Intro
Ahoy there and welcome back to Path to Glory for another warband review! Back when we heard the words “pirate ogre” I think you can imagine how quickly the jokes started flying. Sadly, in the first edition the jokes continued even after the warband’s release, as Blackpowder’s Buccaneers were simply one of the worst warbands in the game. While they had some interesting mechanics, I often felt that their stats and Rivals deck (particularly upgrades) had left them far short of where they needed to be, so I’m excited to see the designers take another swing at them in the second edition. Climb aboard and let’s get started!
Warscroll
Inspire
The warband has a shared inspire condition, with each fighter inspiring after you’ve discarded your third or subsequent Swag token, a warband-specific resource. If you have no Swag and are looking for some, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place, but I can at least tell you how to get the tokens…
Loot and Plunder
To start with, you begin the game with 1 Swag token. A few of your fighters also have weapons with the runemark corresponding to the weapon ability Swashbuckle, which grants you 1 Swag token if the attack succeeds or 2 if you are the underdog or the target of the attack had any upgrades. While this is nice and straightforward token generation, especially in cases where you are able to get 2 tokens at once, there is one glaring issue with this: it is a weapon ability. You need Swag? Throw out all your cleave, ensnare, grievous, etc., can’t use it. I cannot adequately express my immeasurable disappointment at this. While the hope is obviously that you generate counters early so that you can use any weapon abilities you’ve accumulated via upgrades at a later time, the conflict is entirely unnecessary. It will create situations where you have to decide between accuracy/damage and trying to collect enough tokens to inspire/feed your warscroll (we’ll get there shortly). While you could be optimistic and view this more as an opportunity for skill expression in terms of making the right choice at the right time, I see it instead as an extraneous handicap that most other warbands don’t have to deal with, save for Skinnerkin, who fall into the same traps.
Swag Shrapnel
Well, if you manage to secure yourself some Swag counters, there are 3 once-per-game ways to spend them, starting with Swag Shrapnel. After you pick your leader’s ranged weapon attack (note that it does not say he has to use one that is on his fighter card), you can discard 1 or 2 Swag tokens. In this case, doing so either gives you a 50% or 75% chance, respectively to deal a damage and stagger up to two other enemy fighters within 2 hexes of the target of that attack. To inspire more rapidly, I think you’re generally incentivized to discard two tokens for one of these abilities, and this one is generally a great candidate for it. Getting out “free” stagger tokens and ping damage is actually a really solid boon from a single ability. While this will obviously depend on how close together your opponent’s fighters are at the time you plan to use it, horde warbands in particular will be really susceptible to this ability. I think, as long as you only try it by discarding 2 tokens, it should provide solid value.
Swag Blast
The next option is Swag Blast, which simply grants the attack cleave and will stagger the target if they are driven back. Not a bad option here, especially because it is sort of allowing you to use two weapon abilities at once by not explicitly giving the attack the stagger weapon ability. The irony is not lost on me that something like this would have been a great solution for my earlier rant about Swashbuckle, but, sticking with this ability for now, I think it’s quite decent. I might have liked to see some additional incentive to discard a second Swag token, like we did with the first ability, but the effect itself has enough juice that I can get behind it. You’ll just likely only spend the one token unless you are trying to accelerate that inspiration.
Swag Mortar
Finally, Swag Mortar, grants you +X Range to the attack, where X is the number of tokens you discarded. This could potentially let you snipe from as far as 5 hexes from your target, but we will need a similar FAQ here as we did with the Emberwatch. That is, can I pick my leader to resolve an Attack core ability if no eligible target is within 3 hexes if the +X Range from this ability then puts that target in range. My gut says that this is how it should work, but my brain is telling me that you can’t choose to use a core ability if you can’t resolve it at the time you are picking your fighter. Obviously, which interpretation we get here will be extremely relevant to the power level of the ability. If we go with the former interpretation, it is quite solid, but the latter interpretation would limit it to very niche cases where you have one target in range but need the extra couple of hexes to hit a different target instead.
