A Lunchtime Quickie

I had a quick got at one of the ship duel scenarios from Under The Southern Cross at lunchtime, adapting it to Galleys & Galleons again.

This time it was a small action from 1820 between an Argentine privateer, Santa Rita and a Portuguese brig, Maria Teresa. It was a night action, so used the rules from Fayre Winds & Foul Tides. 

Santa Rita (26) - Q3 C3 - Square-Rig, Chasers
Maria Teresa (14) - Q2 C2 - Square-Rig, Chasers

Santa Rita started anchored and unalerted, 2 x Long from the east edge, which was land with attendant shallows. The wind was blowing from the north-east. Maria Teresa started in the centre of the south edge, heading north-west (so the wind was directly on its starboard broadside). Santa Rita could take no actions until it was alerted. At the start of the Argentine turn it rolled a number of Q dice depending on how close Maria Teresa was - 1D6 at 2 x Long, 2D6 at Long and 3D6 at Medium or less. Any dice that succeeded meant a level of alert; if Santa Rita achieved a level of four then it was alerted and could start taking actions.

The positions and wind were adapted from the original scenario, and if you set them up you'll see that Maria Teresa, despite having the element of surprise, is also downwind of Santa Rita. 

So the Portuguese ship sailed wide of the Argentine, staying out of spotting range, and looking to get upwind. Obviously this was a slow process, and the wind shifted a little as it did so.

In fact a fortuitous shift of wind helped Maria Teresa with its tack to bring it into range of Santa Rita.

With the wind on its port beam Maria Teresa sped towards Santa Rita, whose crew were beginning to suspect something was up.

Unable to angle in for a boarding action, the captain of the Maria Teresa opted for a broadside, but it did little damage to the Argentine ship.

The Argentines fired back and inflicted both hull and rigging damage, which would now make it harder for Maria Teresa to close and board.

The brig fired again, inflicting only superficial damage on Santa Rita, whilst a second broadside from Santa Rita shattered the Portuguese vessel, crippling it and slicing up more of its rigging.

Maria Teresa finally got in a good broadside that inflicted critical damage, leaving Santa Rita badly hurt. But the Argentine's third broadside saw a fire break out on Maria Teresa.

The fire damaged the brig's rigging some more, and the Portuguese vessel quickly struck, its crew abandoning ship ...

... just before Maria Teresa exploded.

So a win for the Argentine Santa Rita, who hadn't even raised anchor. To be honest the odds seem stacked against the Portuguese ship, but historical actions are rarely fair. It whiled away twenty minutes or so, so was a fun diversion.

Once again you can see that I had foreign vessels standing in for the combatants.

Death Race

Last night saw us playing Gaslands at the club again. Bailey and I were playing, and we had the promise of two new players as well. I designed a team for one and Bailey designed one for the other. As it was, one of them couldn't make it, so we ended up with a three- player race (I chose a race as a good way for new players to learn the game). And it also turned out that all three of us had gone for 'teams' consisting of  a single vehicle.

I fielded my newly refurbished heavy-truck, 'Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven', sponsored by The Warden and with a big ram and a mighty sound system. Bailey brought the 'Spongebob Speedboat', which was illegally sponsored by Rusty's Bootleggers. Illegally in that one of the requirements for the team is that at least one of the vehicles must have a trailer, and he didn't. Bailey missed that bit in the rules. A Rusty team drives drunk; it can't go in a straight line, but is much more tolerant of hazards. Finally Bailey's friend, newcomer Minh was running (literally) the Mishkin sponsored 'Victor Charlie' - a cart pulled by a pair of what one must assume were super-soldiers and mounted with a flamethrower and a horde of heroic soldiers with handguns.

So a fairly silly setup even by Gaslands standards.

Because I was anticipating two new players I kept the course fairly small; a straight run down the left side and around the top, cut across the middle through the first gate and then a hard left to the finish-line. It would have been a tight course for four players (and multiple vehicles) but quick-playing. For three of us, and three vehicles, we anticipated a quick game,

Lift Your Skinny Fists and Victor Charlie made a strong start, the former using a spin and slide combo to edge ahead and the latter, loaded with hazards from its close encounter with the mighty digger, wiping out but flipping into a better position. After Gate One weapons were hot. Literally in the case of Victor Charlie, who hosed Lift Your Skinny Fists with the flamethrower, setting it on fire. The digger responded with a ram and a volley of gunfire, plus some very, very loud music (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, naturally)

Lift Your Skinny Fists rammed Victor Charlie again. I realise we made a mistake here, since I think Victor Charlie should have caught fire.

