by eriktheguy
There are two situations in which you want to place a consolidate in a sea zone.1: You ran out of order tokens and are using it as a place holder. In this case, before players reveal orders but after they have placed them, announce "I have a consolidate in the sea zone, but it's only a place holder". This way you don't have to worry about someone raiding your sea zone.
2: You want to muster AFTER your opponent, and hope to do so by placing more consolidates on the board, resolving the useless consolidate in the sea zone first, and forcing them to resolve their special consolidate before you. This lets you see what your opponent decides to muster before you decide what to muster.
You can see the importance of announcing that the consolidate is simply a place holder. If you don't announce it, then your opponents may think you were going for situation 2 above. If you fail to announce that the order is just a place holder and then spot a raid in the adjacent sea zone, don't be surprised if the other players don't want to let you take it back.