Action Off Kinsale

I played this Galleys & Galleons scenario a year or so ago, but decided to give it another go at the weekend because I wanted something quick and easy to occupy a Saturday afternoon. It's really a simple four ships a side action, with a thin veneer of history thrown over it.

So in 1649 Prince Rupert's Royalist squadron is in the port of Kinsale in Ireland and about to set off privateering. Baturally the Commonwealth government are not happy about this and have dispatched ships to deal with him. Historically there was one near miss between the two flagships (which I have run as a scenario elsewhere). This scenario assumes that Rupert's ships are brought to batle by the Commonwealth squadron.

The Royalists have: Constant Reformation (Flag), Convertine, Swallow, Satisfaction

The Commonwealth Squadron is: Assurance (Flag), Constant Warwick, Phoenix, Greyhound

In both cases the flags are C4, the next two ships are C3 and the final ones are C2. The Royalists have the Trained Gun Crews trait on their three largest ships whilst the Commonwealth vessels with their larger crews have Drilled Soldiers. Satisfaction and Greyhound have neither of these, but Satisfaction has Carronades (better gunnery) and Greyhound has the Razee trait (speed).

The two squadrons came at each other head on with the wind on their beam - Royalists on the left and Commonwealth on the right. Entry points were semi-random, hence the ragged Royalist line. 

The Commonwealth vessels. They have red labels. 

Blue labels for the Royalists. Swallow had to turn to avoid colliding with the flag. 

First shots at extreme range. 

More gunnery. A shift of wind left the Royalists unable to close with Parliament, but that was really to their advantage as their long-range gunnery was better. However the advantage didn't convert into actual hits 

Even more gunnery. And still no significant damage.

A long-range shot from Swallow damaged Phoenix. 

Swallow was on the end of the Royalist line and the Commonwealth ships began to close there. 

Phoenix got onto Swallow's stern

Meanwhile the lead Royalist ships poured fire into Constant Warwick and brought down a mast.

The Commonwealth began to focus on Swallow.

Swallow surrounded. She was soon completely battered. 

The little Satisfaction engaged Phoenix. 

Swallow dropped out of the fight as a further change in the wind made it unlikely she would be able to get back into action even if she managed any repairs.

Both sides had turned for another pass.

Commonwealth gunnery was beginning to tell, and the Royalists took a few hits. 

The two flagships exchanged broadsides.

Convertine took concentrated fire from Phoenix and Assurance and was soon in trouble. 

Assurance ran aboard Convertine, and grappled. Convertine would be able to cut the grapples and escape however, taking no further part in the action. 

Greyhound grappled Satisfaction.

Constant Reformation came up in support, grappling Greyhound, but too late as Satisfaction quickly struck to Commonwealth boarders. 

An attempt to board Greyhound was repulsed by dogged resistance.

Convertine leaves the action. 

Assurance and Phoenix, whlst not badly damaged, were also currently seperated from the action and unlikely to get back in very soon.

But Constant Warwick moved up and grappled the Royalist flag, which now found itself fighting two enemy ships.

Despite fierce resistance Constant Reformation was captured.

Whilst both side had damaged ships, the Royalists had suffered the worst, with two ships struck and catured and two crippled ships leaving the battle. And with Prince Rupert captured the seas were probably safe from Royalist interference for now. 

Jutland Battlecruisers

Thursday's club theme was naval, so four of us played Broadsides: Empires Of Steel. The game was some phase of Jutland involving battlecruisers. Ralph and I were the British with six fairly good ones under our command, whilst Caesar and Stuart played the Germans who had five less good ones, but some supporting light cruisers as well. 

The Royal Navy, looking very organised. 

The Royal Navy looking less organised as we decided how to deal with the approaching light cruisers and their torpedoes.  

Ralph used his big guns to pound the German battlecruisers, and caused a couple of fires on the German flagship. 

We took very little damage back, but  those dastardly light cruiser started to move into torpedo range. This one missed with its first shot. 

It didn't survive long enogh for a second. 

We had to finish the game at that point, with a second wave of cruisers descending on the British, who were checking the rules for firing secondary guns.

I had a couple of older battlecruisers at the back of the line, so got to fire pot-shots at the cruisers. But I didn't get a single shot on target. Still, it wasn't for lack of trying.

