Name:    Nightmare (Cursed)

Card:    OE #009 (Common)

Points:  13

Masts: 3

Cargo: 5

Moves: S

Guns : 2S,3S,4S

Hit %: 150 (S), 0 (L)

Ability: Schooner. If this ship wins a boarding party, she may take as much treasure from the other ship as she can carry.

The Nightmare personifies everything that's good and bad about the Cursed.

The good: she's kitted out for boarding, with a good pair of abilities and deep cargo holds. You can pull alongside the gold ship of your choice, do a schooner turn to make contact without getting pinned, and if you win your boarding action, you can loot the enemy blind. Her cannons are okay in a pinch, in case a boarded ship shoots back.

The bad: she's hopelessly slow and badly overpriced. If you want to catch anything faster than an iceberg, you'll need a Helmsman; that just isn't up for negotiation. Now you're up to 15 points, and you're still slower than most gold ships. Consider some other 13-point ships with 5

cargo: HMS Prince of Chichester, Le Descharges, USS Louisiana, Grand Barnacle, or the magnificent Le Soleil Royal -- all are faster and better armed, and most have better abilities. Even the Cursed can do better for 13 points, with ships like the Pale Moon, Sea Monkey, or Hades' Realm.

This ship personifies everything that's good and bad about the Cursed.

IMHO, there's more bad than good. If you can use a gunship to damage the enemy's gold ships and corral them away from their home island, the Nightmare can catch them and pillage them. Otherwise, this ship isn't much more than a waste of plastic.

Goldship rating: 2.5 / 5

Gun Ship rating: 2.4 / 5

Boarding rating: 2.8 / 5

Value for points: 2.1 / 5

Name: Nightmare

Masts: 3

Cargo: 5

Speed: S

Firepower: one 2S, one 3S, one 4S cannons

Cost: 13pts

Ability: Schooner. If this ship wins a boarding party, she may take as much treasure from the other ship as she can carry.

We start this week with a Cursed cargo hauler. As the Cursed go they don’t have much gold collecting capacity. Next to no gold runners but what they do have are slow and capacious haulers.  Cursed ships are slow and expensive compared to most other navies, outclassed too. This ship is one of them.

The Nightmare has her uses though. Her poor base move means bringing her ability into play is near impossible. Put a helmsman on and with Celestine in your fleet or a navigator. Set up a trade route between your HI and some wild islands.

With four cargo left and her base move up to S+S, she can start hauling that gold. With a faster ship up front, say Fallen Angle for example, which can do any exploring before the arrival of Nightmare. On the way back, she might be lucky enough to pick up a trade current and get a well needed boost of S to her base move. This would bring her speed up to S+S+S in places.

The problem is her cost. You are paying a huge amount for an ability which will never get used due to her base move. But then that’s typical of most Cursed ships. My marking system tends to reflect single nation fleets slightly, even more so with the Cursed.

The breakdown of points.

Masts – 1.5pts

Cargo­ – 2.5pts

Speed – 1.4pts

Cannons – 1.5pts

Ability –  6pts+

Gunship rating 2/5

Gold ship rating 3/5

Fleet support rating 2/5

Value rating 1/5