More Monster Hunting

I tried the monster-hunting scenario from the Galleys & Galleons rules again this evening. I'd had another couple of goes at it since my last report, but found it problematic. The monster scores points simply for surviving a turn, but since it can submerge relatively easily it can avoid the attacks of other players long enough to pick up enough victory points to win all of the time*. In one game the monster won by pretty much running away from the ships when it couldn't submerge. It was ... unsatisfying.

Anyway, in this evening's game I tried two things - a definite end and a limit on the monster's scoring. In the first case, the game would end when one force was eliminated, either by it's ships surrendering, sinking or leaving the table (or, if the monster, fleeing or being killed). Secondly the monster only scored a survival VP if it ended the turn both on the surface and within 2 x Long of the centre of the board. This would keep the game focused and make submerging more of a gamble.

Anyway, once again the Dutch and Portuguese were hunting a mighty creature of the deep. The Dutch sent a couple of cromsters. They always do. I'll post ship stats at the end.

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the Portuguese. But they got off to a very slow start so we'll come back to them.

And the monster they were hunting was a mighty one indeed.

The Dutch brought their broadsides to bear whilst the monster eyed them warily (it has a very poor Q value, so didn't act at all on a few turns)

The Java opened fire ...

... and scored a lucky hit!

And here's the Portuguese. They'd sent a carrack, but also recruited some native allies who specialised in hunting creatures of the deep, albeit that they operated from fragile canoes.

Whilst the Dutch sailed past, the Portuguese edged closer. Their plan was to bring all three vessels into action at once, grappling and spearing the mighty beast whilst it was at a disadvantage.

Of course that's not what happened, as the Santa Amaro didn't prove agile enough to maneuver up to the monster. But it fired a broadside at the monster's rear end, causing its eyes to water (more than usual, anyway).

Spurred into action the monster turned. The Santa Amaro was sailing downwind and would be out of the running for a while (the rest of the game, as it turned out - we'll not see her again), so the creature attacked the Dutch, ramming the Java and causing some damage.

The native allies hadn't been prepared for prey quite this big and had, in fact, been rather tardy in their approach (terrible activation rolls - I mean really terrible). But one group went for it, attacking the creature with spears and harpoons.

But the monster won the combat rather too easily, crippling the group of boats.

(The attack might seem the height of recklessness, but the boats have the derring-do trait which means that for the first boarding action they fight you ignore both combatant's C factor. Only modifiers apply and the monster has none whilst the boats are also swashbucklers. So, in that first attack, the boats were actually one factor up. They lost to a 6 - 1 die roll.)

The Java closed up and fired another broadside. Its captain wasn't worried about the native boats that were in its arc of fire. The shots failed to worry the monster, but sank the hapless natives.

Both Dutch ships kept up a steady fire, but scored no damage.

The monster lunged at the Java again, inflicting more damage.

The Java's plucky crew kept the guns firing, and wounded the creature again.

Meanwhile the Eendracht managed to collide with the other group of natives, although both sides escaped harm.

The Eendracht fired, and the monster was wounded again. One more decent hit would finish it.

However the Dutch were sailing away from the fight, and would need to tack to get back in. The damaged Java couldn't manage this, and ended up running aground on an island.

The natives closed with the monster but failed to launch an attack (did I say that their activation rolls were really, really terrible?)

The monster submerged, hoping to evade the natives; a decent roll would finish the creature if the natives could grapple and attack.

For a turn or two all was quiet. The Eendracht used the cromster's agility to turn back into the fight, whilst the natives waited, following the trail of bubbles from below the surface. 

Then the injured creature resurfaced. The Eendracht fire, but failed to score a hit.

The natives got their act together and their lances, arrows and nets flashed from the canoes. The wounded monster was quickly killed.

This gave the Portuguese the 10VP for killing the monster, but the monster had managed 11VP for surviving. The Dutch scored 1VP for sinking the boats, but had, in fact, inflicted all but the final wounds on the creature, so won the moral victory.

So the monster actually won according to the scenario (even the modified version).

The ship stats:

The Portuguese carrack and the Dutch cromsters were lifted straight from the rules, so I won't repeat their stats here.

Sea-Monster - Q5 C6 - Submersible, Creature, Ramming, Charismatic

Native Monster-Hunters - Q2 C2 - Boats, Swashbucklers, Derring-Do

The monster's charismatic trait represents the fear it induces simply from how huge it is.

I felt that the scoring worked a bit better, but submerging was less of an issue in this game; with a Q5 the monster had several turns where it didn't do anything and no turn where it got more than 1 action, which was used to ram the nearest target in most cases.

I'll try it again with a monster with better activations (the octopus probably), and see how that changes things. Alternatively I might simply drop the survival points, and have the monster score points for damaging or sinking vessels. If the scenario ends when one faction is eliminated then there's still an incentive for the hunters to crack on, whilst the monster can aim to pick up a few points and then try to end the game.

The game looked great though; I love how the new sea-monster appeared on the table.

*True a force with vessels that have the submersible, bombs or torpedoes trait can counteract this, but the scenario ought to work for 'conventional' ships.