Pirate-Hunting

I wanted to set up another Earthsea game using Galleys & Galleons, but this time giving both sides a magic-user. I set the game during an anti-piracy campaign that forms part of the background of the short-story 'The Daughter Of Odren'. On the island of O the Lord of Odren assembles a large force of ships to extirpate pirates from the Closed Sea. It seems to be a long campaign, suggesting it's a series of small, isolated fights. This game represents one such fight.

Four ships from the Lord of Odren's force encounter three pirate vessels on the edge of the Bars of Uny. I randomised the terrain, wind direction and initial positions and the setup looked very much like an ambush by the pirate-hunters, as they had the weather gauge and we steering out of an area of islands and rocks. 

All ships had the same stats: Q3 C2 - Square Rig, Sweeps, Shallow Draft, Unarmed

The Pirates had Intimidating, so had an edge in close combat. Both sides had a magic-user on board one of their ships. That of the Pirates was a Wind-Whisperer (such as I used in the previous game). The Lord of Odren's magic- user was a Theurgist. In terms of the name it's not very Earthsea, but two of their abilities - that of repairing damaged vessels or helping their own side win boarding actions, fit the background. The third ability (attack vessels with ghostly or undead abilities) are irrelevant to this game.

Here's the ships set up:

Of course the Pirate's first response was to shift the wind to advantage their force.

The Pirates also steered for a narrow straight between two islands that would limit the Lord of Odren's ships from ganging up on them. As the two forces came close there was some ... confusion.

I'm not sure how to describe it in form of the narrative. But basically for the next few turns both sides failed their first activation. With their ships on a course for head-on collisions (ready to grapple and board) both sides completely lost control.

The first collision saw one of the pirate ships badly damaged.

More ships on collision course. If either side could get some initiative they could turn and board the enemy. But it just wasn't happening.

More collisions. The Lord of Ordren's ships got lucky in terms of damage rolls. The Pirates less so. Two of their ships were damaged and so far there'd been no fighting.

With what limited actions both sides had some things were possible. The damaged Pirate vessel initiated a boarding action and drove fiercely onto the decks of one of the Lord of Odren's ships.

The other two pirate vessels continued to collide, this time with each other.

The pirate-hunter's vessel rallied and forced back their foe, who surrendered.

The lead ships of both forces had grappled after colliding with each other. After a short action the Pirate vessel struck, depriving them of their wind-whisperer as well.

The third pirate ship came up looking for revenge and launched a ferocious attack on the lead pirate-hunter, crippling it.

Taking a risk the Lord pf Odren's ship rolled for maximum activations, cut grapples and escaped, leaving the pirate ship downwind of all of the enemy ships.

The Lord of Odren's force started to turn back towards the fight; in the earlier confusion two of them had sailed right past and were very much out of things.

But outnumbered four-to-one the surviving pirate ship fled.

This was a short game. influence entirely by the several consecutive failed activations. Just at the point where either side could have seized the initiative, neither side could. And in the randomness of the collision rules, the pirates came off worse.

The wind-whisperer got to use his magic a couple of times, setting the wind to a favourable position, and making some minor moves for other ships. But the theurgist didn't really get any chance; the ship he was in was involved in a boarding action before he could use his magic, and magic-users can't cast in boarding actions. By the time his ship broke free the fight was essentially over. Had it continued he could have repaired the ship he was on.