The two Stephens took command of three squadrons (each of six ships) of mainly Spanish ships (they had some help from a set of French frigates) to take on Darren's Rovay Navy. The two sides were almost identical. Activation was random using cards as per the standard rules.
A simple set up,
The action started almost immediately with a few long range shots.
The arrows denoted the wind direction.
The British had a lucky success when a well placed shot caused an explosion on one of the Spanish flagships.
Great opportunity to use one of the sunken ship markers that Darren has.
Then the moon intervened...
An unsteady hand, but an interesting affect.
I tried the flash and got a better result.
Going...
Going...
Really going...
Almost totally gone.
Gone.
Normal play is now resumed
By the end of the third turn the Royal Navy has taken a hammering,
but a second Spanish ship has been sunk.
This time the loss was due to accumulated damage.
And at this unfortunately late stage we decided to sail off into the moonset.
Maybe 18 ships a side is a little bit ambitious, but I felt the game was working well. The ship profiles were as follows:
The frigates relay ability just extends the flagship's command radius.
I didn't use the reload option, ruled that undamaged ships would avoid collisions (which in my opinion worked well otherwise the game would have been resolved by collision damage) and toyed with an "engaged" rule, but ran out of time to try it.
Ships were allowed to fire at any point in their move. The wind was fixed and most ships were moving medium or long (as ships do with the galleon ability). It would be interesting to have a "make sail" and/or "reduce sail" activation. The idea for "engage" was like "battlestations" or "clear for action" There would then need to a "break off" or "disengage" activation. At this stage, more thought is required.
" It would be interesting to have a "make sail" and/or "reduce sail" activation. "
ReplyDeleteReduce Sail is already in the rules as an action. For Make Sail you could give any of the ships Razee, ignoring the High Castles restriction since all vessels have High Castles. I know the effects of Reduce Sail and Razee only last for the turn, but I think that works better than tracking them turn by turn (I've tried that and it was more effort that it was worth).
The basic rules have Galleon Rig to reflect its superiority to older Lateen or Square Rigs. I'd be inclined for a full-on game of this era, where *everything* is effectively Galleon rigged, to make all vessels Square Rig, since the three different movement rates make for far more interesting decisions with regards to the wind. Obviously some smaller vessels could have the Lateen rig.
Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI was aware of the Razee rule, but had totally overlooked the reduce sail action. I agree about not wanting to track sail settings, that was something that complicated SoG.
And with every ship being a galleon, changing the settings sounds like a good idea.
I still fancy an engage/battle stations activation that would stop a ship and let it blast away as seemed to happen. I would mark such an action with cotton wool which would represent the guns being actively worked.
I always like it. The ships start out in nice orderly lines converging in stately grace and end in a state of confusion mixed with smoke and debris. Great day at sea. 😀
ReplyDeleteThanks. I was very pleased how this game looked. Darren has made some slip on covers to hide the numbers on the bases, but it was handy to have the flags and number of guns (to determine ship type) and also the names added flavour. All that was missing was some cotton wool.
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