Well, we should’ve read the rules more completely.  Hopefully my re-read will help our next game.

• We totally missed the KC rules and pirate-controlled KC’s coming into play other than by event cards.  Oops!  No wonder ther was no challenge for the pirates.
• We missed the fact that cunning can be used for rerolls.

We’re likely to give the game another try, we’ll see how that turs out.