Gaslands - Capture The Flag

We had four players for Gaslands last night. This meant that we were happy to go with a 50 can game. And three of us brough single 50 can vehicles.

We rolled Capture The Flag, which is an interesting scenario with just one vehicle. You have to have a flag on one of your vehicles (obvious choice if you have just one) but it's deposited in the arena if you wrecked. It can then be picked up. You win if you have two flags on one of your vehicles. Obviously harder to do if you have multiple vehicles, but fun with one vehicle.

Anyway, Daniel has a single flamethrower-armed truck from the Order Of The Inferno. Craig had a Scarlett truck, but hadn't really read through how Scarlett works, so had a less than optimal design. Caesar had two trucks, sponsored by Rutherford and both equipped with front-mounted tank guns. And I bucked the trend with my James Bond Aston Martin DB5 - a Verney sponsored performance car. 

After some early moves there'd been a bit of shooting. Biond had inflicted a hit with his machine-guns, whilst one of the tank-guns had failed to make an impression on the DB5 (it's tough).

The DB5 in action. 

Daniel chased down Bond and set the DB5 on fire. 

It took some speedy driving to get to a unfrequented part of the arena and put out the fire. You stay on fire so long as you have hazards, so I had to dump them fast. Best way to do that is to wipe out, which I did in such a way as to stay in the game for that gear phase.

Daniel did a slick turn around an obstacle with his truck. 

Caesar shot him, and his vehicle wrecked. This dropped the flag.

You can just see the purple flag tucked in behind the obstacle. And Bond had a plan. Of course. 

Meanwhile Craig's mini-gun armed truck was hunting Caesar's other truck. I think Caesar was taking a bit of damage. 

Back to Bond's plan. Caesar was lining up for a run on the flag (out of shot). So I had to be faster. Being in a perfoamnce car, that was easy. The rest was pure Gaslands. Step One: Ram the obstacle. 

 

Step Two: On the next gear phase, ignore the obstacle, drive through it and pick up the flag. A win!

Also drive through oil and loose gravel. The hazards were stacking up. 

We finished the activation phase. The DB5 was wildly out of control, but Bond had already won. However his move finished next to Caesar's truck, so it would have been rude not to use the Eureka! perk to magic up a one-shot tank-gun, and blow his truck to smithereens. 

Bond then wiped out. And flipped ...

...  over the arena wall. 

Technically that disqualifies a vehicle, but the game was won once the flag was picked up, so the later bits were just extra chrome. Bond grabbed the flag, took out an enemy in passing with a gadget and then escaped into the night. 

What a hero!

Holiday Hunting

I fitted in a short game of Palaeo Diet whilst I was on holiday. I'd loaded up my terrain because I'd planned to play HOTT with my sone, so sticking in the Palaeo Diet rules and the two small boxes with hunters and beasts in was no great hardship. 

It was a basic no-frills hunt. I had four hunters - one each of the basic types. There were two large grazers and four herd grazers. So a win would be one of the rhinos or a couple of horses. 

I sent most of my hunters to the left, whilst the fire-wielder went to the right, upwind of the beasts. The aim was to use fire to drive the animals into the hunting party. 

As it was, the bow-armed hunter took a shot at a horse and killed it instantly, so that was 50% of their target achieved with virtually no effort. 

The animals panicked as a series of fires started by the fire-wielding hunter raged towards them. Interestingly beasts still base their moves on hunter proximity, so although fire dictates a reaction coumn, the move is still driven by the nearest (or active) hunter. This does mean animals will try and run towards (or around) fire. You have to position your hunters carefully to use a ground fire to move the animals in a specific direction. Panic is panic, I guess. 

Anyway, the horses (which were now the primary target) moved towards the hunters.

They managed to wound one, which caused the three horses to race off past the fire. The hunters set off in pursuit. 

The bowman brought down the wounded horse. When hunting herd grazers someone with missile weapons is worth their weight in meat. 

The rapidly spreading fire also scared a couple of critters out of a thicket, but the hunters elected not to chase them. They concentrated on moving their first kill out of the path of the fire. 

A nice game that whiled away an hour at the end of a long day of being on holiday.