Introduction
Gunning is one of those puzzles that you either immediately get how to play, or you get frustrated and don't understand it for years on end.If you fall into the latter category, you're likely to be stuck there as you will not get a chance to gun for others since you don't get how it works.
It's a vicious cycle.
Moreover, searching for "gunning videos" does diddly squat because they're just way too fast for you... and you're left thinking, "Sorry, what just happened?"
Hopefully we'll get you out of that rut with this guide.
In a nutshell, gunning is all about manipulating the pieces into the guns in the right order by placing arrows on the board to affect how they move.
Let's get started with the basics.
1. Basics
The board
 |
| A typical board |
The gunning board consists of 4 guns, 2 on each side. The position of the guns will never change, but the position of the crates and things on the board will. That is what makes certain boards "good" (easy) or "bad" (hard).
All pieces turn right when hitting obstacles. More on that later.
Your goal is to fill the guns as fast as possible by directing the pieces in order into the guns.
Red, white, black.
Placing Arrows
Two ways to place them.
One way to click and drag in the direction you want, the other to use WASD and then place with a click.
There are gunners who swear by either method.. whatever works for you.
You can only place 3 arrows on the board at any one time, so you should fill guns using a loop of 2 arrows or less (you need 1 to place stuff inside the guns).
Barrel (Piece Spawner)
The Barrel is from where the pieces enter the board.
It is positioned in the center of the board, and divides the board into two down the middle. The behavior of the pieces takes a bit of getting used to, and will be outlined in the next section.
Pictured below is the barrel that spawns the pieces.
The barrel spawns one piece at a time, each piece in a specific DIRECTION clockwise, but the order in which the pieces come out is random.
The order which pieces are spawned towards is ALWAYS UP, RIGHT, DOWN, LEFT (clockwise from top), and repeated twice in that order, until 8 pieces (2 of each type) are on the board.
Pieces
The board will only have two of any one piece at the same time.There are 4 types of pieces (outlined below), making 8 pieces total on the board at any given time.
- Bucket (blue)- a waterball used to clean out booched or dirty guns
- Powder (red) - Gun powder, first piece to load into cannon
- Wad (white) - piece of cloth, second piece
- Shot (black) - cannonball, the last piece. These cannonballs will be the ones that you will use from the ship's hold and booty.
Filling a Gun
To fill a cannon, you need 3 pieces. A Powder (red), then Wad (white), then cannon ball (black).Pictured and fill in this order.
If you do happen to fill the gun in the wrong order, simply send a Bucket down it to try again. |
| A dirty gun |
i.e., kick a red, get a red. Kick a white, get a white.
After a cannon has been fired, you need to clean the dirty cannons with water in order to continue gunning. It will look similar to this.
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| A typical board |
Speed Bar
This bar at the bottom controls the speed at which the pieces move around the board. There are two marks, one is a small line that indicates the recommended speed, while the slider, is one you can manually move to set the speed of the board. |
| Blue = slow, red = fast |
As you first need to understand how the pieces move, don't worry about your score just yet when using this to practice.
Now that the basics are out of the way, here's where it gets complicated.
2. How the pieces move
The movement of the pieces may seem random at first glace, but there is an order.How the pieces move is the most complicated part, and is the key to understanding how to gun. A slow and careful read is advised.
You can use any board and do fine (literally), but some boards can be crappy, while others can be amazing.
Good or bad boards are determined by the ease and speed at which you can fill guns with, as that is how gunning is scored.
As already mentioned in the previous section, the direction with which pieces come onto the board is always Up, Right, Down, Left.It was also mentioned that the Bucket splits the board into two down the middle.
Pieces always travel to their right side when hitting an obstacle or a wall.
An easy way to remember where the pieces will go is:
- the left side of the board sends pieces upward,
- the right side of the board sends them downward.
Illustrated in the screenshots below.
This is the left side of the board. The path of the bucket will go as follows.
The water will hit the left wall, and go up into the corner, bounce off the wall, then head back down.
The water will go down to the bottom wall, bounce up, and head back up.
The water will continue bouncing up and down in an endless loop.
This is the bottom right gun on the board. The pieces will always go downwards on the right side of the board. So start at the top of the image.
The piece will come down (follow the black arrow), hit the edge, and
bounce back up, going towards the rest of the board (following the red arrow).
Below is an example of a complete board, and a fairly good one at that.
The arrows outline the path of the pieces depending on which direction they come out of.
Right - The piece will hit the right wall, and then follow the same path as red.
Down - The piece will go down, hit the bottom wall, go left, hit the box and go up, then continue in the red loop at the top.
Left - The piece will hit the left wall, follow the red path, and continue in the loop.
This board is a great one because it is known as a "one arrow full board loop".
If you place a -> arrow right where the top left cannon ball is, you can see that the pieces will travel around the board in a clockwise direction.
3. Gunning Styles
There are two main ways to fill guns effectively.
- Freestyle
- To fill each gun individually by guiding pieces one by one into the guns.
- Looping
- A very common method to increase ranks with the navy, by looping guns on the same side (whether that be top 2, left 2, bottom 2 or right 2)
The best gunners use a combination of the two, regardless of the boards that they're given.
4. How it's scored
TL;DR : The rating goes by how many cannons you fill, based on how long you take.
The best chance you have, is to hop on the station, look the board over.
If you don't like the board (i.e., cannot loop easily), then hop off and try again.
You can take some time assessing the board before it counts negatively towards your score, but if you're just looking to improve your rating, you should look for a good board.
It doesn't matter how many arrows you throw on the board, but generally, the fewer the better.
However, the faster you go, the better your rating.
Throwing pieces off a board loses you almost nothing, and you could constantly have pieces thrown off and still get incred.
The only real way of doing bad is going slow, or messing up on filling a cannon.
If you don't do either, you should do well.
Don't worry about lining all 3 pieces in a row. You can fill each cannon with a gunpowder, then cloth, then cannon.
If you can fill all 4 cannons in under 40 seconds, you will be guaranteed a excellent or incredible.
So you can fill 3 cannons in 30 seconds, and still get the same rating as 4 in 40 seconds. Just remember to abandon station after, so that your "speed" isn't diluted by that extra time.
5. Gunning in Battles
Gunning in a battle has more variables for you to take into consideration as opposed to gunning with the navy.You have to deal with cleaning out the cannon, AND you have to worry about when the ships turns.
Ship turns left = Barrel slides left
Ship turns right = Barrel slides right
If possible, you should ALWAYS TRY to get on the gunning station right AFTER the turn starts, so you don't get effected by any movements. You then have 45 seconds to clean and fill all 4 cannons. If you can do so, than you're golden. However, if you don't manage to fill them all, than hit esc. It will stop the piece spawner (barrel) from rolling around.
If you're looking to up your rating, DON'T GUN IN A BATTLE.
Additional Reading:
YPPedia Page on Gunning - Also has additional links to other gunning demonstrations and resources.
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