Fighters
The leader of the warband is Gorlok Blackpowder and he is one beefy boy at 3 Move, 1 Shield, 8 Health, and 3 Bounty. With 8 Health, he might actually be able to find a way to stay on the table now, particularly with access to cards like Healing Potion, Great Fortitude, Utter Ignorance, etc. His weapon profiles are pretty solid with a melee weapon at 1R/2H/3D with Swashbuckle (that’s right, Arcus has more reach with his pole thing than this guy does with a sword that must be twice the length of it) and a ranged weapon at 3R/3S/1D from which you can proc your warscroll abilities via Swag discards. Outside of my issue with him not having Range 2, the damage is respectable here and is coupled with a sizeable accuracy boost once he inspires, as he gains a die on both weapons. Get him inspired and he’s going to do a lot of work, he looks quite strong in this iteration.
Getting into the not-so-strong fighters in the warband we have Peggz at a physical profile of 3 Move, 1 Dodge, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty with a miserable weapon profile of 1R/2S/1D with Swashbuckle. Unfortunately, all he adds when he inspires is one die to his attack, so he’s not going to be doing much in the way of hitting things outside of occasionally extracting a Swag token here or there. As usual, if the boss wants something done right, looks like he’ll probably have to do it himself.
Kagey is just Peggz but with Range 3 instead of Range 1, which I would say is a slight improvement these days. Since you’re not going to be doing anything particularly threatening with either of them short of handing them a weapon upgrade, I’d expect they’re both just bodies for feature token scoring, if anything.
Shreek is appreciably more useful at a profile of 5 Move, 2 Dodge, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty with the flying trait. His attack is both more accurate (when uninspired) and has greater damage potential than either of our prior fighters at 1R/3S/1S with critical grievous, inspiring to just a flat 2 Damage. Notably, Shreek is the only fighter in the warband that does not have Swashbuckle, but at least he seems far more competent for whatever actual gameplay purpose you might need.
Mange is the last fighter in the warband and sports a decent physical profile of 4 Move, 2 Dodge, 2 Health, and 1 Bounty. His weapon is 1R/3S/1D with Swashbuckle, which is at least reasonable accuracy in trying to help the warband inspire. Notably, he does inspire to 2 Damage, making him, once again way more useful than either of Peggz or Kagey.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, a bit of a mixed bag for me on this warband. While I don’t love how they’ve handled Swag generation (particularly it clashing with other weapon abilities), I do quite like the abilities they’ve slotted into the warscroll for spending it. While I would have appreciated some modal output from Swag Blast, all 3 options are compelling and should be useful at various points in the game. What I find unfortunate is that I see no reason to divert from playing this warband like you used to see Mollog’s Mob played back in the day. Peggz and Kagey are somehow even more useless than they used to be, I would have loved to see them get just one rule on the warscroll, potentially along the lines of what they had in the first edition where you could push Mange after moving with one of the two of them. That said, Blackpowder himself is quite threatening, particularly when inspired. I would just sink all of my resource into him and hope that he can deliver me a victory.
To that end, I have a hard time imagining doing anything besides playing a mixture of Blazing Assault and Reckless Fury with them in Nemesis. Scream of Anger and Get It Done are extremely potent ways to keep your leader making extra attacks throughout the course of the game. The charge token tech in Reckless Fury just generally seems like a great way to hit a charged out state where your leader gets to keep swinging and shooting. Meanwhile, packing in cards like Healing Potion, Commanding Stride, Great Strength, Accurate, Keen Eye, Bladecatcher, Utter Ignorance, Great Fortitude, and probably some others I am forgetting sounds like a great way to keep him going for at least two Battle Rounds, which is likely all you’d need for him to put in that work when he can get to the point of consistently throwing 4 Hammer, 4 Damage attacks with a re-roll once he is inspired.
I don’t know that he’s going to be top tier or anything, but big boy Voltron in general should be back in a big way thanks to this Nemesis pairing, and the Buccaneers are a decent candidate for it despite a more-or-less irrelevant supporting cast. Let us know what you think of the warband in the second edition! Until then, we wish you the best of luck on YOUR Path to Glory!
