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.