Fleet - Tips & Strategies

In this variant you compete against a big fishery Ahoy! Inc. or AI for the control of the fishing resources of Ridback Bay.

Setup: Use the two player set-up. Use 50 fish crates. AI doesn’t keep cards. It automatically draws and launches from the boat deck as described below. Auction Phase: Draw 3 licenses and place them in a top to bottom fashion. Take 2 cubes from the reserve and place them on the top license.

Rules for acquiring licenses:

Bottom license:
– Pay the printed minimum cost.
– The top license automatically goes to AI.
– Reveal as many boat cards as there are cubes on the top license.
– AI launches all the boats that match any of AI’s licenses for free.
– Cubes go back to the reserve.

Middle license- Bid against AI:

– Reveal one card from the boat deck. This is AI’s initial bid. Its cost value determines how many additional cards AI will reveal as its final bid (e.g. if it’s a tuna boat, AI will draw 1 more card, since tuna costs 1 to launch. Lobster-2 more cards, etc).
– Based on the first card, place your offer. Your bid is binding; you can’t modify it after this step.
– Reveal the rest of the AI’s bid (cost value of first card = # additional cards). The sum of the coin value of all cards is AI’s final offer.
– If your bid > or equal AI’s, you win the auction and take the license. Pay the amount that you bid, even if it’s higher than AI’s. Add 1 cube to the top license. If there are already 4 cubes on the top license, the top license automatically goes to AI. AI reveals as many boat cards as there are cubes on the license and launch all matching boats for free.
– If your bid < AI’s, you lose the auction. AI gets the middle license, and you get none this round. No cubes are added in this case.

Top license:

– Pay minimum +$4.
– Discard the cubes on the card or put back in the reserve, your choice. (Cubes act as timers.

No license purchased
– If you don’t buy a license this round, the top card goes to AI. AI reveals as many boat cards as there are cubes on the license and launch matching boats.

After the auction is over, shift upward any remaining license in the offer, then fill up the empty spaces from top to bottom. If the top license has no cubes, place 2 cubes from the reserve on it.

Launch Boats and Hire Captains phase:

After you launch your boats, AI reveals one card from the boat card deck. If this boat card matches any of its licenses, it launches this boat. Don’t place captains on AI’s boats.

Fishing phase:

AI boats don't need captains to fish. AI’s boats get one crate following the 4 crate/boat limit.

Processing and Trading phase: AI doesn’t process or trade.

Draw Phase: AI doesn’t draw cards.

End Game: As per regular rules, if you run out of licenses to refill the offer (three in this case) finish the round, or if you run out of fish crates, the game ends after the fishing phase.

Scoring: You score as per regular rules. AI scores normally, applying all score bonuses from premium cards.

Difficulty:

You could scale the difficulty in several ways:
– Applying or not applying King Crab’s bonuses to AI score.
– Each time AI gets the top license, instead of launching all revealed matching boats, only reveal until the first matching boat, or stop when the # cubes on card is reached, whichever comes first.