Name: Stoneheart (Pirates)
Card: FN #027 (Rare)
Points: 13
Masts: 5
Cargo: 4
Moves: L
Guns : 4L,4L,4L,4L,4L
Hit %: 167 (S), 167 (L)
Link : Vlad the Iceblood
Ability: Once per turn, you may reroll any die roll you make for this ship; you must use the second die roll result.

Five-Masters Week begins with a rather average Pirate thug, the Stoneheart.

Her move and cargo are typical of the five-masted breed. Her cost is a little below average; her cannons are well below average. The reroll ability can help a little here, but this ship, unlike most big ships, wasn't meant to earn a living by cannon fire. No, she has a more specific role to play.

The Frozen North release was focused on the Vikings, who excel at boarding and looting home islands. This ship, with her many masts and using her reroll on the boarding rolls, gives the Pirates an equalizer against thieving longships. They won't dare mess with her, and if you give her a Helmsman, she can overtake them and steal back anything that the Vikings have taken. If the cannonballs fly, she has enough masts to survive the worst that most longships can dish out, and if she scores even one hit in return, that's enough to send a longship scurrying for home and repairs.

I'd crew her with a Helmsman and maybe a Captain, and use her as a boarder, using her lousy cannons only if there was no other way to resolve the situation. Her linked crew, Vlad the Iceblood (ignore terrain and exclusive explore), actually makes sense in this context; you can explore the wild islands without stopping, so your own gold ships can load up and go in a hurry, while you continue chasing the nearest enemy who needs to be boarded. As I've said before, boarding is a hard way to make a living in this game. But if you combine boarding with gold running, you can do well, and the Stoneheart is an above-average way to go about it.

Goldship rating: 2.7 / 5
Gun Ship rating: 3.4 / 5
Boarding rating: 3.6 / 5
Value for points: 3.1 / 5