No Escape-KmH

Last night we had another game of Kiss me, Hardy. Still learning the rules but decided to go with multiple ships this time. This is a historical battle that took place after the Battle of Tralfager. A British squadron of four 3rd Rates (there were actually 3 frigates as well but for scenario purposes the frigates were dropped) giving chase to four French 3rd Rates. 

British Squadron-Strachan

HMS Caesar, 80 guns, Elite Jolly Jack Tars

HMS Courageux, 74 guns, Elite Jolly Jack Tars

HMS Hero, 74 guns, Average Jolly Jack Tars

HMS Namur, 74 guns, Elite Jolly Jacks Tars, Foul bottomed

French Squadron-Dumanoir

Le Formidable, 64 guns (down from 80), Average Sans Cullottes

Le Scipion, 74 guns, Average Sans Cullottes

Duguay-Truion, 74 guns, Average Sans Cullottes

Le Mont Blanc, 74 guns, Poor Sans Cullottes

The wind was blowing east and all 7 ships were "on the bow". The HMS Namur started off table. 

I was playing the French so I started off making a starboard turn to get my ships "on the quarter". Unfortunately, one of my ships was a poor sailor so out line was almost immediately broken, the HMS Namur entered the table at the end of the 2nd move and appeared to be crewed by good sailors and very soon got caught up to the rest of the squadron.

Here are some photos, apologies again for lack of rigging and you will see that I used Scandinavian ships for the British squadron aside from the Hero, which was RN flagged. I used Spanish ships for the French aside from Duguay-Truion which carried French colours. The 80 gun ships were 3rd Rates and the 74 gun ships were 5th Rates from my collection.

British Squadron

French Squadron have swung to their starboard and are running on the quarter, aside from the trailing ship  which has the wind to the stern.

The French squadron had the luck of the cards at the start of the action and were able to pummel the Caesar, as they were able fire 2 broadsides as well as a bow rake early on. It was looking good for the French but the cards turned and the British were able to get some close in short and point blank range shots off, with the extra dice provided to the Jolly Jack Tars due to their superb gunnery they were able to rain hell down on Le Formidable, the ship caught a fire, and lost 2 of it's 3 masts..........

............and then the wind failed (this was in error but it added to the fun) and all the ships became becalmed! At this point 3 of the 4 British ships had targets at close range while the French had only 2 ships with targets and one was at long range. Le Formidable was captured. The conclusion was forgone....A British Victory, history repeated itself. Well played Pierre-Yves!

The Summing Up

British Squadron-Strachan

HMS Caesar, 54 DP left at 7 cm speed. Steering damage

HMS Courageux, 58 DP left at 11 cm speed. Boats destroyed

HMS Hero, untouched

HMS Namur, 61 DP left at 10 cm speed. Foremast Destroyed

French Squadron-Dumanoir

Le Formidable, Struck and captured

Le Scipion, 49 DP left at 8 cm speed. Boats lost

Duguay-Truion, 70 DP left at 12cm speed. 

Le Mont Blanc, 71 DP left at 12 cm speed. 

The more I play this ruleset, the more I enjoy it but I have to say there are some challenges to playing it virtually. I will look forward to getting to play in person. I believe P-Y is planning to work on some templates for the game which will assist with deciding if where a ship is in the wind and more importantly when a ship has a full broadsides.

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.  

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.

Black Seas-Pitched Battle

Yesterday myself and Adam got in a game of Black Seas at the Hobby Bunker in Wakefield. It was nice too see Adam and to get out for an in person gaming session. Although we have played a few games of Black Seas, it was also the first time he got to see my Spanish fleet as they had been trapped in Montreal for almost 18 months because of the pandemic.

We decided to go with the Pitched Battle Scenario from the rulebook, this is a 2000 point game played on a 6x4 sea terrain. I played the Spanish and Adam the French.

Spanish Fleet

Admiral Juan de Lángara

1st Rate w/ Lucky, Sturdy, Boarding Nets, Master Gunner

Two 5th Rates w/ Sturdy, More Carronades

5th Rate w/ Lucky, More Carronades

Two Brigs/ Sturdy

6th Rate Xebec w/ Sturdy

French Fleet

1st Rate w/ Sturdy

Three 3rd Rates w/ Sturdy

Two 5th Rates w/ Sturdy and Streamlined Hull

So we got on with it, Adam has played a lot and I have not played this ruleset for close to 2 years so I had to be cautious. As you can see, I went with pretty defensive attributes with Sturdy and upped my firepower with More Carronades. My 1st Rate was going to be my main offensive ship so I added a couple dice re-rolls with Lucky and Master Gunner.

