Give me pirates or give me death!

Yeah, they're adding a new galleon variant in the expansion IIRC to make it worse.

Gary Sax wrote: Yeah, they're adding a new galleon variant in the expansion IIRC to make it worse.

Overall M&M sounds like it'll weigh in somewhere around Eclipse for my group- I mean this in terms of playing time and complexity. Not that my group can't handle Eclipse, but playing time is doubly important (ie. it's not just a matter of players' patience) now that one of the group's regulars has become a dad- he just has to leave earlier than before. So I think I'll be leaving expansions until the basic set has had enough play to generate a demand for new options. Fingers crossed I guess, because I've already pulled the trigger over on Amazon.

charlest wrote: M&M is fantastic. My only complaint is that a Merchant in a Galleon is often more of a threat than a Pirate. In our circles it's a commonly accepted powerplay to switch wholesale from Merchant to PVP when you get a Galleon as the points come easy and Galleon's are so hard to take out.

Yup. Also a couple of early lucky draws and sales for merchants will let them buy that galleon pretty fast, while pirates are more reliant on the luck of the dice to spot targets and need to spend in order to patch their ship frequently.

I think this is the first time I see the components list for the expansion (Not Sure's link), new Brig ship sounds pretty nice. Also a menacing pirate Manowar to put more pressure on wealthy merchants.

JMcL63 wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Yeah, they're adding a new galleon variant in the expansion IIRC to make it worse.

Overall M&M sounds like it'll weigh in somewhere around Eclipse for my group- I mean this in terms of playing time and complexity. Not that my group can't handle Eclipse, but playing time is doubly important (ie. it's not just a matter of players' patience) now that one of the group's regulars has become a dad- he just has to leave earlier than before. So I think I'll be leaving expansions until the basic set has had enough play to generate a demand for new options. Fingers crossed I guess, because I've already pulled the trigger over on Amazon.

The base set has LOTS of replayability. Not sure the expansion is needed for me at this point, but MORE OPTIONS!