I know I have read alot of glaring issues with this game, but I havn't seen this one in anything I've read yet. I don't know if I have a misprint or something, but in the section where the OL places his ship during an Encounter during an ambush, there is a Sandbar one space token right where the ship is placed... wouldn't this sink the ship as soon as play started or am I missing something?

Veritech said:

Or is the ship only considered to "Collide" when it is moving and impacts against Sandbars and Boulders, not when it is just placed on them?

Just checked the map (and all the others, which seem to be good) - the OL ship definitely has to be placed on the sandbar.

This must be either a printing error or we have to apply the rules strictly - as you noted, collisions only take place when a ship tries to move into an obstacle - which would not be the case if the ship started already on the obstacle and finally moves off of it. Any other interpretation would mean auto-win for the heroes in an ambush situation, which can´t be correct.

This should´ve gone into the FAQ document, but it´s too late for that now - probably we can still smuggle it into it, once we got a response from FFG (which we haven´t so far).

It was one of those things that just glared at me when I was scanning through the new map options. If I were to play it I would likely move the sandbar over one or play by the rule that it doesn't affect ships already on it (I highly doubt the encounter ship is supposed to sink as soon as the first turn ends). Although that entire map confuses me. It looks like the player ship has to drop all sails and steer hard towards the far side of the map and hope the current doesn't dash it into the rocks on the way there. That one sandbar square completely blocks that side of the map for escape route possibilities. In fact one would almost hope for an ambush since otherwise the only way to keep the player ship from sinking is to kill everything on the map before being run aground on the rock squares. I almost suspect that sandbar square (the only one on the board) was supposed to represent a reef space and they forgot to clarify. Then again, one never knows, glad I caught it.