More Piracy

I had another go at running the Tortuga against a set of randomised threats.

I felt that it's capabilities weren't suited to aggressive piracy, so dropped the razee trait in favour of a combination of carronades, yare and derring-do(the total cost remains the same). I felt the extra turns from yare would give me as much of an edge over the foes as the speed from razee did, the derring do a bonus against the larger ships when it came down to boarding, and the carronades some teeth when it came to gunnery.

I moved the terrain around a little, and ended up with some widely spaced counters.

I decided to go for the blue counter, albeit that it was furthest upwind, because the other two were too close to shallows for my liking.

It turned out to be nothing.

I cut along the coast and triggered the yellow counter, which gave me a small merchant ship, the Pamela (I'm just reusing names here) and a small warship, the Minx.

In the early part of the game, the wind had shifted considerably, meaning the two opposing ships were now going to have to tack up the table to the opposite corner. Whilst this disadvantaged me as well, I felt that my yare trait would give me an edge. I decided to do a fast run past the Minx, and then lock onto the Pamela.

All went well to start with ...

But then the Minx turned sharply and cut across my bows firing a broadside. The Tortuga was damaged!

The Pamela ran close-hauled past her consort as it fired at the Tortuga again. I returned fire, damaging it and killing its captain.

With the Minx hampered by the loss of its captain I decided that perhaps capturing a warship would be a great feather in my cap. I was emboldened when confusion on its decks saw it start a run in order to board me, then veer away, getting caught in irons.

But again the Minx turned back on course, my fire having little effect on it. It cut across the Tortuga's stern and I was damaged again. Most importantly I took a rigging hit. Unfortunately this meant that I was stuck sailing downind and my opponents were now all upwind, as was their destination.

All the Minx and Pamela had to do was sail to safety, whilst all I could hope for was that the wind would shift enough in my favour that I could creep after them

In fact the Minx and Pamela still had to make a difficult series of tacks to get to safety, and in its damaged state this would be risky for the Minx. I turned as close to the wind as I could, repaired what damage I could and waited.

The Minx edges across the shallows, without incident.

Unfortunately a series of failed activation rolls saw it sail far too close to the headland. It scraped its bottom but, once again, escaped damage.

As the crew panicked they mistook the Pamela for the Tortuga, and fired a broadside at their charge. It did no damage.

The wind shifted again, and I could begin to move after the targets. But the shift helped them as well. My only hope was to run the final counter (and hope it wasn't anything too nasty), and also head through the shallows.

The final counter also turned out to be a dummy, and I survived the shallows.

But the Minx and Pamela were both set on a course for safety, and too far ahead of me. I was obliged to let them go and, with no further targets in sight, head for home with an empty hold.

I might tweak the rigging damage a little, as I spent half of the game unable to engage the enemy due to one critical. I have tried allowing ships to repair certain criticals, but I think this is possibly a bit much. One thought is to allow a Jury-Rig action, though - spend one Action to ignore the effects of one Rigging critical for this turn only. This could be applied to any propulsion system, and by tying it to Actions forces a ship to make a choice in order to move. Example: A square-rigged ship is close-hauled and suffers a rigging critical. This reduces its close-hauled move from short to nothing. On its next turn it spend an action to Jury-Rig, so the rigging critical no longer applies - it can make its normal short move.

How To Be A Pirate

My new Renaissance galleys will see a proper outing later this week, I hope. But having rebased all of my ships I thought I should get a few of them on the table as soon as possible. I was going to just set up a simple fight between a couple of ships, but I was also feeling inspired by this blog post from Small But Perfectly Formed.

Now Elenderil's post took an article on randomising threats in land-battles and adapted it for WW1 air-combat. I shall try them out for my own 'Spandau and Lewis' rules at some stage. But I wondered if I could apply a similar idea to Galleys & Galleons.

