Form Line Of Battle

I've always described 'Form Line Of Battle' as my favourite set of rules for Napoleonic Naval, but I was surprised when browsing through this blog, I discovered that the last time I'd played it was over ten years ago!

Inspired by the announcement of a new 6th Edition, I dug out my 4th Edition (plus house rules) and set up a game. I actually repeated the setup for THIS SCENARIO in which two British frigates faced two Dutch frigates in the Mediterranean in 1781. 

The British have Flora (36) and Crescent (28). The Dutch have Castor (36) and Briel (36). Flora is heavier than the Dutch frigates, and also has a new-fangled weapon - carronades. 

In fact, whilst I remembered the carronades, I forgot that the Dutch frigates were lighter and had a penalty when shooting at Flora. It might explain the final result.

Anyway, here they are all set up - British to the left and Dutch to the right.

It took me a turn to get back into the swing of movement, and I found the wind-attitude tools a lot harder to use than the ones for Galleys & Galleons (which is, to be fair, pretty simplistic in its approach to wind). 

The Dutch opened fire at long range, not wanting the Flora's carronades hitting them close up. They scored a hit on Flora. I got back into the swing of firing too. 

Flora hit Briel at close range, scoring a hit. Ships took a lot of single hits, but even they slowly whittle down the broadside factor. 

The little 6th rate Crescent also damaged Briel. 

Flora attempted to cross Briel's stern, but couldn't manage it at close range. 

The initial exchanges of fire saw all ships with at least one hit and some initial broadsides burned. The Dutch formed up heading down-wind, and the British turned to follow. The Dutch were using unfired broadsides though, so scored some more hits on their opponents. 

However a misjudged turn by Castor saw the British with an opportunity to rake it from both ends. Crescent didn't manage it (but gave it a good hit on the stern quarter) but Flora managed a solid bow-rake. Castor was now fairly beaten up but, unfortunately, so was Flora who had taken more steady fire from the Dutch as the lines had closed. 

Briel had dropped out of the fight for a short period with a damaged wheel, but came back in with a vengeance, delivering a shattering broadside to Crescent, which left the British vessel close to striking. 

Crescent fought on as best it could, but Flora wasn't in a position to come up in support owing to a small change in the wind direction. Flora managed another bow rake on Castor, but the gunnery on both ships was now weakening through damage. 

Briel hit Crescent again, taking down a mast. 

And the Dutch got their act together and raked both British ships. Crescent was forced to a strike test, but passed. However it was now spent as a fighting vessel. Flora took more damage and was now very weak.

With Flora trying to turn back into the fight the Dutch focused on Crescent, and a pair of broadsides forced the small frigate to strike. 

With little effective firepower left the Flora's best option was a tactical withdrawal. 

The initiative card system worked well for both sides, opening up rake opportunities twice. The British didn't get much out of theirs, but the Dutch used their two rakes to pretty much finish off their opponents. As I said at the start, I did forget that as Inferior ships the Dutch got a -1 when firing at  Flora. It might have made a small difference, but I doubt it. The British were outfought.

These rules are wonderfully old-school and fiddly, but not too complicated. However the constant checking of sailing attitude got wearing, as did even the simple arithmetic of firing and then looking up a die-roll on a table. I think age is beginning to dull my ability to play rules like this. Or maybe it was simply lack of practice. I will give them another go though, maybe with some easier to use player aids. I do love the initiative system, with each side's three phases being intermingled, and the random movement is delightfully unpredictable and often frustrating, generally forcing you to use conservative movement options to keep your ships together and avoid collisions. 

The HOTT Literature Championship - First Semi-Final

Now things have settled down a bit after Christmas and the New Year I decided to pick up my HOTT mini-campaign again.

The first four rounds saw the four semi-finalists decided. The second semi-final is going to be Cluny's Rat Horde vs Helium. However the first semi-final is the subject of this post - The White Witch of Narnia vs The Forces of Light.

The Forces of Light defended and opted to sit with their flank anchored on a wood. The White Witch was content to attack, so long as the opposing magician didn't cause too much disruption as she did so.

The White Witch's army advanced slowly and Cadellin Silverbrow came out from behind his forces to challenge the enemy.

His first magical attack caused one of the White Witch's behemoths to flee, but his second failed to impress the other and failed enough to make further attacks dangerous. He then compounded his problems by failing to get the PIPs to move back behind his own army.

But he easily fought off the opposing hordes and was eventually able to retreat.

A brief pause before the main event.

The White Witch reorganised.

Finally - the attack. In the centre the Wild Hunt suffered badly (being opposed by a behemoth wasn't a sensible strategy for starters), but fortunes were mixed elsewhere. 

The Lios Alfar riders on Cadellin's left flank saw off the enemy hordes. The Witch struggled to get enough PIPS to keep her momentum going.

A behemoth faces a hero. The other behemoth had been forced to flee by Cadellin again.

On the Witch's left her lupine second-in-command led his fellows into an attack on the Lios Alfar archers, but was cut down by a volley of arrows. 

An aerial attack on the Lios Alfar riders ...

... failed.

The Witch's army was looking pretty thin now, and was close to breaking. 

