Baptism of Fire-KmH

HMS Indefatigable

This past Thursday, myself and P-Y had another Kiss Me, Hardy game over discord. This time I hosted the game. We decided to play another scenario from the TFL magazine, this one written by Rich Clark. In "Baptism of Fire", we have a scenario with single ships. The scenario was taken from CS Forester's first Horatio Hornblower book, where two 5th rates decide to engage. We see the HMS Indefatigable spot a French frigate in the Bay of Biscay. Victory conditions are to capture the other ship, sinking it would be a less than satisfactory achievement.

HMS Indefatigable

32 guns (4d6 broad sides, 1d6 bow and stern chasers)

Crew-Elite Jolly Jack Tars (fervently determined, boarding party)

Speed 14cm (foul bottomed)

32 DP

Le Frigate

40 guns  (5d6 broad sides, 1d6 bow and stern chasers)

Crew-Average Sans Culottes

Speed 15cm

40 DP

Our combatants, I have a large Spanish fleet already rigged as well as some Scandinavian  ships, so I had to quickly paint up 2 frigates from my Black Seas spares. I am sure you will note the lag of rigging as well as the missing staysails. I have to say I found it quite a struggle to even string up the colours. My apologies, as I sure this will disturb some, but I enjoy gaming over modelling!

Starting positions for the 2 ships and the wind direction.

I added 3 random islands to the terrain to make the sailing a little more complex, we can see our 2 ships heading south but where are they heading?

Well, it looks like the Brits are planning to swing around the island in order to bring their starboard guns into action. Their sailing ability is much better than the French so they should easily be able to tack back into the wind. The French have decided to keep the wind to their backs and are sailing north of the island on a westerly direction.

Despite the ability of the Brits to tack, the chits come up allowing the French to fire their cannon first. Both players focussed fire on the rigging as the goal was to capture the opposing ship rather than destroy it. A slow ship is certainly a little easier to board.

The French were able to get behind the Brits, sustained fire from both sides. By now, the French were slowed to 7cm and had lost their main mast while the Brits were still sailing at 11 cm. Both ships were at less than 50% of their original DP. The Strike Test chit came up, the Brits passed, the French failed. Le Frigate was captured, Midshipman Hornblower sees his first victory!

So it was a fun game again, we got somethings wrong at the start so we restarted the game, despite this we got a clear victory within 2 hours of gaming. we have a few questions which I will post on the FB group. The game is a lot of fun and I believe I enjoy it more than Black Seas. We may house rule a few things to ease the game along specially when being played over the internet.