Back To The Ice

I had some downtime at work yesterday, owing to a massive server-failure, so whilst I was waiting for things to get back up and running I replayed the galleons and icebergs scenario I still had set up on my gaming table. This is the up-side of my office and gaming room being the same.

I rejigged the layout (randomly, naturally, and only used three icebergs. In this picture you can see the wind direction (from the top left, and direction the ice would move (from the right to the left).

The French whalers opted to head straight up into the wind, towards the English, hoping to slip past them and then pass between the icebergs and the central island. This would involved them sailing close-hauled, but it was a reasonable risk to take.

Unfortunately once they had committed to this plan, the wind shifted and they were in irons. This forced them to use using their sweeps for much of the way - I gave them the Sweeps trait to represent their having a lot of boats they could use to tow the ships with.

The English galleons bore down on them.

A first raking broadside from the English caused only superficial damage.

But both galleons opened up on the lead French vessel, and in one turn pounded it to splinters, leaving it sinking - they both scored criticals for extra damage and a hole.

A French ship returned fire. It was ineffective at first ...

But a second broadside saw the one of the galleons take some critical damage.

The now leading French ship and the damaged galleon exchanged fire, and the French ship took some rigging damage.

The lead galleon swung about to board one of the French ships. As it bore down on its foe it fired its chasers, and managed to set its target on fire. Forced to grapple rather than risk the damage of a collision, the English ship was also now in danger of catching alight.

And did.

Fortunately the English were able to cut free and bear off, extinguishing their fire. The French simply abandoned ship, and their vessel soon exploded.

The lead French ship had now worked upwind of the galleon it was fighting, and was making sail to escape. the English turned to attack the next French ship.

A furious exchange of fire saw the French ship damaged and holed.

Meanwhile, the other galleon, having got badly out of position whilst extinguishing its fire, used its speed to run to the south of the island, then tack up the board to intercept the lead French ship.

Meanwhile the other galleon raked the French vessel it was fighting. It scored little damage ...

... but a series of confused orders then saw the English ship pile into an iceberg and sink.

The surviving galleon attempted to stop the escape of the lead French ship. It scored some damage, but the whaler was able to use its boats to head straight into the wind, leaving the galleon unable to follow it.

The French ship escaped.

The galleon used its speed to intercept the other whaler.

A couple of broadsides saw the French captain killed and the ship strike.

So whilst fortunes were mixed, the English won this one, sinking one French ship, blowing up a second and capturing a third. It was unfortunate that one of the galleons ended up decorating an iceberg, though.

Anyway, then the servers came back up, and I could go back to work ...

Adventure In The Ice

As I said in an earlier post I've been reading a bit of Napoleonic naval fiction recently, specifically the early books in Richard Woodman's Nathaniel Drinkwater series. I rather like this series - the main character serves in an eclectic variety of ships, and adventures in some interesting locations, including the Red Sea and the North Pacific coat of the Americas. He even contrives to be at Trafalgar, but in a rather unexpected role. I'll leave that for you to discover, however. 

Anyway, one of my favourites is the fifth book in the series, 'The Corvette' when, in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Peace of Amiens, he is given his first post-captain command - a sloop - and sent to protest Britain's Greenland whale fisheries from possible French raiders. Again, I'll leave his various adventures for you to discover, but there's plenty of exciting ship-based action in the ice, so I felt inspired to play a game of some sort in such an environment.

Galleys & Galleons includes some rules for icebergs, and I'd played a game using them a few years ago. So I set it up again. I hadn't noted the ship designs in the previous game, so did them again.

I went for a 16th/17th century setting, since that's more suited to the ships I wanted to use. Here we have some French whalers/fur-traders, heading home full of the riches of the Arctic. 

Each ship is: Q3 C2 - Square Rigged, Chasers, Merchant, Reinforced Hull, Sweeps

(There are four of them, but one somehow got cropped out of the picture)

Stalking them are two English galleons.

Q3 C3, Galleon Rigged, Chasers, Razee

I randomly distributed four icebergs and a large island, then randomly rolled for wind-direction. The French could choose their corner of entry from that - they're trying to get to the opposite corner - and then the English could choose their entry point.

