Pirates of Davy Jones' Curse

Pirates of Davy Jones' Curse is an expansion set for the constructible strategy game Pirates of the Spanish Main produced by WizKids. It expanded on The Cursed Faction and was released on May 31 2006.

et Details

Apparently rushed into production to meet the (unrelated but thematically similar) movie [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean:_Dead_Man%27s_Chest Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest] that released later on July 7, 2006, this set had an unusual number of quality issues in the first run, mainly damaged cards from the factory - severe scratches, dings and corner clipping are common in the first run of this set. Dirt, pebbles, hair and assorted debris were also commonly found inside the wrappers. Later print runs changed the booster pack wrapper artwork and seem to have addressed some of these quality issues, but the cardstock and inks used in this set are still notably inferior to other sets. These cards are especially prone to peeling and flaking due to the poor seal and finish. Collectors are warned that many of these cards are "Mint as issued", aka issued damaged from the factory.

*The expansion includes cards for the following factions -
** American
** Cursed
** Pirate
** English
** French
** Spanish

*The die color in this set is red (d6).

*The set introduced Sea Monsters, The Cursed faction, and a new keyword - the Black Mark.

*The Black Mark - This crew may start as if it belonged to the Cursed faction, play it face up if so. The ship that the crew is part of is now considered to belong to the Cursed Nation. If played face up in this way, the crew's point cost is increased by 1.

*Four super rare cards (Mist Walker, Behemoth, Screaming Mimi and The Red Skull) may be found in a single pack which is indistinguishable from a normal card pack. Super Rare packs appear approximately 1 in 100 packs. In a first for this game line, these cards are printed on a semi-translucent plastic stock, giving them a 'ghostly' appearance.

*Value Box Sets: This is the first (and so far only) set to feature 'two runs' of Value Box sets, 8 altogether. Each value box contains 6 ships and/or sea monsters, 3 crew and/or treasure, as well as 2 islands, and 1 full size (d6) die. Initially, four special edition ships were issued (Boneyard, Electric Eel, Drowned Man, and Fool's Gold). A further four "special edition" boxes with new ships (The Black Diamond, Broken Key, Nightmare and HMS Richard) was released later, in October 2006. Value Box Trivia: a packaging 'exploit' led to buyers being able to see into any value box without opening it, and because the Davey Jones Super Rares have a translucent appearance, tell if the Super Rare pack was a part of that particular Value Box or not before purchase. This was corrected in following sets by adding an opaque insert to block the view.

* This set consists of 144 pieces in the base set, with an additional 18 Limited Edition Ships given as Tournament Prizes, and one convention exclusive ship for a grand total of 160 cards (Not including the different versions of islands). Game pieces are numbered 001-145, 200-217 and 300.

* 18 Limited Edition, one & two masted ships are available as tournament prize LE's, which were distributed to the public in a new fashion for this set: one package of three different LE ships is included in each 36-count retail Booster Box (apparently with the idea that the game store will remove the package before selling the box or packs and give the LE ships to winning tournament players). In practice, many of these packs ended up thrown away or auctioned on eBay. Additional prize packages of these cards were apparently mailed later on to a few tournament Envoys as well, but this new distribution method for tournament prize cards led to these particular cards being much harder to collect, and they still command large prices when they appear at auction.

* The Guichuan - a 10-masted ghost junk, was part of a special giveaway - twelve pack wrappers, receipt from the store the packs were purchased at, and a shipping and handling fee were required for the giveaway. It also included a crew called The Headhunter on the ship card.

ea Monsters

The concept of Sea Monsters was introduced in this set, with ten sea monster pieces (8 are rare, 2^* are super rare): Leviathan, Calim, Calypsos, Mist Walker^*, Behemoth^*, Tiamat, Tsuro, Slarge Gubbit, Jormungandr, and Gog-Clocthoth.

Controllers decide whether the Monster is submerged (movement only), or surfaced (move or attack). Two of the monsters have breath weapons, Tiamat has ranked breath attack that works like a firepot. Leviathan has ranked breath attack that works like a chainshot. The others have game-changing abilities such as moving in and out of fog banks (Mist Walker)- this ability is commonly called a 'fog hopper' - and eliminating masts or crew in boarding actions. Behemoth can copy a crew ability. Tsuro may move an opponents ship,(with proper Dice roll).

Later sets fiddled with keywords such as 'Kraken', 'Titan', 'Octopus', 'Sea Dragon' and others, but for this set, the keyword was simply "Sea Monster" regardless of the creature type.

Notable Ships

*The Flying Dutchman - A famous ghost ship.
*Harbinger - A ship captained by the pirate Jack Hawkins that can board other ships without having to ram them if the ship is in short distance away from her.
*The Pequod - Famous ship from the novel Moby-Dick.
*El Raton - an error in printing shows this ship as a common (red color corner) card, it is actually a rare as shown on both the checklist and the WizKids card gallery.

Notable crew

*Davy Jones - The Cursed captain of the Flying Dutchman, Davy Jones is a separate legend, but was linked by Wizkids to the Dutchman. (This was done to tie it in with the films, The Pirates of the Caribean.) The Dutchman was either the name of the ship, or a nickname for her Captain. Depending on which myth you hear.
*The Inquisitor - (Black Mark) A mysterious figure around which many Spanish ships are linked,he can remove crew if a boarding action is won!.