Crew member

Crew members are represented by Crew Boards, and by miniatures placed:

• in Zones On Deck,
• Below Deck on Improvements, on Crew effect spaces on Improvements, or on empty slots where Improvement can be placed,
• on Service locations on the Port Board (including occasional spaces on Denizen cards),
• on spaces on the Island Board (when doing Exhaustive Expeditions).

The status of each Crew member are tracked on the Crew Board for that Crew member. The Crew Boards are placed along the right side of a player's Ship Board, and there is a limit of four Crew members per player.

Crew members are primarily recruited via the HIRE CREW action in Ports, at the cost indicated on the Crew Board for the specific Crew member. That cost also needs to be paid again for each Crew member at every End of Act if a player wants to keep the Crew member.

When a Crew member suffers Trauma or Strain, this is marked by placing acrylic gems on the Trauma/Strain track on the Crew member's Crew Board. If the spaces for Trauma/Strain all get filled up, the Crew member dies (unless some Trait or other effect makes something else happen). If a Crew member dies, discard any tokens and cards related to it, and shuffle its Crew Board back into the Crew Board stack next to the Game Board.

If a player's ship ends up with no Crew members on it, that counts the same as the if the ship was sunk in Combat.

Crew Board

The Crew Boards represent the Crew members that the players can recruit for their ships. There are various types of Crew members, with Deckhand being the basic type, and Shellback being the collective term for all other types of Crew members. All players get two Deckhand Crew members at the start of the game.

The Crew Boards have different slots and stats marked on them: at the top, there is a row of small round holes punched through the board; these are used to track Trauma and Strain. Below that is a box containing two Skill Values, used for Skill Tests; the Island Value is on th left, and the Port Value is on the right. At the bottom of the Crew Board are two Traits; Deckhands have one random Positive Trait and one random Negative Trait, while Shellbacks have one fixed Indelible Trait and initially one random Negative Trait.

If a Deckhand gains a Negative Trait, discard any previous Negative Trait they may have. Similarly, when gaining a Positive Trait, discard any previous Positive Trait.

Shellbacks have one Indelible Trait, and only one free slot for either a Positive or Negative Trait. Whenever they gain a new Trait, whether Positive or Negative, the previous Positive or Negative Trait is discarded.