And what of Bailey in the Spongebob Speedboat? He'd whizzed off to the side at the start, collided with a concrete barrier, bounced across the track the other way, wiped out and flipped back across the track to end up facing the wrong way. Don't drink and drive, kids.

Victor Charlie and Lift Your Skinny Fists negotiated the tight first bend. I fired at Victor Charlie, putting it on its last hit, but the cart had the ability to return fire and used it effectively, wrecking the mighty digger. Naturally, as a Warden vehicle, it wrecked and exploded, but against the odds did no damage to Victor Charlie (two hits off eight dice and he evaded them both!).

Thanks to Lift Your Skinny Fist's attacks, though, Victor Charlie was loaded with hazards and wiped out, leaving it at a standstill and facing the wrong way. This allowed the Spongebob Speedboat to catch up. As it sped past Victor Charlie used its return fire ability to shoot at it - and wrecked it.

At that point I remembered a rule about the Death Race - if at any stage a player is the only one with active vehicles, they win! So Minh had won his first game of Gaslands!

However we decided to carry on until someone crossed the finish-line. I respawned Lift Your Skinny Fists (something I could have done a phase earlier to prevent a potential Minh win had I thought about it), and rammed Victor Charlie out of existence. This would leave Minh out of the game for the rest of a newly started turn. In theory it also meant that I was now the winner, with the only active vehicle, but we discounted that.

But with a new turn starting, the Spongebob Speedboat was back in the running, faster (by one gear) than the truck and more tolerant of hazards.

Both vehicles cut across the middle.

But the extra gear phase put Spongebob ahead ...

... and crossing the finish line in a deliberately spectacular style

So thanks to the low vehicle density we all won the race at some point. It was a fun evening and I think Minh is keen to play again, despite Bailey's eccentric ( and semi-legal) designs.

Lautaro vs Esmeralda

One of the reasons I bought the boardgame 'Under The Southern Cross' was to plunder the scenarios for things I could convert into miniatures games. And this evening I had a go at one.

The naval war that accompanied Chile's independence didn't feature fleet or squadron actions, but was characterised by  the raiding of commerce and ports and the establishment and breaking of blockades. It saw the first exploits of Lord Cochrane in South America.

In 1818 Spain controlled the Pacific coast of the Americas, with three heavy frigates. The nascent navies of Chile and Peru had little that could oppose them on equal terms, and sought to even the odds. On 26th April a British captain, George O'Brien took the frigate Lautaro out of Valdivia to engage the Spanish frigate Esmeralda. I decided to game this brisk little action.

I chose to use Galleys & Galleons to play it. I had thought of Form Line of Battle, but it's been a while since I've played that, and I wanted a game I could set up and play quickly. I did, however, forego my lolly-stick ships in favour of vessels more suited to the period, from my Napoleonic collection. French ships stood in for the Spanish and a Turkish frigate (first thing that came to hand) for the Chilean vessel. Anyway, that explains the French flags on the Spanish ships.

Here's the Spaniards, blockading Valdivia. In the foreground is the frigate Esmeralda, and beyond it the brig Pezuela. The wind is blowing from the top-right of the picture, so the Spaniards are beating at the start.

Esmeralda (44) - Q3 C4 - Square-Rig, Chaser Guns - 46pts
Pezuela (20) - Q4 C2 - Square-Rig, Chaser Guns - 25pts

(In the Under The Southern Cross scenario there are special command rules for the Pezuela, limiting its contribution to the action. I reflected this by reducing its quality so it's more of a liability.)

And heading out of Valdivia, with the wind on its starboard quarter, and aiming to sink, burn or capture the Esmerelda, is the Lautaro, under Captain O'Brien.

Lautaro (44) - Q3 C4 - Square-Rig, Chaser Guns, Swashbucklers, Carronades - 58pts

(I realise that in this period pretty well all ships carried carronades. I gave Lautaro carronades and swashbucklers to represent the desperate nature of their mission, and to balance up the forces a little)

The setup is as follows: the wind is from the north-east. Lautaro starts in the centre of the east edge, facing west (broad-reach). Divide the west edge up into six equal zones, and dice for each Spanish ship, positioning them in the corresponding zone, facing east (close-hauled).

