Kiss me, Hardy

We had our first game of Kiss me, Hardy; the Age of Sail ruleset from TFL. We have played quite a bit of Black Seas from Warlord Games but we are always ready to try something else and since we play quite a few TFL rules, we said why not?

This is one of the early rulesets from TFL and was written by Nick Skinner, we have played quite a bit of Bag the Hun, also from the same rules writer. On the face of it, the rules looked a little complicated but once we started to play they were actually quite simple. We played for about 3 hours and finished the game with a clear victory. This is really quite good for a first outing with a ruleset being played over the internet on Discord.

We played a scenario from the 2019 Lard Special called Bahama Broadsides. This is scenario was written by Chris Stoesen, a frequent contributor and scenario writer for TFL. The scenario is written for smaller ships and requires the To Covert Glory supplement for playing games with small ships. These are mostly modifications for firing power and movement. I should note that like a lot of early TFL rulesets the game is card driven.

The scenario is set in the waters off the Bahamas and involves the HMS Rose, a 6th rate frigate on patrol. It encounters a Spanish convoy of 4 ships on their way to St Augustine with papers outlining the plans for the invasion of Georgia. The convoy are all small ships with the San Juan Batista, a snow with 10 guns and 10 swivels, it is accompanied by 3 other schooners and sloops, all similarly armed. The captain of the HMS Rose decided to pursue despite being outnumbered. The victory conditions in the game are that the Rose will earn a draw, if they survive the battle and will win if they can also take one Spanish ship. The Spanish win if they can exit 3 ships off the far edge of the table.

Pierre-Yves ran the scenario from Montreal while I was in Salem. I believe all the small ships in the game were 3D printed. I will post some of his excellent photos. 

The Spanish Convoy

HMS Rose

Off in pursuit

First Fire

The Spanish convoy circles back in a wolf pack type manoeuvre. The HMS Rose was able to take out one of the Spanish ships fairly quickly but had quite a battle with the 3 remaining ships. The battle went back and forth with both sides taking a fair amount of damage and the HMS Rose being slowed to almost a standstill because of the amount of damage it took. The Jolly Jack Tars however were able to manoeuvre their ship into one of the Spanish vessels and board it. Their superior manpower allowed them to capture the ship and the game ended.

Some glamour shots

This game went very well and it was a lot of fun, it is quite different to Black Seas in mechanism and activation. The card system really makes it quite a bit more interesting than Black Seas. It was so much fun that we are going to have another game this Wednesday with me hosting the game. This will be a one on one action for which I am now painting up two 5th rates.

Gung Ho-The Finale

 

The Forces

USMC (FM 11)

2nd Marine Raider Battalion (missing 13 men)

Platoon #2

2 SL's

2 Raider Squads with Superior JL's and 9 men (-3 men)

Supports (11)

Raider squad

extra BARs for 1 squad

Native Assistance

M1919 LMG Team

Japanese (FM 10)

62nd Garrison Force (missing 19 men)

1 SL

1 Inferior SL

2 LMG Buntai's with JL's

Knee Mortar Buntai with JL and 3x50mm Mortars (-6 men)

Supports (6)

MMG team

Marksman

Adjutant 

Patrol Phase

We started off using P-Y's patrol ap, smaller dots represent the JOP's. This was the "Attack on an Objective" scenario for the main rulebook. The Raiders have to blow the Fuel Tanks. This was a completely different game then the last in that the Raiders were able to capture the southwest part of the terrain so their approach to the objective would be from the south.

The Action

The game took place over 2 days, as we got started a little late the first session. We finished up this past Tuesday. All the core players showed up for both sessions. I thought I had taken more photos but it appears I had not. There was a bit of tentative movement in the first session but the game certainly sped up in the second session.

The table

JOP's

The Japanese deployed their marksmen in the watchtower as well as their Knee Mortar squad almost immediately. The Knee Mortars were placed behind one of the oil tanks with the Marksmen giving them indirect LOS to the approaching raiders.

The marines got off to a quick start deploying their 2 core squads and then their support squad as well as their LMG team just south of the wharf.

The green raider squad with the Platoon leader took some loses and shock from the Knee Mortars.

Pink and blue marines squads advance to the jungle edge

Eero leads the pink squad to safety behind a hut in the initial raider assault on the objective.

They are covered by the blue squad.

The green marine squad supported by the LMG also advanced north staying behind another hut to block LOS for the marksman.

Jarrko has deployed the IJA blue squad with himself in the concrete building,

the IJA green squad is finally deployed just out of LOS being screened by the jungle. He orders the knee mortars commanded by Petri to advance from behind the oil tanks to support the IJA green squad.

Mikko pulls the trigger and orders Eero to advance with the pink raider squad with his own green squad to assault the IJA green squad ( all though not in the rules we see no reason not to allow multiple squad assaults).

Jarrko although has a CoC die and adroitly plays it bringing the IJA blue squad out of the house  making what seemed to be a sure marine win in doubt. 

If I have it right the raiders had 46d6 and the the IJA 43d6. In CoC though sometimes numbers  can win, the raiders had all their men killed in the first assault while their 2 Leaders were wounded. The IJA had 4 men survive with 2 Leaders wounded. As there was no clear victor, a second assault took place. In this assault the IJA drove back the raiders, killing one of the JL's and knocking down the SL and the pink squad JL. The Marine FM was 1 while the IJA was over 3. The IJA still had over 25% of their men alive after we applied the ATSE rules. The Victory in the game and campaign was given to the IJA.

I really enjoyed putting on this campaign, it is the first time I got a chance to get my jungle set up and troops on the table. My Finnish friends are all great CoC players and it was anyone's campaign to the very end. Also thanks to William Thorpe for putting this, a very well written campaign, together.