As I have played a few tournees with the events, here's what I think:
Before PotR, many fleets were built around one big hitter and a few add-ons, like Titan with Cap, Helmsman, Myngs and L'Intrepide or some such. I myself played La Possession with Capt. Arathiel and a few additional ships. The game itself consisted more and more of close combat and ever less on collecting treasure. The events - and the decision to allow only one piece of the same name in ships, crew and treasure - forced to redesign fleets.

The risks emanating from Mermaids forces you to consider less crew on each ship so these Power-Hitters aren't dominating the game any more. At the German Nationals the biggest amount of crew was five. At the final it was the Mermaids event that led to the loss of my opponent, because he had forgotten to dock his ship when shooting at mine. Mermaids leaves enough loopholes to slip through, it just punishes heavily if you oversee these. Remember: a docked ship can't be 'mermaided'. A ship in a fog bank also isn't affected by Mermaids, it just isn't there.

Aan-allein

That must have been a house rule where you played.

Officially, Mermaids can affect a ship in a fog bank because they do not require line of sight and do not have an area of affect. All they require is that the target ship be undocked, and since a ship in fog isn't docked it is a valid target.

Though we disagree about the fogbank effect, I agree with Aan Allein. Mermaids can easily be played and designed around. It is nowhere near as broken as becalmed is. If anything, our group was incredibly happy to see mermaid since most of our games turned into my titan vs your harbinger battles. Our current higher point games see more variety of ships and crew combinations than ever before thanks to that event.

If anything, WK should be commended for listening to the players' comments and trying to fix things that were wrong with the game. Multi-action ships were too broken, so Mermaids was made to balance it. As described above, a good multi-action ship can still get around it, yet it is more difficult to pull off.

I complained about splitting loot with a player whose ship I had sunk. Hence allowing treasure running fleets an advantage under current win conditions. I got divers. Not a big step but at least it is one in the right direction.

To take this a step further, an argument can be made that becalmed was a step in the right direction. 1st turn victories by player 2 were a problem that we all griped about. Low and behold, becalmed is printed. Unfortunately, that had some latent effects that I have addressed elsewhere.

To Summarize: If you have complaints about mermaids then my only advice for you is to rent a copy of "heartbreak ridge". Enjoy the viewing.

At the German Nationals, the German rules arbitrator had given out the rule for the fog bank that a ship in a fog bank was considered "out of play" as long as its player decided to remain inside. If it's out of play it can't be affected by any event.

As the ruling went, if my opponent placed a Becalmed event next to the fog bank, my ship got becalmed immediately after placing it according to my die roll for the point of emerging out of the fog bank if it is thus placed anywhere inside of the range of the event token.

Aan-allein

Hey, Powerlusche,

In regards to your remark, I think your opponent would quickly follow the Mermaids Event with the Buggery Event.

The event card reads something like this:

Buggery. Place this token on a ship that is out at sea (not docked). This ship loses an action for one turn as the Captain/crew found the cabin boy to be effeminate. :D

that's how we ruled it locally. Unfortunately, I don't think it works that way now.