International Naval Wargames Day 2024

Today, August 6th, is the birthday of Fred Jane, author of 'Janes Fighting Ships' and, of course, pioneering naval wargamer. The day is celebrated as International Naval Wargames Day, and I took some time this evening to play a couple of games in his honour.

I had planned a fair-sized Galleys & Galleons scenario, but I've been struck down by a lurgy these past couple of days, so had to scale things back. In the end I chose to refight a couple of single-ship actions I'd done last year since I had all the ship stats to hand and the models were already labelled and ready to go.

The first was an 1820 action between an Argentinian privateer, the Santa Rita and a small Portuguese warship, the Maria Teresa. The details are HERE.

This is a night action, and the Argentinian ship starts anchored and unalerted. The Maria Teresa has a chance to sneak in and get the jump on its opponent; before the larger ship gets to fight back. Unfortunately because of the wind the Maria Teresa had to take a slow, long way around the anchored Santa Rita in order to avoid being spotted too early.

The wind changed a lot, making the approach very difficult indeed.

Eventually the Maria Teresa was within striking range of its opponent, although the Argentinians were beginning to suspect that something was up.

A first broadside woke them up, and scored some light damage.

The Santa Rita turned at anchor and replied with its own broadside, scoring a serious hit back.

However confusion on board saw it swing back the other way, exposing its stern to a rake from the Maria Teresa. It escaped without much in the way of serious damage, however.

Because of the wind the Maria Teresa was in difficulties with regard to closing the range on the Santa Rita, and since it was already badly damaged couldn't afford to take many more close-range broadsides. The Portuguese ship turned away in order to see to some repairs.

The crew of the Santa Rita raised anchor and began to turn their ship into action.

Slowly the courses of the two ships converged. The Santa Rita fired a broadside that damaged the rigging of the Maria Teresa.

In return the Maria Teresa damaged the Santa Rita's rudder.

The two ships were now on parallel courses at close range.

But the Santa Rita's damaged steering saw it run aboard the Maria Teresa. The two ships grappled.

There was a swift boarding action which saw the smaller Portuguese ship strike; a victory for the Argentinian privateer, Santa Rita.

For the second game I went back in time a couple of years to 1818 and reran an action between the Chilean vessel Lautaro and the Spanish frigate Esmeralda. This was an attempt by the Chileans to raise the blockade of the port of Valdivia. You can read about the setup from when I played it before HERE.

Here's the early stages of the action. In the distance you can see the Esmerelda on the left and the Lautaro on the right. In the foreground is the small Spanish brig Pezuela.

Lautaro had closed with the Esmerelda immediately, looking to subdue it before the Pezuela could come up in support. It got in an initial rake, although the fire was less effective than hoped for.

The Spanish ship turned across the bows of the Lautaro and delivered a crippling rake in return. Lautaro was in serious trouble already.

The two ships adopted parallel courses. Lautaro managed to stave off disaster with some emergency repairs, before settling into an ineffective broadside duel with the Esmeralda.

Ineffective, that is, until Lautaro managed a well-aimed broadside that crippled Esmerelda. At this point Pezuela came in and fired an ineffective long-range broadside before sailing off to take no further part in the action.

Both ships were now in a bad way, and it was Lautaro that gave up first, striking to the Spanish frigate.

Lautaro was unlucky to get a strike on the All At Sea table. In fact in both scenarios I ignored the first All At Sea strike for each vessel; I find too many single ship actions end this way, and thought it kept things a little more interesting. It's OK for larger actions (and indeed, makes them rather fun), but when there's never going to be a closer friendly vessel it does seem a little sudden, and harsh. In the case of the second scenario Lautaro had already had one strike result; this was her second.

I retained the reload rules for these games (I didn't use them in the original refights), and didn't think that the games suffered for having them.

Anyway, it was good to get some ships out on International Naval Wargames Day.

Dwarves, Elves and Malians

I played a couple of games of HOTT over the weekend.

The first saw my Wild Elves attacking Dwarves. The Dwarves had a strong position between two woods. The Elves massed for an attack on the Dwarf right; their army is smaller (thanks to two magicians), and since it's mostly warband  stands a better chance if attacking in a double rank.

The Elves close, but their rapid advance has left their archers behind.

They smash into the Dwarven line ...

... and are repulsed.

The unengaged Dwarven left flank swung onto the Elven right, destroying one of the magicians.

At the other end of the line, two Elven warband were cut down by Dwarf archers.

The Elven king now faces the Dwarven steam-tank.

He forced it to flee, but more Elven warriors fell in the centre, and the Elven army was crushed 0-12

The winning Dwarves stayed on and defended against Sundiata's Malians.

Cavalry rode out on Sundiata's right. But Sundiata supported his with archers.

At the other end of the line the Malians pulled back their knights from the Dwarven missile troops.

