The one cannon loop

This is helpful if you have a messed up board and need to quickly load a gun for the captain.

The two cannon loop

Notice that the lower right corner needs no arrow – there’s a block right past the cannon that helps your loop.  (This is what I would call a one-arrow board.)

A variant on a two cannon loop would be where the loop covers not the upper or lower guns, but instead the left or right two guns. 

This loop will work for these two cannon, but the other two cannons will be harder to load.  I would take a normal two cannon loop over this type any day.

Unless you can find that rare board that will allow you to have the two cannon loop on both sides.   The left loop can be maintained with two arrows, and the right loop can be maintained with just one. 

The three cannon loop

  The loop path goes past all cannons but the upper right hand corner.

The four cannon loop

This board has no helpful blocks in the corners, so you need two arrows to keep the loop going. (Thus a two-arrow board)

  What type of loop you can get going depends upon the board you’re using.   The more cannons you can have the loop go past the easier all the cannons will be to load.

First arrow

Second arrow

Third arrow

Fourth arrow – the first one is gone!

Change the direction of the last arrow and the other two remain.

Again, changing the direction of one arrow doesn’t make the other arrows disappear.