Pirates of the Cursed Seas Ship Design Contest

From Wizkids Games:
Design a Ship for Pirates of the Cursed Seas!

For those Pirates of the Cursed Seas fans who dream of pirate ships both night and day, we’ve got a contest for you: A chance to have your ship design published in a Pirates of the Cursed Seas PocketModel game expansion!

You will find below a few PDFs to download; these are called dielines. The dielines will be your guide in creating a Pirates of the Cursed Seas ship. You can design a ship for any of the six Pirates of the Cursed Seas factions: America, England, France, Spain, Pirates, or the Cursed.

All submitted designs will be considered for future Pirates of the Cursed Seas releases. Designs must be submitted before October 20, 2007, and will be entered into a drawing for a full factory set of Pirates at Ocean’s Edge. So crack open your old shipwright texts and dust off your old schematics . . . you’ve got a ship to build!

What I Did This Weekend

On Saturday Craig and I decided that we needed to do something other than just sit and watch TV, especially now that there isn't much new on TV and our TiVo is fairly empty.

What did we come up with? Renting some games for the PS2.

We rented Pirates of The Caribbean: At World's End and Gran Turismo 4.

Because Pirates was new, we only rented it for two nights, but Gran Turismo was older, so we've got it for a week. We played Pirates completely through - a rare thing for us to do in a weekend. It's fairly easy as most of the game is just key mashing as you sword fight, and plays through quickly. Still, the visuals were pretty cool. The story includes the end of the second movie and then goes from there - but there are of course parts left out and some story changes to make it all fit.

Because Pirates had to go back, we spent most of our game time playing that, but we did do a few races in Gran Turismo. In that game, when you finish a race it will replay it as if you were watching the race. Oh my gosh! I nearly peed my pants I was laughing so hard. Our dog ran over and kept trying to calm me down because she had no idea why I was making such noises. The replay was HILARIOUS!! We don't have one of those driving wheel controllers - we've just got a regular old PS2 controller, so the slightest move on that can create HUGE swerves while driving your car, especially if it's a fast car. Many of the tracks have some tight corners too. The race played back looked like there were two drunk teens racing - we were just all over the place and once I even went off the track and then got back on and started to go the wrong way. Craig was just as bad - at one point he stopped horizontally on the track in front of me and I had to ram his car out of the way. Oh my gosh it was SO funny to watch.

Arrrrr! Here be Captain Vane

I have a thing for Pirates. Yep, I'll admit it.
Why? Well, they get to ride around on cool sail ships and say Arr! and go treasure hunting. Maybe Johny Depp dressing up like a character from a theme-park ride had something to do with it too.

I have a pirate name:

My pirate name is:

Captain Bess Vane

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You tend to blend into the background occasionally, but that's okay, because it's much easier to sneak up on people and disembowel them that way. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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I've seen all of the movies. The first is the best - it's funny and doesn't take itself overly serious and there is a lot of Captain Jack Sparrow. The second two are much darker, and there isn't as much of Captain Jack. But I still did enjoy them. I thought the effects, especially in the third one that just came out last week, were really cool. But (spoiler - highlight to read) I thought that in the scene at the end where the Black Pearl was taken from Captain Jack, it should have been Elizabeth at the helm, not Barbosa. Especially since Elizabeth was Pirate King and all. I also was reading some Internet blogs the other day and discovered that the green flash of light we see as Will sails off aboard the Flying Dutchman is actually a sign that he has been freed of the curse and doesn't have to stay away for 10 years because Calypso frees him due to his finding true love and all. But they ended up cutting the scenes that show this happening - except the green flash. I hope they do another one and make it more like the first one. Craig even got to sit next to a Pirate during the movie. (I think it was just a guy dressed like a pirate, but I digress) I have most of the movie action figures - not all of them though because they kept making the same characters over and over and I just don't need 4 Captain Jacks, even if he is the awesomest!

I also play and collect the Pirates constructable strategy game made by Wizkids.

I have the Pirates: The Legend of Back Kat video game for PS2, and I've played it through. It's a very cool game. I have another pirate video game, but I can't remember the name of it, and it's not really very good - the character doesn't get to sail on any cool ships.

I really wanted to get the MMORPG called Pirates of the Burning Sea, but it's had some problems and it hasn't been released yet. Looks like the Disney made Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG will come first. It's not horrible, but I don't think that the graphics are nearly as good as the Burning Sea. However, with my older computers Burning Sea probably won't run properly anyway.

I just ordered the Lisa Petrucci Kick Ass Cuties Pirate Girl (pictured left), sold by Darkhorse. It wasn't too expensive and I did think it was pretty cool! Made by a woman named Lisa, calls itself "kick ass" and it's a pirate figure - I couldn't pass it up.

Since Spider-Man 3 is so two weeks ago and Pirates 3 is still sailing the high seas, I took down our in-store display of black suit/venom Spider-Man merchandise and changed it to Pirates stuff (see picture at top). The loose figures are from my collection, as is the silly hat. I'm totally going to read the Government Manual for New Pirates book next week.