I made all ships square-rigged to better reflect the classic square vs fore-and-aft of the period, and assumed that things like marines and so forth would cancel each other out and be irrelevant, so no Drilled Soldiers. In this period I forego the reload rules, which are designed to represent the less reliable and less consistent armament of 15th-17th century ships. However I decided that a ship could only reload one broadside for free each turn; the second would cost an action.

Anyway, the wind shifted straight away, blowing south and putting both sides on a roughly equal footing. I'd randomised the starting positions, so the Spaniards moved to bring their ships together in a line so they could concentrate their efforts on the Chilean ship. O'Brien brought the Lautaro into action rapidly.

The first broadside saw only superficial damage inflicted on the Esmeralda.

The Esmeralda returned fire with a ragged broadside, but inflicted a hit on the Lautaro.

But a blunder saw the two Spanish vessels collide, both ending up damaged.

The wind shifted further, forcing the Esmeralda to wear in order to get back into the action. Lautaro tacked, and in doing so brought its guns to bear on Pezuela.

A close-range rake shattered the Spanish brig.

History will never know what happened next though. Although only lightly damaged O'Brien struck his ship. Maybe with the Esmeralda between him and his port he felt unsafe, or he thought more Spaniards were in the offing. Whatever the reason, the Chileans gave up.

(Galleys & Galleons players will recognise the cursed roll of '1' on the All At Sea table.)

So a short action resulting in a strangely unsatisfying Spanish victory.

Since that had only taken about 15 minutes to set up and play, I had another go. The wind shifted as before, and this time the Spanish decided to try and take the Chilean ship from both sides.

Lautaro veered downwind, and a long-range shot started a fire on Pezuela. This was quickly extinguished, but left the brig a long way downwind of the fight, forcing it to slowly turn back into the action.

As Esmeralda turned into the fight Lautaro tried, and failed, to rake her.

Both ships were sailing close to the wind, so there was little scope for maneuvers. Esmeralda wisely tried to keep a decent separation between the vessels to avoid falling foul of the carronades or a potential boarding action. As it was its gunnery inflicted a hit on the Lautaro.

Lautaro returned the favour, but the Chilean's broadside not only damaged the Spanish ship, but killed her captain as well.

With the weather gauge (just) Esmeralda tried to rake Lautaro, but failed. However the shots did chew up some of the Lautaro's rigging.

Pezuela was still trying to get back into the fight, but the damage it had taken was too much and the crew struck their colours. The Esmeralda would now be fighting alone.

Again the Esmeralda failed to rake Lautaro, but did inflict more damage to the rigging. The Lautaro was now heavily battered. But it fought on, and soon had the Esmeralda in a similar state. One good broadside from either ship would see their opponent strike or sink. A shot wounded Captain O'Brien.

Esmeralda was forced to pull away from Lautaro, which swung around and fired a ragged broadside at long range.

Esmeralda caught fire ...

... and exploded!

So George O'Brien and the crew of the Lautaro had lifted the blockade of Valdivia, and removed one of the Spanish frigates from the war.

Historically O'Brien led the Lautaro straight at the Esmeralda and boarded. But the ships separated in the swell, leaving O'Brien and a small boarding party trapped on the Spanish ship. O'Brien was killed, and the Esmeralda fled. In 1820 Lord Cochrane led a daring expedition into the harbour at Callao, and cut out the Esmeralda whilst evading forts and gunboats.

Both games were more fun than I thought they might be, and the second one turned into a desperate fight at the end, with both ships one decent critical hit from sinking or striking and both crews fighting with lower Quality because of the loss of their respective captains.

Something Old Is New Again

Several years ago I Mad Maxed this lovely big excavator, and it got used in a few games of Machinas to provide a big, dangerous opponent.

I was never entirely happy with how it looked, so this weekend I remodelled, shifting some of the exiting weaponry and adding, of all things, a massive set of speakers. 

Speakers? Firstly because they look cool and secondly because it can be used to represent a couple of different weapons systems in Gaslands.

So here is the moderately new and slightly different Gaslands edition of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven.

And I totally listened to the album whilst I did the modelling and painting (or some of the modelling and painting, since it took longer than the album's 90minutes or so.

It's coming at you, and it's playing SOUNDS.

Solo Samurai And Single Ships

New house stuff beckoned today, although not much. A trip to Bunnings for some bits and pieces, and then a morning spent putting up a mirror and shelf in the bathroom. Naturally I rewarded myself with an afternoon playing games.

One of the kickstarters I got recently is the expansion for Small Samurai Empires. This has all kinds of goodies in it. The biggest thing is an extra mapboard and all the necessary expansions required for adding a fifth player. Probably not that relevant for me, as moving beyond a two-player game has proved hard enough. However it also includes some extras for all player levels.