The wind was directly astern of the French. The icebergs would drift to the right; directly across the course the French ships would have to take.

This time all four French ships are in the picture. Their gunnery isn't much to write home about, but they're tough.

Most of the icebergs were in a line, and the French aimed for a large gap between them, hoping to slip through into the open water beyond.

However the English moved rapidly and plugged the gap. The French ships turned away. Their better option was now to tack, head back the way they came and pass behind the ice as it drifted to the right of the picture. In fact this would have been a better option from the start, but I'm good at coming up with terrible plans.

One French ship did try the gap, but the English had it well-covered.

For their own part, the English decided to push their galleons through the gap and engage the French. The first galleon to try this ripped a hole in its bottom passing too close to an iceberg.

It opened fire, damaging a French ship.

The French began to turn, but as they did so the wind veered, staying on their stern-quarter the whole way.

The second English galleon passed by the ice.

It cut things too fine though; an iceberg drifted into it and it was lost.

The English now had a single, badly damaged galleon, but kept up the fight, damaging the rigging of a French ship.

The French continued their slow turn. One of their ships strayed off course (bottom right) and eventually left the field of battle. 

The English galleon harried them as they turned. Both sides actually engaged in little firing, as they were expending all of their actions to turn and shorten sail so as to avoid crashing into ice and each other.

This shot set one of the French ships on fire.

The big turn continued, as the crew of the French whaler battled to contain the fire.

And they did it! Just in time for the galleon to collide with them. The sturdy French ship survived the collision. Not so the galleon; the collision was one step too far, and it started to sink.

This really ended the fight, but I played for a few more turns. After all, the three surviving French ships still had to get past the ice and head for safety. Two of them slipped behind the main flow of the ice, as the wind veered to the opposite direction from which it had started. The final ship still floundered by the island.

However eventually even the straggler made it through.

So the English lost both galleons whilst the French had one ship wander off the edge of the world. Maybe it will get home. Maybe not.

All three ships were damaged (one had engaged in some running repairs). But they'd get home.

I think the next time I try this I will have fewer icebergs. But the tight and dangerous terrain made for an interesting game.

Bolt Action French

I didn't play anything at the club last night, but I did sit in on a game of Bolt Action, and took the opportunity to take a few picture of Ian's French Colonial troops.

The Somua tank was a bit of an issue for the Germans, who had nothing stronger than an anti-tank rifle and 20mm cannon to engage it with. They managed to inflict a pin.

The game went a bit ACW with a section of sunken road. The troops in it got flanked.

Trying out Portrait Mode on my phone. I was told I had to make sure the pin marker showed up nice and clearly.

On an unrelated note, let me just give a shout-out to the anonymous follower of this blog who seems to have enough time on their hands to post a regular stream of abuse in my comments. Once you add your real name to them, I'll be happy to publish the small fraction of them that have acceptable spelling and grammar. Until then, they go straight into the bin.

Illuminati

I played a blast from the past yesterday evening, when I dug out my copy of the 1982 game Illuminati (plus its two expansions) for our semi-regular Wednesday evening boardgame. It was inspired by a discussion on Twitter about old Steve Jackson games.

For anyone that doesn't know, in Illuminati each player takes on the role of a super-secret society trying to take over the world. They do this by taking control of various groups and organisations, which can themselves take control of groups, creating a power-structure of  control.

Each illuminatus has their own special ability and also, which was a bit innovative at the time, their own victory condition. So each one plays differently and is also aiming for a different target to the others.

Here's the early setup - I had The Bermuda Triangle, which has the ability of a fluid power-structure and is aiming to collect at least one of each of the possible group alignments available. Maya had The Bavarian Illuminati, which has raw power and secrecy as its ability, and is simply looking to accumulate power. Finally Catherine played The Society of Assassins, who are masters of neutralising the power-structure of other illuminati, and aim to collect violent group.

You can also see the big pile of money and in the middle of the table the first batch of groups we'd be fighting over. I'd captured one - the KKK - but we had Local Police Departments, The United Nations, New York, and Mad Scientists up for grabs as well.