My idea was to run a pirate ship on a cruise. Other ships might appear, either merchant ships ripe for the taking, or warships looking to protect the merchants or rid the seas of a pirate. And this is how I thought I could run it:

(i) I worked out some simple ship designs, trying to keep the points about equal for each type (with one exception). These would be for the Pirate, Merchant Ships (small and large) and Warships (small and large). I then set up a table of possible encounters:

1 - Small Merchant
2 - 2 x Small Merchant
3 - Large Merchant
4 - Small Warship + Merchant (1-3 Small, 4-6 Large)
5 - Small Warship
6 - Large Warship

(I have Small Merchants at half the points cost of the other ships)

Obviously you can set this up to suit your own collection.

(ii) Set up a table with a few bits of terrain. Place the Pirate in a random corner, and three differently coloured counters in each of the three other corners.

(iii) The Pirate chooses the wind direction.

(iv) Take three more counters, each corresponding to the colours of the counters in the corners, and place them in the centre of the board. Roll a red and a white D6 for each counter. It is moves in the same direction as a line running from where the white dice falls to where the the red dice falls. The distance it moves is based on the die rolls:

White Dice - 1-2 Short 3-4 medium 5-6 Long
Red Dice - 1-2 1x 3-4 2x 5-6 3x

eg The dice fall so a line from the white to the red runs roughly NE. So the counter is moved in that direction. The white dice is a 3, so use a Medium stick, and the score on the red dice is a 4 so it is moved 2x Medium.

(v) There should now be three different coloured counters scattered across the board, each corresponding to a corner. If one is placed in impassable terrain then roll its position again.

(vi) Start the game as normal, except at the moment there's no opposing side. The Pirate moves first in each turn, however.

(vii) Whenever the Pirate passes within Short of a counter, it is resolved. Roll a D6:

1-3 - Nothing. The counter is removed, and so is the counter in the corresponding corner
4-6 - Sail Ho! Roll on the Encounter Table in Step (i). The ship or ships are placed within Long of the corner corresponding to the counter's colour and start moving on the opposing player's next turn.

Each encounter table roll can only appear once. If you roll a duplicate then roll again. If the first two counters are Nothing, then the third must be Sail Ho!, but randomly determine which corner the encounter appears in.

(viii) All opposing ships are treated as the same player, so if one fails two activations it ends that side's turn.

What do the opposing ships do? Merchant ships will always attempt to sail to the opposite corner than the one they entered from. Warships I would play with common-sense and some random decision-making. Their aim is to protect Merchant ships, but can also take the fight to the Pirate

And the objective? As the Pirate you certainly win if you can capture a Merchant ship and sail it off the board (or simply be in control of it if there are no opposing ships on the board after all counters are resolved). If you only get Warships, then a win is simply escaping them, by exiting from the same corner you started in. If you can sink or capture one, then that's really good. The Pirate loses if it is sunk or captured.

Obviously you should adapt the Encounter table to your own ship collection and how challenging you want to make the game. I am still considering how to add third-party forces - natives, other pirates or similar.

Let's try it for real ...

I will use the following ship profiles (nice and simple for a first game).

Pirate - Q2 C2 - 48pts - Square Rig, Razee, Swashbucklers
Small Merchant - Q3 C3 - 24pts - Square Rig, Merchant, Pilot
Large Merchant - Q3 C4 - 40pts - Square Rig, Merchant, Pilot, High Castles
Small Warship - Q2 C2 - 43pts - Lateen Rig, Drilled Soldiers, Master Gunner
Large Warship - Q3 C3 - 44pts - Lateen Rig, Drilled Soldiers, Master Gunner

I set up this terrain - the entrance to a bay, so two peninsulas and some shallows off the end of each. I started my ship - the Tortuga - in the bay, and set the wind. In each corner you can see a coloured counter, and each has a corresponding counter in the centre of the board.

I rolled for the blue counter. The line from white to red determined the direction, the roll of the white dice told me I was using a medium stick and that of the red dice dictated that it would be two medium stick distances.

I did the yellow counter next. The direction is towards the top left of the image, the white die showed that I should use the short stick and the red that, again, I should use two of them.

Finally the purple counter. The direction was bottom left, stick was medium and distance two sticks.