But one of her behemoths trampled Colin and Susan, beginning to even up the scores. 

But another attempt to attack the enemy riders saw the Witch's aerial element flee. 

And then the riders proceeded to mop up the remaining hordes.

The hero attacked was attacked by both behemoth's though. This wouldn't win the battle for the Witch, but would put her very close.

But the hero fought back furiously and felled the minotaur. 

And that was enough to break the Witch's army

The losses don't reflect how hard-fought this battles was - the Witch was very unlucky in both IPs and combat rolls. But Cadellin's Forces of Light picked up 14AP and the Witch only managed 7AP.

So with that victory the Forces Of Light progress to the Final. 

Saturday Night Live

Thursday saw me playing Gaslands for the first time in nearly six months. The past couple of times it had come up as a game at the club I had been otherwise engaged, so missed it.

We were supposed to have five players, but two couldn't make it at the last minute so ended up playing with three, 50 Cans each. And two of us had gone for 50 Can single vehicles. So this was a small game by Gaslands standards.

We rolled up Saturday Night Live as the scenario, which basically involves grabbing Audience Votes by any means possible, including via a number of scenario-specific spot prizes. The teams were:

Caesar, running two Mishkin buggies
Other Daniel, running a single truck sponsored by the fire-themed Order Of The Inferno
Me, running a single Rutherford heavy truck with a turreted tank-gun (Siberian Khatru)

Here's Casar's opening move, as his best buggy zipped forward.

Siberian Khatru lumbered into life and blew the buggy away with a single shot. This scored Audience Votes for me (lots of damage) and for Caesar (having a vehicle wrecked).

Caesar's other buggy lasted one gear phase longer before being flamed by Other Daniel's vehicle. Don't worry; this scenario has respawn rules, so one of Caesar's vehicles could come back.

I plodded around firing my big gun, and picking up votes for damage. However I was running out of ammunition.

At this moment the ever-changing spot prize was for performing a t-bone ram on another vehicle. Ramming a heavy truck is never sensible, but points are points. Even if  Other Daniel scored them accidentally.

Look, I don't pretend that these photos tell much of a narrative. We had three vehicles in play and it didn't take long before we'd all been destroyed and had to respawn. Essentially we chased around the arena trying to pick up spot prizes (Lose all hazards? Done. Perform a hazardous manoeuvre? Easy). It was great fun, but hard to keep track of.

Here's a nice head-on collision that was no fun for either vehicle.

A lull in the hostilities when, for a phase or two, none of us had an active vehicle in play.

My big gun had limited ammo (although I could use Audience Votes to buy more, and did), but with a crew of four and some hull-mounted machine-guns I could still dish out damage without the main armament.

Into the closing stages of the game and I was doing well on points. A few good damaging shots would see me pick up the win. At that point I then failed to reach the point-score damage threshold with any shot; my gunner just couldn't do it. 

We chased around an obstacle for a bit.

Siberian Khatru was briefly inconvenienced by being destroyed. Again.

But it was soon back in action and failing to score damaging hits.

Actually I was still picking up plenty of votes thanks to my vehicle being a crowd-pleaser. This meant that I got an Audience Vote every time I wiped out from getting too many hazards. And having a low handling heavy truck with a big gun meant that I was wiping out a lot. Sure I sometimes flipped and took damage, and often ended up facing in odd directions, but when your gun is in a turret direction is often meaningless. 

Anyway, there was drama towards the end. Caesar had a good run of spot-prizes and reached a score on a par with mine (you need 15 victory points to win, with each Audience Vote you earn being worth one - so long as it's earned close to an opposing vehicle. There's no hiding in the corner and doing fancy shit in this scenario). He then collided with the central pillar, and was wrecked. 

I failed to wipe out or score any major damage in the interim, so couldn't pick up the ONE VOTE I needed to win. However on my next activation I would.

And then Caesar respawned. The spot prize was to be at maximum gear. So he used all of his spare votes to ramp up to full speed from the off. That left him with one Audience Vote required to win.

You get an Audience Vote if a vehicle is wrecked. So he drove at full speed into an obstacle, the subsequent twisted metal of his vehicle winning the event for his team.

Sneaky. And pure Gaslands.

Final scores were:

Caesar - 15 points
Me - 14 points
Other Daniel - 5 points

Other Daniel had problems with his team abilities in that he scored Audience Votes for setting other vehicles on fire, but none of the vehicles he did it to lasted long enough aflame to actually score he points. 

Anyway, for a small game with (mostly) three vehicles it was a lot of fun, with all of us finding creative ways to pick up points and lots of cat and mouse manoeuvre. Siberian Khatru proved to be a useful vehicle in this scenario, with it's many limitations kind of working to its advantage.

Siberian Khatru

Rutherford - Heavy Truck - 50 Cans
Max Gear - 3
Handling -2
Crew - 4

125 mm Tank Gun (Turret) - 4 Ammo
Machine Gun (Sides)

Perks: Headshot, Crowd Pleaser

Tour De France 1903 - Part 4

This is the final part of this short Flamme Rouge tour based around the stages of the 1903 Tour De France. 

