Skull's Eye Schooner vs. Black Sea Barricuda

well, obvious differences: color scheme: I like the contrast of the red
and yellow trim on 6285 barricuda:  never liked the color green, so the
green cannon flags on 6286 the schooner don't appeal to me as much, but
the red and white trim on SES are nice.  flags:  the black and white
flags with skull and crossbones are more menacing on SES than the white
and red ones on BSB.  figures: SES comes with 9, one pegleg, one female,
one in the ruffled shirt w/brown vest (MY favorite pirate captain, I have
dubbed him Errol Flynn to the wench's Maureen Ohara); plus shark monkey
and parrot.  (the other 6 figs are assorted pirate rabble)  in BSB also 9
figs, one pegleg, one wench and 7 assorted rabble, monkey parrot, but no
shark

having dropped them both fully from at least 3 feet off the floor I can
testify that BSB is slightly more structurally sound.  In terms of ships
designs I like the opening stateroom doors on SES, it works well, and the
8 cannon holes/4 actual cannons integrates better than the 4 cannons 4
holes of BSB.  The steering wheel design on 6286 is functional , turning
it turns the rudder, while on 6285 it is decorative only.
I like the wench w/goblet that serves on the bulkhead of BSB much more
than the blackfaced pirate bulkhead w/saber.  Most ships had ladies not
men on their bulkheads.

playability:  well the stateroom on BSB is largely inaccessible unless
you lift the floor of the helm, and thus cannot really play on one level
without losing the level above it.  Yes, the front panel pulls down, but
I have tiny hands, and can barely fit my hand in there without lifting up
the helm panel.  Also it seems very dark in there until you lift up the
helm panel.  in the SES however, the side doors open easily and you can
place minifigs anywhere in the room without much trouble, including
pushing them through the doors to the main cannon area, (a difficult task
on BSB even with helm panel lifted up).  Because both side doors open,
the stateroom then gets plenty of light.  The holds work much better on
SEs as well, since you lift up a larger panel, those angled plates that
go from 1 dot wide at top to 3 dots at the bottom, used mainly in these
ship sets.   in BSB the holds use a standard hinged 3 by 4 dot plate,
with little windows in the hold itself.  I end up shaking out anything
that gets put in there, whereas I don't have to shake things out of the
SES hold as much unless it is really tiny like a gold coin.   okay
there's yer plus es and minuses...  hope they help

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