We got in a very good game lasting around 3 hours, I had a lot of fun. It was touch and go for a while as my 1st Rate staying in the action and delivering some devastating firepower, but my overall lack of offence with my small ships eventually ended up with a clear victory for the French.

Here are a few photos I took of the actions.

Well played Adam, we are hoping to get in a game of Devil in the Wilderness next. Looking forward to it.

Black Seas

I had a nice game of Black Seas with Adam a couple of days ago, I had not played for a while. Adam set up the game. I played the Brits and he played the French.

It was a simple scenario, we had 3 ships each and the British goal was to move 2 ships from the southwest corner of the terrain to the northeast corner in 6 turns. Victory could also be obtained if the British were able to take out 2 French ships in 8 turns. All other outcomes would result in a French victory. I am not 100% sure what the Order of Battle was for the French but I suspect it was similar to the British. I had 2 large 3rd rates and one small 3rd rate.

I think we played 7 turns and I have to say I had the most amazing dice, throwing criticals almost every turn. I suspect this was the cause of the British victory rather than my excellent seamanship! We played the game virtually, and it worked well. I believe Adam has hosted several virtual Black Seas games now and he has the process down. I forgot to take photos at the beginning of game but the below snaps sort of illustrate the progress, the Brits are to the left of the photo in the initial shot.

The British were able to destroy 2 French ships, thus achieved victory. I have to say I quite enjoyed the game.

A Small Danish Fleet

Several weeks ago, I had a look at my Black Seals plastic pile, a couple of 3rd rates, some frigates and lots of Brigs. Since my Spanish fleet is landlocked in Montreal and I suspect it will be months before I am allowed to retrieve them (do not set me off.... the richest country in the world acting like a 3rd world banana republic with even worse leadership.....move on John), I decided to paint add a couple of small fleets to my collection.

I gave it a bit of thought and decided to paint some ships for the Scanian Wars. This was specially attractive as there very little information on how this ships were painted, so I had some flexibility. I have been very slow to rig the ships, I finished the hulls several weeks ago. But today I finally finished my Danish ships. I believe we have found that during the pandemic few rather than more ships work for Virtual Tabletop Wargaming. I painted a frigate and 3 brigs for the Danish fleet.

I think they look pretty nice, so I have to get on with the Swedish fleet so they can all be launched.

Black Seas-Pitched Sea Battle

 

Last Friday we had a game of Black Seas at my apartment. We decided to play scenario 12 from the book, a 2000 point per side battle. This was a pure open seas battle with no terrain with each force lined up on their respective sides on the long axis of the mat. My mat is slightly smaller then the recommended 6x4' by about 6" per side so I believe it played out ok.

I played the Spanish while PY took the British.

 

I do not have the actual British list but it did comprise a 1st and 3rd rate as well as Nelson, I think there were 1 or 2 frigates and several brigs. We lined up our ships and diced for the wind, it was blowing Northwest. I will not bother to write out an actual battle report but I did take some photos to deatil the action as follows.

 

 

Purisíma Conceptíon

 

HMS Victory

 

We got 10 of 15 turns in but by then the Spanish fleet was severely tried and I decide to withdraw. We totaled up the points and it was a 20 to 7 British victory. The British are a tough nut in this game and they have a built in advantage because of the modifiers on their skill tests. Essentially with the HMS Victory on the table with Nelson in the third rate, with both ships having veteran crews, they only fail skill tests on a d6 roll of 1. The Purīsima Conceptíon was able to pound the Victory to below it break point but to get the crew to surrender was almost impossble, the Victory shot back and the Spaniards surrendered.

This is a great game and the first from Warlord Games that I have really enjoyed. It is going to take some time to learn how to effectively play the  Spanish as they have some inherent limitations. But that is what gaming is about. I had a lot of fun, as I think did PY.

Black Seas: AHPCX #4

 

Over the last couple of months I have much enjoyed painting my first Age of Sail miniatures. To be honest, they are the most enjoyable minaitures I have painted in quite some time. In the last few years, my focus has been on gaming and terrain and much less so painting, which in most cases I have been happy to hand off to the professionals.

These miniatures, however, are a lot of fun and once assembled look great on the table. I have also played a couple of games of Black Seas and that has been fun as well. To prepare for a game this Friday, I decided to paint up and assemble (the assembly is the more challenging part of the process) some more ships for my Spanish fleet.

1st Rate (yet to be christened)

Lots of guns

 

This is a resin and metal model, I have heard some complaints about the metal masts and they are a bit more of a challenge with the rigging but I think it came out OK.

3rd Rate (the Montañes)

 

An all plastic model

 

Gunship Squadron

Single Medium Cannon in front.

I did these in Salem, but my mat was in Montreal so I will have to darken up the base a bit.

My Spanish fleet