Ahoy mateys!  After talking to some crewmates I realized that not everyone has an easy time with the gunning puzzle.  Since I rather like it and am often good at it, I thought a how-to guide might be in order.  My hope is that people will read this to understand how it is I load the cannons, and perhaps walk away with ideas to try themselves.  Please remember that practice is important, and navy ships are a great place to practice!  If you can't see a gunning mission when you go to the mission board, just take any mission available that puts you on a ship.  Once you've fulfilled your mission, you can then try your hand at the guns.

A lot of a gunner’s success depends upon the board they’re using.  This is one reason why you’ll see a gunner enter and leave a puzzle repeatedly – they’re trying to find a good board.  For me, a good board is one where I can set up a loop using only two arrows to keep the loop going.  A great board is one where I can keep the loop going with one arrow… while a perfect board requires no arrows to keep the loop going. 

 Throughout this guide I’ll be mentioning which boards to keep, and which to pass by.  This is assuming you have the luxury of staying on one board during a battle or aren’t loading up the guns for the first time.  Usually you can camp out on a board while on a sloop, but if you’re the only gunner on a cutter or are gunning on a larger ship then you will need to step out of the puzzle and enter it again to load up all the guns.  In that case, you’ll need to try and load the cannons on the board quickly and with whatever loop you can manage, even if the board is less than desirable.  

The method of filling the guns I prefer to use is what I call the loop method.  This means you get all the pieces moving in a clockwise loop on the board.  

  Powder monkey says--  It's all clockwise motion!  When a piece on a gun board hits an obstacle (a wall or a block) it will move off in a clockwise direction – unless something else is in it’s way.  So if a piece is moving upwards and hits the top wall, it will start moving to the right… a clockwise turn.