Here, I will show you how you can beat a Man o' War with a humble cutter.

First, the contesters.

The Man o' War, a 60 pointer! The strongest ship in the game!



Against, a humble cutter. Level 8 in our example.


The first thing you need to do, it to bring the Man o' War (MoW in shortage) at 99% damage. You can do this with various voodoo cards.

We will use The Kraken for our example:


Now that the victim is ready, simply attack:



-How???
Simple, all you need to do is to ensure that the Cutter fires first and one of its cannons manages to hit the MoW. You might actually need more than one hitting and this is why we needed a level 8 Cutter.

>The Cotton Sails ensures we will hit first (The cutter is the fastest ship of the game after all).
>The Bronze Cannon and Double Hammocks increase our probabilities to hit.
>Double Hammocks also give us speed but we have enough anyway.
>We put the remaining points to Round Cannon, just to ensure we will do the needed damage on hit.

In the same way, you can defeat ANY ship, with a small cutter

Does this work with other ships?

Cutter can beat any ship this way^^

It does : the object is to hit the other ship with enough damage before its turn to fire : if you have done so, it cannot return fire as you have, in battle engine terms, effectively sunk it (taken its damage to 100%). Its a good way to capture bigger ships but does need plenty of turns and the right voodoo used correctly.

Be warned, though: A SoL is faster than a MoW. If you're unlucky when using a cutter vs a SoL this way, the SoL may fire first, destroying your cutter.

does favorable winds play a huge part in this? or is that only travel time

A recent post by CJ states that favourable winds only reduce travel time, it does NOT affect ship speed, and thus does not affect who fires first.

Contrary to what I previously thought, I might add.

Haron wrote:A recent post by CJ states that favourable winds only reduce travel time, it does NOT affect ship speed, and thus does not affect who fires first.

Contrary to what I previously thought, I might add.

That would be interesting if it did make ship speed faster

I have not attempted this but I did see someone who did. Hats off to Vane.

His cutter actually lost the first couple battles, which we both found odd as the MoW had 99% DMG. And since the cutter is the fastest ship on the seas... must have been some really bad luck with the dice that day. In the end Vane was victorious.

I recall taking a SotL using a LMM... which made me laugh.. if not the previous owner..