Thursday, September 17, 2015

Who will stop the boats now?

A repeat of the blockade running scenario.  Mark B, political appointee, commanding the blockading forces of his Majesty King George tries to stop the French commanded by Matthew, one of the best French commanders with a rating of "middling".

Forming the blockade line, from left to right HMS Defence, the flagship, HMS Meleager and HMS Spartiate.  The French need to exit from the top left hand corner.  The frigate Unite leads the way, follwed by Imperial, the flagship, and Aquilon. 

The British are holding position and using their gunnery skills to fire, somewhat ineffectively, at the French as they slowly make their way around their rear.

The French start to return fire.

The British line breaks, with damage to both HMS Meleager and HMS Spartiate.

The British fight on, land a many a broadside on Aquilon.

Aquilon gives its fight to stay a float and sinks beneath the waves (mostly, a goodly amount of wreckage is left bobbing on the surface).

HMS Defence heads to cut off the French.  It delivers a devastating bow rack to the little French frigate, but then sails off into the mists of the table edge.

The British frigate is out of it, but HMS Spartiate fights on, despite significant damage.

The French frigate, gets away, but not in the best shape or direction.  The Imperial however completes the task and sails off to open waters.  HMS Spartiate is in no condition to give chase and sails off into the mists.

While I made a few mistakes (getting clockwise confused and failing to add in factors) they applied equally.  No explosions this time, but a good number of failed turns which probably helped the French except that the British were generally "in irons."

We just used an eight point compass which made wind direction much easy to track on the square table with its four sides and four corners.  I need to make some wrecked ship models and things always look better with some cotton smoke.




No comments:

Post a Comment