The encounter trigger counters in position.

I sent the Tortuga straight down the middle, aiming for the purple counter. With hindsight I should have gone for the yellow one first, as any ship that generated would have to come straight down into the confines of the bay to reach the opposite corner.

The roll. A 4 on the white dice indicated that it was a ship, whilst the 3 told me that it was a single large merchantman.

And here it is - the Pride of Bristol.

I headed toward the entrance to the bay, aiming to cut across the course of the Pride of Bristol. Although a merchantman, I felt a few shots, with the chance of a critical, would be in order before attempting to board.

I cut across the bow, but failed to score any damage. The Pride of Bristol failed to fire a shot in return.

We passed, and I fired another shot with no effect.

However a third broadside damaged the merchant's tiller. This forced it to expend most of its limited actions trying to turn to safety, as a shift in the wind saw it veering dangerously close to the shallows.

The Pride of Bristol set a course for safety, whilst I turned the Tortuga in pursuit.

The Tortuga had lost ground, but with the razee trait would soon make it up.

However the Pride of Bristol was now set on a course for safety, so the crew could concentrate on defending the ship rather than sailing it. They ran out their guns, and their first broadside damaged the Tortuga.

The Tortuga proceeded more cautiously, but managed to position itself for another rake which did no significant damage. The Pride of Bristol was now set to escape, and I let it go. There were two more counters and maybe they would provide easier prey.

I triggered the yellow counter ....

... and got a large warship, the Nimrod.

With one hit on my vessel already I didn't feel secure in engaging a warship, and triggering the final counter could just add to my woes, so I decided to run. The razee trait gave me an edge, but I had to risk sailing close to land to make a clean getaway; the wind direction meant that heading further out would involve tacking, and the Nimrod was coming up fast with its fore-and-aft rig.

A close shave ...

... but I made it, and escaped.

Not a great first outing - I ended up damaged with nothing to show for it. I moved the terrain a little and set the game up again.

Looking at the counters I decided that the blue one offered the best possibilities. but I had to take a roundabout route to get there, as heading straight towards it would take me too close to either the yellow or purple counters.

The blue counter was a dud.

I went for the yellow counter next, and sighted the sails of a small merchant vessel, the Pamela.

The wind was such that I had the weather-gauge. The Pamela either had to come straight up to where I was, or take a risky detour through the shallows. It chose the latter option.

I headed it off, firing a broadside as I did so.

The Pamela veered away, and I fired again. It started a fire.

The fire spread. Amazingly the Pamela didn't explode, and the crew efficiently extinguished both fires.

The Pamela was damaged now, so at risk of striking off a bad activation roll. I stayed close, but she was taking to make a run back to the main channel, and I had to tack to follow her.

I fired again, hoping to inflict some more damage and increase the chances of the Pamela striking, or cause enough hits to make taking her by boarding a foregone conclusion.

I rolled rather too well, inflicting enough hits to cripple the Pamela, but also a critical, which saw her holed below the waterline. Her crew took to the boats as she rapidly sank.

I made the long trip upwind to round the shallows, and bear down on the purple counter. It was nothing.

So both of my cruises were failures. I shall try again another day, maybe with some changes to the Tortuga's configuration.

The random generation of encounters worked fairly well, I thought, although it's relatively easy to trigger only one at a time. However the idea was that with ships mostly having to cross the centre of the board, I'd be forced to run past other counters in pursuit. I shall see if this is what actually happens in later games.

And maybe that title (chosen before I played either game) should be 'How Not To Be A Pirate'.

Completed Galleys

Completed galleys ... and galleasses!

The galleasses. They really kicked the whole project off. I fancied making a couple of them, then went all Lepanto and felt that I ought to have some galleys to go with them.

I tend to leave my ships fairly generic and it makes them look like they belong to any nationality. But the galleases are part of this group in red and blue which could nominally be The Holy Alliance.

The other faction, in green and yellow, will stand in for the Turks. I'll need to so some more of these to offset the Red-Blue Alliance's galleasses.

Fun with galleys!