Here's the start of my power structure - my illuminati and the one group it controls. Each group has a Power (how well it makes attacks), Resistance (how easy it is to take over) and Income (how much money it generates each turn). They also have one of more Alignments, of which there are ten. As you can see that KKK is classed as Conservative and Violent. Most alignments have opposites - Conservative is the opposite of Liberal, and Violent the opposite of Peaceful, for example. It's easier to take over groups with the same alignments, and harder if there are opposite alignments. It's easier to destroy groups with an opposite alignment though. The arrows show where the group can attack subordinate groups - the KKK can control one group directly.

This is my structure a couple of turns in. The KKK allowed me to take over the Local Police Departments (both are Violent), but I also took over the Phone Company as well, and moved the Police under their control.

And a couple of turns later ...

As you can see I've reorganised a lot (my special ability). I'd picked up the Mad Scientists (which have useful power that can be added to the attacks of other groups), but also attacked Maya's structure and taken New York off her. Since New York controlled the United Nations I picked up that as well.

There are three types of attacks. You can attempt to control a group, whether uncontrolled or in another player's structure. This is the commonest type of attack. You can also neutralise a group in another's structure. This has the effect of returning it to the uncontrolled pile; not as directly useful as controlling it, but easier to do. The Assassins are particularly good at this, so you have to watch your structure when they're around. Finally you can simply destroy a group, which removes it from play - we did that just once in our game (destroying Comic Books, as it was a Violent group that the Assassins couple pick up), but one illuminati (the Servants of Cthulhu) actually wins by destroying a certain number of groups.

Anyway, here's the board later in the game. Despite losing New York, Maya was building up power with the CIA and Nuclear Power Companies. Catherine had collected a few Violent groups, partially by neutralising a couple from my structure and then using a second attack to take them over from the uncontrolled pile (groups in a structure are harder to attack, especially if they are close to the illuminati).

The Assassins. They had taken the Mad Scientists and Local Police off me. Her raw power came from controling the Pentagon and the International Communist Conspiracy.

Maya's Bavarian Illuminati was also positioned well, controlling the Nuclear Power Companies and CIA, as well as Big Media.

My structure was larger, but had less real power - New York and the Phone Company were my main weapons at this stage. I did have some decent incomes however, and kept money flowing from my lesser groups to teh heavy-hitters in order to boost their attacks. At this stage I'd also reached the point where I had nine of the ten alignments I needed for victory, and neither Maya nor Catherine had noticed. I'd managed to pick up some of the least common ones as well (Peaceful and Fanatic are both hard to get).

I just needed Straight (the opposite of Weird) to complete the set, and the only Straight group in play was Big Media in Maya's structure. Fortunately both she and Catherine had drained their treasuries in an earlier turn, so I did some careful money movements, and then struck, swiping Big Media with New York to win the game.

Sadly I don't think I'll get away with such an obvious win in the future.

In terms of gameplay this is very much a game of its time, as is the choice of groups available. It's a game that's dated badly in a few places but which is also still strangely relevant in others. However it was surprising how easy it was to get back into it after 35 years and we all had a good time.

52 Games - Game 43

Blood, Sweat and Rhinestones

Sorry it's been so quiet here recently. I haven't been playing a lot of games in the past week or so. Inspired by my game of Blood On The Sands last week, I did play a few games of Blood, Sweat & Cheers. I didn't keep any detailed notes, but the secutor Priscus did OK, up to the point where he met the dimacherius Philus. 

Philus then showed just how good the dimacherius is in Blood, Sweat & Cheers, by defeating everyone sent against him (so far).

Things could quieten down even more over the next few weeks, as burlesque has returned to my life with a vengeance. I'm performing again in June and probably a couple of times in July, and have to not only rehearse and refine an old act, but work on a new one as well. With classes and rehearsals a lot of my spare time will be taken up, and there's work on costumes and choreography to do as well.

I am taking some time to reread a few of my favourite Napoleonic naval novels, though, so this might inspire a few games involving ships. Or not. I'm reading them anyway.