Fighting all along the line.

Sundiata destroyed some Dwarven foot.

But his griot is surrounded and killed.

The Dwarves had now smashed through Sundiata's centre, destroying three elements there and gaining a commanding lead. But Sundiata destroyed another element of blades.

The steam-tank turned towards the knights, aiming to increase the margin of victory. Meanwhile Sundiata rode straight for the Dwarven general.

The tank smashed through the first element of knights.

The cavalry fight on the other flank had been stalemated for a while, which suited the Dwarves as they were tying up Sundiata's most mobile troops. But the Malian cavalry surrounded one group of Dwarven horse, and destroyed it.

The steam-tank destroyed the other element of knights. Sundiata's army was now one point away from breaking. Sundiata himself was surrounded, but held off the attack in true hero style.

A second element of Dwarven cavalry were destroyed. The Malian cavalry were now free to come to the aid of Sundiata in the centre.

Sundiata attacked the Dwarven king, and killed him, leaving the Dwarves leaderless. But having only lost 10AP to Sundiata's 11AP they would still fight on.

The steam-tank attacked the stronghold, but failed to capture it.

Cavalry to the rescue!

They crashed into the surviving Dwarven blade - a kill here would give Sundiata the win.

The blades held them off! 

The steam-tank attacked the stronghold again. Disaster! a 6-1 saw it destroyed.

So Sundiata had come back from near disaster to win the battle 14g-11. A Pyrrhic victory for sure, but a victory nevertheless.

Pirates Ahoy!

Our scheduled game this week was Gaslands, and it looked like we'd get so many players that we'd have to run two games. However with one thing and another we ended up with four people, enough for a comfortable single game.

The Zombie Bash game the other week was so good that we added the scenario to the table for arena battles in the rules, dropping the extra Death Race (and thus reducing the odds of that scenario coming up). As it was we got an old favourite - The Arena Of Death.

The four teams were:

Declan, running an Idris team of two cars - Black Dog and Back In Black
Caesar, running a single Mishkin monster-truck, It's A Long Way To The Top
Craig, running a single Scarlett van, All You Need Is Love
I ran a Maxxine team, consisting of two cars, Woman King and Terrible Canyons of Static.

Declan has played a couple of times, whilst Craig was a complete novice.

Here's an action shot of Caesar rolling the first skid dice of the game.

His monster-truck zoomed forward and unleashed fire from a mini-gun at Declan's Back In Black. With Headshot, Dead-Eye and a second shot from Rapid-Fire he shredded the car before it even moved. When Declan did move one of the gun-turrets fired and wrecked him.

I got off to a nice start, with my vehicles dancing gracefully and earing some Audience Votes.

We encountered some opposition from Black Dog, and Terrible Canyons Of Static took more damage than I would have liked at this stage.

I fluffed some moves and ended up in a near-miss collision with Black Dog. This left my synchronised driving a bit out of sorts. At that point Craig came his Scarlett VW camper-van, loaded with jolly maniacs armed with guns. He managed to get the scatter-guns lined up on both of my vehicles and unloaded a ton of fire on them. Woman King was damaged, whilst Terrible Canyons Of Static was destroyed.

Caesar's monster-truck was finishing off gun-turrets.

Woman King zipped out of the way of Craig's deadly pirates; I hoped that Caesar's truck would finish him off. Meanwhile Craig gleefully rammed Black Dog, destroying it.

So Declan was out of the running, with both vehicles destroyed. Craig was now gunning for Caesar's monster-truck. You can just see Woman King hiding behind a container in the background.

The two vehicles turn towards each other ...

... then run straight at each other,

Crash! The monster-truck had a ram, but Craig had the battle-hammer trait which means that his hazards add to a collision. A head on collision meant that both vehicles were rolling lots of dice for damage.

They both survived, but Craig used a Scarlett ability that allowed him to sacrifice crew to cause hits on the opposing vehicle, boarding the monster-truck and wrecking it. He then press-ganged one of its crew onto his team!

So it was now just me and Craig. I managed to slide my vehicle into a wall in the excitement of the thing.

Timing would be everything. I had to stay out of range of the camper-van's firepower, then zip in on my turn to ram it at high speed and hopefully destroy it.

I didn't manage it, and got shot up. A lucky evasion roll saw me survive with one hit left.

I tried to turn in on Craig, and did get in a shot, but on his move he was able to stay in range and handguns were enough to finish off Woman King.

So as the sole survivor Craig won! And in his first game as well.

The Scarlett bus is a beast:

All You Need Is Love - Truck - 50 Cans - Scarlett

3 x Extra Crew, 4 x Blunderbuss, Caltrops (Rear), Mines (Side), Armour Plating
Battlehammer, Boarding Party, Terrifying Lunatic, Fenderkiss, Double-Barrelled.