Friday 2 September 2022

Black Seas

Last night Ralph put on a learning game of Black Seas for a group of people. Although I've played it before, it's only been a couple of times, and I still don't really have a handle on the game, so I sat in on it.

We played a couple of scenarios from the book. In the first each side had three frigates approaching each other with the aim of trying to get one of their number off the opposite side of the table.


We had three French frigates on the right and three Spanish on the right. All ships had regular crews; we weren't doing anything complicated.


Both lines rushed at each other and exchanged broadsides as we passed.



Brian's ship tried to tack and, due to the rather strange tacking rules, caught fire instead. Either we misunderstood the rules, or they are very strange rules indeed.


One of the Spaniards made it off the table, ending the game.



We set up a standard pitched battle with three 74 each next. We French did manage to get our ships into a line, but it was sailing downwind towards the impervious horrors of a lee-shore.


A rake that wasn't. Unless you're using the Fire As She Bears rules (which we weren't) it's really hard to set up a rake. But it was irrelevant anyway. The two lead French ships just ran straight into the rocks and only mine turned away, simply to be shot up by the Spanish instead.


Granted I think I've only ever played Black Seas with the most basic of rules, but I really can't bring myself to like the game. I'm not sure what it is about it, but for all its marketing and pretty models it just simply doesn't seem to cut it as a set of rules. I confess a big turn-off for me was the realisation that the process of sailing ships in a line, which would seem to be a standard feature of any game set in this period, has to be covered by a specific rules exception, because the initiative process - ships closest to the wind move first - makes it otherwise impossible.  To me that just seems to be untidy rules-writing. The fact that we had a ship catch fire because it failed to tack just added to the general absurdity. 

I don't know. Black Seas seems popular. What am I missing? Or is it all hype, marketing and the fact that enough people play it that if you don't then you don't get a game?

Thanks to Ralph and Bryan for providing the models, and to Ralph for navigating us through the game.

Anyway, as a treat I took along some of these - ships's biscuit. I made them myself, following the recipe in teh Aubrey/Maturin cookbook, 'Lobscouse and Spotted Dog'. But you'll probably hear more about that in a future post.


I don't think anyone was a big fan of them. You could survive on them if you had to, but they're hard work.

5 comments:

  1. Interesting AAR. I have Mantic's Armada which is a high fantasy ship game built on the basic Black Seas mechanics. I enjoy it, though I'm sure I'd share your frustrations with BS if I were to give it a try. I've never gotten along with Warlord's rules - just a couple months ago I was badmouthing Bolt Action. For purportedly focusing on historicals, they seem to have a tough time managing the reality.

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    1. I don't have enough experience of WWIi games to really know how good or bad Bolt Action is, aside from its approach of treating WWII troops as Space Marine factions to be 'collected'. As a game it's not awful, but not desperately exciting either.

      Warlord does seem to produce nicely presented but average rules whose function is mostly to sell figures.

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  2. To be honest I cannot stand the Warlord ‘product’. It all reminds me of GW unfortunately. I here both companies may now be in trouble financially, not a surprise. Warlord seem to be having a lot of sales and offers.

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  3. I suppose handing the 'first move' to the vessel closest the wind (whatever that means) has to do with the weather gage. I am supposing that if the wind is coming from due north, say, then the most northerly vessel has the weather gage - which gives it the initiative, to determine whether to bring on a close action, stand off and try long bowls, or sail off altogether.

    One thing's for sure, your chances of achieving a raking broadside are approximately nil without you begin to windward of your adversary.
    Cheers,
    Ion

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    Replies
    1. That's correct - if the wind is coming from the north then the most northerly vessel moves first. So if you're in a line heading south with the wind directly behind you, the ships at the rear of the line move before those at the head ...

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