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There are a total of 6 factions in the Buccaneer TCG,
as well as neutral cards that may be used in any deck.
We will be including 4 factions in the initial set and
adding the last two at a later date. The initial factions
are The Golden Buccaneers, The Crown, The Scarlet Corsairs
and The Freebooters. Each faction has their own strength
and general style of play, although tactics and strategies
will largely depend on individual deck construction.
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Players of the pc game will be most familiar with this faction as
it is the Golden Buccaneers you sail for in the single player campaign game.
They are a powerful faction with many large ships and one of the few who
can stand up to the Crown’s fleet in open combat. In the card game they
represent a “Jack of all trades” faction that is fairly strong in all areas,
with no great strengths but no real weaknesses either.
Buccaneer ships are painted in yellow or yellow and black livery and their
buildings tend to be decorated with yellow flags. Buccaneer cards are
also coloured yellow for ease of identification and bear their distinctive flag –
a yellow and black “Jolly Roger”. Their ships are often designed with combat
in mind and some of them can be quite difficult to sink.
As with most of the decks, Buccaneer decks benefit from a healthy addition of
neutral cards such as Sudden Events and Effects to help bolster the military
and financial effort.
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The Crown are a large (fictional) European power, with vast wealth,
a huge empire and a powerful navy to enforce their will. Supported
by professional soldiers, diplomats, politicians, well-trained officers
and the biggest ships afloat, they are almost unstoppable. Yet their
strength can also be seen as their weakness. Many of the pirate factions
make use of Hidden locations, sublety and guise, while the Crown’s
reliance on sheer force and a belief in their own invincibility can
be their undoing. Crown cards tend to be more expensive to play than
their pirate counterparts, but individually they are often more effective –
very few pirate players could realistically hope to win a stand up fight
with a well-balanced Crown deck.
Crown cards can be identified by their light blue colour, that matches
the livery on their ships and the colour of their buildings’ roofs.
Their faction flag is similar in design to the Royal Navy ensign and their
Land Units and officers wear red uniforms, maintaining the feel of an
organised, empire builder.
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Those familiar with the pc game will recognise the Scarlet Corsairs
as the first opponents that use big ships against you in the campaign.
Equipped with a fleet very similar in style to the Buccaneers, the Corsairs
even use some of the same basic ship classes – Swifts, Hawks and Condors.
Where the Corsairs differ is their fondness for customising and butchering
their own ships. Many of their ships are constructed from parts of other
ships and Corsair ports are normally cluttered with the skeletal remains
of vessels stripped for their timber and guns. They will happily destroy
two or more ships if it means putting a more useful or powerful ship to sea.
Scarlet Corsair decks are… you guessed it, red in colour, as are their
ships and buildings. Many of their cards require other cards to be destroyed
in order to put them into play, but seldom is anything wasted and even
destroyed cards have a habit of returning to play.
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An initial glance at most Freebooter cards might give the
impression that they are very weak and couldn’t possibly
hope to compete against their more powerful rivals. This
couldn’t be further from the truth. The Freebooters’ strength
lies in both numbers and co-operation. Their ships are generally
very cheap and can be fielded in large numbers. But their real
strength comes in their ability to group smaller, less powerful
ships into effective fleets. Most Freebooter ships will gain
bonuses from having other ships at the same location as themselves
and once organised there are very few larger ships that are capable
of resisting their swarm tactics.
Freebooter cards are white bordered and their ships have white or
white and black livery. Their decks can often afford to have fewer
island regions as their cards are mostly quite inexpensive to put into play.
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