The Enemy Ship Board is a separate board that has a similar layout to the On Deck area on players's Ship Boards. The Enemy Ship Board is used when Boarding an enemy ship, and is printed on the other side of the Island Board.
Boarding
When playing with what the rulebook refers to as "optional advanced mechanics", Boarding is available as an alternative way of attacking enemy ships. Boarding can be done when a player ship is adjacent to an enemy ship, and the procedure is as follows:
1. Place the Enemy Ship Board next to the On Deck area of the player who initiates the Boarding. Spawn enemies with a total Act value equal to the current Act, and roll the Fate Die to determine what positions on the Enemy Ship Board they occupy.
2. The two ships are now treated as one big On Deck area, with the three closest Zones on each ship being connected to each other. (TO CHECK: does this matter? Doesn't crew movement move crew members from any Zone to any other Zone?)
3. The player activates as many Crew members as they wish, moving them to a Node and triggering a Fray if applicable. No Orders are spent to do this, and not all Crew members need to be activated.
4. All enemies activate and resolve their actions.
5. If there are still enemies and Crew members alive, go to 3.
6. If all enemies have been defeated, the player collects as many Spoils as the current Act number, and the enemy ship is then removed from the Game Board. The enemy ship doesn't leave a Shipwreck behind. (Note: the rulebook has a misprint regarding the rewards, saying to collect rewards as described in a text box on the ship's Enemy Card, but there is no such information there. Grimlord Games have confirmed this is a misprint.)
7. If all Crew members were killed, the player's ship is sunk.
Note: the rulebook doesn't explicitly says what happens at the end of a successful Boarding, but the FAQ published by
but since other such minigames, like Visit a Port and Exhaustive Expedition, end with the Crew members being returned to any Below Deck spaces the player chooses, it seems reasonable to do that after Boarding as well.