leviathan!). Evolutions also give the Leviathan a nice end of game scoring boost, with more Evolutions racking up more pints.
Our next Smuggler replacement faction, the Coral Cap Pirates want to recruit Crew, make them captains of their fleet of Frigates, and carry out jobs on the high seas. The Pirates have six Frigates in addition to their Flagship, each one with a different ability, such as adding double the amount of pips you lower your Cannons by in a fight, moving your ships directly to the Frigate’s location or or repairing all ships in its region, including enemy ones. Frigates are placed into play by recruiting a Crew from the market, which becomes the Frigate’s Captain (scoring the Pirates Fame equal to the Captain’s recruiting cost in the process). The act of recruiting a Captain increases the wealth of the region and the Captain retains his Crew special ability for use on that Frigate (with the added bonus that one use abilities which would return the Captain to the box do not do so when captaining a Frigate).
Each Frigate also comes with three jobs to do by discarding a Crew of matching suit from the market; each completed job earns a draw of a random job token worth 1-3 Fame at the end of the game, and the second and third jobs on a Frigate card increase the wealth of the region, possibly helping the Coral Cap Pirates’ opponents.
The Pirates have the usual actions like Tailwind, Cannons and Repair, along with some unique ones:
• Parade: Like a Sail action that allows the Pirates to move up to three ships based on the value of the action die placed there;
• Full Sail: Moves one ship a number of spaces equal to the action die value placed here;
• Relocate: A teleport type action that allows these sneaky Pirates to swap the location of two of their ships;
• Rob: The Pirate Flagship can perform this action on an Island to discard a crew and gain gold equal to its recruiting cost.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
Fang & Fortune is an excellent addition to the Ahoy setting. Just like Rivals & Renegades introduced replacements for the Bluefin Squadron and the Mollusk Union, Fang & Fortune allows you to swap either or both Smugglers out of a game of Ahoy. But unlike Rivals & Renegades, in which the Orcas and Turtles play very similar to the factions they replace, the Leviathan and the Coral Cap Pirates are an almost entirely different gameplay experience (although there is a slight similarity with the Pirates’ and Smugglers’ dependence on Islands, increasing the wealth dice, etc). You can also easily incorporate both expansions and play a game of Ahoy without ANY of the base game factions, which increases Ahoy’s replayability immensely. It also solves my one quibble with Ahoy in that two Smugglers in a four player game seemed a bit boring, both for novelty factor and the competition between the two Smugglers in addition to the other players. Like most Leder games, the components, from heavy duty player boards that keep dice from sliding around to color coded screened meeples, are top notch, and we are once again treated to Kyle Ferrin’s fantastic and whimsical artwork.
