I thought up a few more ideas for your 'Trade Routes' ability switch, seeing as you asked us earlier in chat for substitutes (why did it have to be changed again though?):
Reasons for replacing that skill are..
1. It's technically painful to make happen.
2. Potentially broken
related skills might lead to early-game event economy fails, so the less of them we have, the better
3. It would be the 3rd
related skill
has. It might be better to have something more PvP orientated, after all, we are talking about pirates
Cursed Gold:
If your current gold count is divisible by 10 before a battle, your opponent must discard 1 card afterwards (win or lose) for each upped card he uses in his deck.
Grog Chugging (2 AP + Relic):
You may use 4 additional upgraded cards on the first duel of your next battle, but you must then use 2 less upped cards on the remaining duels.
Fishbait (3 AP (+Relic?)):
Name an opponent. If the player attacks you the following turn, they cannot kill any of your creatures during that battle.
The theme of
Cursed Gold sounds a bit.. weird. Why would the number of gold you have, affect how much your opponent discards?
I think it would be too easy to make sure Also, shouldn't it be renamed to "Cursed Electrum"?
Fishbait is not bad imo but won't stand a chance against..
Grog Chugging which I love! Awesome concept and a unique PvP related skill that the player him or herself controls. That's just the kind of skills we need.
Couple of thing though.. "chugging", is that a word that has been used for long or is it a more recent addition to the dictionary? I've never even heard of the word myself and I'm pretty sure that many other non-English native speakers haven't either. That's not automatically a deal-breaker but something more common might be better. It doesn't even have to be a verb. It could be like "*** Grog" or something.
I'm not all that convinced that you would need something as cool as a Relic to produce a terrible drink like Grog.
Maybe it could be something that can be bought by anyone but only people with this skill can actually use it for their benefit?
As for the mechanics, I think you pretty much nailed it. Alternative version would be an effect where you get the bonus the day you use it (rounds are days in WoE) but will get the debuff the next day. But I think yours is probably more interesting.