The final two stages are mostly sprints, although there are a few small terrain challenges to keep the riders on their toes.

Catherine's Blue team is looking very strong in terms of current tour points, but if things get close then the overall winning team could go down to the bonus points for the sprint and mountain challenges, as well as fastest riders and teams. But, at the end of the day, winning races and winning them well will always put a team on top. My Blue team needs to press Catherine hard.

The fifth stage runs from Bordeaux to Nantes. There's a moderate ascent near the start but after that it should just be a sprint to the finish. Not a race where you want to get left behind.

Riders ready for the off. White and Pink are up front whilst the better-scoring Blue and Black teams sit behind them. 

Everyone stays close together as the riders deal with the ascent.

However the white made a break for it and my Pink sprinteur followed. A gap opened up.

The White rouleur and Pink sprinteur led the way, chased by the pack.

My sprinteur slipped back and Catherine pushed her Blue team forward to try and catch the White rouleur.

The Blue sprinteur put in a burst and ran for teh line, neck and neck with White.

But Blue had shot their bolt and exhaustion got the better of them. My Pink sprinteur put in an epic run to the line and finished first!

This increased my tour standings and gave me some much-needed sprint points. However my rouleur didn't finish so well and lost his yellow jersey to the Black rouleur. White picked up mountain points off the first ascent.

Going into the final race, these were the positions:

Tour Points

Blue - 11
Pink - 9
Black - 7

White - 6

Individual Times (m:ss)

Black Rouleur - 3:50
White Rouleur - 4:00
Pink Rouleur - 4:20
Blue Rouleur - 4:20
Pink Sprinteur - 4:40
Blue Sprinteur - 11:50

White Sprinteur - 13:20
Black Sprinteur - 15:00

Team Times (m:ss)

Pink - 9:00
Blue - 16:10

White - 17:20
Black - 18:50

Sprint Points

Blue Rouleur - 13
Pink Rouleur - 11

White Rouleur - 7

Pink Sprinteur - 5
Black Rouleur - 4

White Sprinter - 2

Mountain Points

White Rouleur - 8

Black Rouleur - 7
Blue Rouleur - 5
Black Sprinteur - 2
Pink Rouleur - 2

Stage 6. The final run from Nantes to Ville d'Auray, near Paris. A small ascent halfway through was the main challenge, but two small sections of cobbles early on could cause problems too.

I needed to finish well to stand a chance of pushing up towards Catherine's score. 

The current leader makes their first selections. It's a serious business. 

As predicted the cobbles did cause a small break. Both bot teams were in the front pack, whilst Catherine and I, who are more cautious, were at the back.

I got the drop on Catherine, pushing both my riders forward  and leaving her trying to catch up at the rear.

Things got more mixed before the second ascent. But I was still feeling confident.

Catherine's sprinteur made a break for it. A couple of good cards would see him win. Could I catch him?

The Blue sprinteur started to struggle on the final run to the finish, and we caught up.

Both of Catherine's rider now looked to be struggling, whilst I still had fast cards left in my deck.

A shame then that on the critical turn BOTH of my riders drew a hand of '2' value cards! I dropped right back and, whilst White won, Catherine's rouleur wasn't far behind. I failed to place.

One bad draw had cost me dear. The near-final points were:

Tour Points

Blue - 13

White - 9

Pink - 9

Black - 8

Individual Times (m:ss)

White Rouleur - 4:10

Black Rouleur - 4:50

Blue Rouleur - 5:00

Pink Rouleur - 5:20

Pink Sprinteur - 5:40

Blue Sprinteur - 12:50

White Sprinteur - 16:20

Black Sprinteur - 17:20

Team Times (m:ss)

Pink - 11:00

Blue - 17:50

White - 20:30

Black - 22:10

Sprint Points

Blue Rouleur - 16

White Rouleur - 12

Pink Rouleur - 11

Black Rouleur - 5

Pink Sprinteur - 5

White Sprinteur - 2

Mountain Points

White Rouleur - 9

Black Rouleur - 7

Blue Rouleur - 5

Black Sprinteur - 2

Pink Rouleur - 2

White Sprinteur - 2

Bonus Tour Points are awarded for the fastest rider, fastest team, sprint champion and King of the Mountain

Catherine's Blue rouleur won the sprint challenge, with the White rouleur second. 

The White rouleur won the King of the Mountain with the Black rouleur second

The General Classification (fastest riders) was won by the  White rouleur, followed by the Black rouleur and then Catherine's Blue rouleur. That final draw cost me points here.

However I'd done a good job at keeping my riders together in each race. So my team had the fastest total time, to pick up the team award.

Adding in the bonus points for the various classifications gave these final scores:

Blue (Catherine) - 16
White (Bot) - 15
Black (Bot) - 11
Pink (Me) - 10

The results were close enough that the final race decided it; a couple of changes in final position would have seen White with a win, and even Black in with a chance. So it was closer than it looked.

The tour sheets in the game are a little fiddly to use, but not too hard. And they make each race an interesting challenge beyond just Win The Race.

Catherine's keen to do another tour, and I have one all ready. I might not bore you all with it here though.