Questions for the Legends of the High Seas players - getting my crew ready!

Since there's no subforum, I figure I'd go to general.

So I've been trying to get into Legends of the High Seas since around Xmas when I ordered my ship...and it finally arrived this week! I also got the figs for my crew.

Now my question is, what do you recommend for starters? I'm not sure what's good and what's not. I'm going to go with a Privateer crew. I'm thinking I should max out heroes from the get go and get as many henchmen as I can afford after that?

For Archetype, I'm torn between Lucky and Courageous. Lucky so it will help me catch up a bit better since I'm starting late, courageous to mitigate the Privateer weakness. What are experience players' thoughts?

From the starting equipment, how useful are boats (the small ones you can have in your ship)? How much of a role do they play in the game?

What about hired hands, should I stay away from them in the beginning or get some to even the playing field since I'm starting late?

Thanks for the help guys,
Endre

I would go with maybe 2 heroes to start out. The only real advantage of taking more than two is more rolls for rare items later. One of the big advantages of Privateer crews is they have great musketeers...so I would max out on mercs and give them all muskets and swords or hand weapons. That will give you 5 4+ musket shots which will help greatly when your starting out. Fill in the rest with mariners with swords (so you can parry and hold off larger forces) and boarding pikes for support. Its probably best to get hired hands later on but if you want to get one I would recommend a master gunner or navigator. Lucky is a really useful ability but you do have a point on the courage thing. I think lucky would be best. as long as your captain lives you will probably not have to worry to much about courage tests and if you roll badly you can always use fame and/or lucky to re-roll. Boats are a good thing to have. Some ships are really powerfull and if they get really lucky it is possible for them to down u in one salvo. If you have a boat you can save a good amount of crew. If you don't have a boat you have to roll for every member to see if they drown.

Thanks, this info is gold! Now I can plan out my crew better

NP We will be seeing you Tuesday then ?

Oh, you might want to check out the yahoo group also. Some good stuff there.

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/LotHighSeas/

Cheating works best for me.

I replace killed or wounded figures, use loaded dice, change stats and such stuff.

com' on I'm a Pyrate!

Jerryb

I need some time to actually put all this stuff together...I'm aiming for next week!