You get new unit types, shown here with the black tokens for the fifth player (House Tokugawa). Archers allow you to negate enemy castles, whilst generals are a powerful unit that trigger a powerful game effect when recruited onto the board. You gain these new units by upgrading your basic samurai tokens. The rules also allow for elite samurai as well. This set of changes look quite fun, but I think I need to get my regular opponents better acquainted with the basic game first.

A big selling point for me, though, is the addition of a solitaire mode. This adds a special board for placing the order on, as well as a set of tokens for determining where the programmed rivals act during a turn.

In the solo mode you the one of the houses and face House Mori and House Takeda (Yellow and Blue) as rivals for the control of Japan. Naturally for this game I tied out the new House Tokugawa black pieces.

As a player you start out with a couple of pieces in each region. The opposing pieces will pop up according to what location and order tokens the non-player houses draw.

Enemies can appear in any region, but the system carefully weights them towards the ones where most points can be scored. This is the position early in the first era - rival armies are appearing across the board.

I was lucky in this game; my rivals steered clear of the potentially valuable orange region (Central Honshu), allowing me to establish a strong presence there.

Once there I kept up a steady pressure on the rival houses, fighting off any incursions until I have the level of control needed to win the game.

So far I've played three games of this so far (they play fairly quickly, despite having to understand the sometimes poorly-worded rules), losing the first one, winning the second (photographed above) by a huge margin and winning the third thanks only to a lucky card-draw at the end which gave me just enough points to edge ahead of blue.

The solo mode is good fun, and a great way to practice the game's basic mechanisms.

Having become supreme ruler of Japan a couple of times, I switched to 'Under The Southern Cross'. I want to play one of the multi-ship scenarios at some stage, but with limited time I decided to try out one of the single-ship actions. In fact I went for one of the first, an 1817 encounter between a a Uruguyan privateer, the Atrev de Sol and a Portuguese ship, the Gaviota Mar.

The duel rules use a special mapboard which actually has a lot of the charts and tables on it as well, and also area to put the ship status and damage counter, which is very handy.

Here's the ships in their starting positions; the Uruguayan vessel is dark-blue and the Portuguese ship maroon. Both ships are equal in combat strength, but the Portuguese have a slight edge in quality.

The duel mode uses the standard game rules, but things can be modified by the use of special manuever cards to help add interest and a degree of unpredictability to such a small game. These cards can actually be used in the main game, but I imagine they add a fair bit of complexity to something that's already fiddly enough.

Both ships have a hand of cards, and play one each at the start of the turn. The chosen card dictates initiative, but also includes modifiers to firing and manuever rolls, as well as limiting what moves a ship can make. So choosing your card is a tricky decision. Each card also has an event on it; you can play events at any point during your turn (or your opponent's) as required, so again you sometimes have to choose between using a card for its initiative effect or holding on to it for the bonus it may give you later.

The two ships approach. The Uruguayan Atrev de Sol had briefly given up the weather-gauge hoping to cut across the Portuguese ship's bow (the wind is coming from the top of the picture).

But it couldn't manage the turn, and he two ships passed each other, exchanging broadsides as they did so. The slight edge the Portuguese have counted here, and the Uruguayan came off slightly worse.

The two ships circled round to engage again, but the Gaviota Mar got in a lucky long-range rake (even if you get the arc for a rake you have to test for it, and it's harder at longer ranges).

This was enough to push Atrev de Sol to damaged status. Both ships tacked, and the Uruguayan attempted a rake of their own. They failed to line it up, and only did superficial damage to their opponent.

The two ships closed again. The Uruguayan captain took a gamble; as the two ships passed he held his fire, hoping to swing onto the Portuguese vessels stern at close range and deliver a damaging broadside. The Portuguese ship, however, fired as he sped past, and rolled incredibly well, inflicting massive damage on the Atrev de Sol. And that was it. The Uruguayan got into the position he wanted to be in, but his ship was shattered as a fighting vessel, He struck his colours just as the vessel sank from under him.

The Portuguese ship was one decent shot of being damaged and only a couple of being vulnerable to striking, so the Uruguayan gamble was worth it.

Here's some of the cards in action. They won't make much sense if you don't know the game, but ... here they are.

Anyway, a good afternoon spent playing games. If I get time tomorrow I may have a go at a larger scenario for 'Under The Southern Cross'.