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| Sailing ships in space! Set a course for Treasure Planet! |
Jenni took the kids to Edmonton to see our newest niece. I couldn't go, so I tried to compensate with some games.
The Set-Up
On the night they left, I took the hex map out of my copy of Leviathan, the jar of bits I saved from Anti-Monopoly, the Pirates of the Spanish Main (PotSM) ships I got in April, and copy of the rules for Wooden Ships & Iron Men (WS&IM) I printed from the all-finding Internet. I chose the five British ships from the set and randomly selected five pirates of the same size. Then I prepped my packing tape-laminated log sheets with a dry-erase marker. That's as far as I got Friday, but I was ready for my solo trial of WS&IM.
In my nerdiness, I used an Excel spreadsheet, which I can talk about in another post, to develop a way to generate the ship data required to fill out a WS&IM log sheet using the number of masts and the number of guns visible on each of the PotSM models. I figured this would make things a little more interesting as the ships of the same class don't all come out exactly the same, as it seems they would in a normal game of WS&IM (or so I gather from the rules and pictures of ship counters I've seen). I also had to drop the secret movement planning rule as I knew my opponent would be constantly looking at my moves as I wrote them. Instead, I went with assigning each ship a coloured (British: red, Pirates: yellow) and numbered chip. Chips went in a cup and were drawn for play order. For firing, I used a white die to decide firing at hull or rigging (evens=hull, odds=rigging) and a red die for the firing result.
I was going to play on Saturday, and I did start the game, but I realized I wanted to take pictures as I played. Couldn't find a camera (except the one on my work phone that's a flip phone and I wanted better quality than that). So I looked up and watched the live-action Space Battleship Yamato 2199 in Japanese with sub-titles.
The Intermission
On Sunday, I invited myself over to a family that, on an earlier occasion, seemed interested my Klondike game. We played Survive: Escape from Atlantis, 2 games of Klondike, and finished off the visit with Risk. I won 0 out of 4 games and had a great time. When I got home, I may have taken another turn with the ships, but I still wanted to get a camera. Then I had a thought: I could borrow one from work.
So Monday I brought a smart-phone with no plan home from work to use the camera on it. Then, while the phone was on the charger, I mowed the lawn until I got rained out. Or maybe rained in? Made a late supper and took a couple or three turns before bed.
The family came home Tuesday, so I had to get this game played out, which I did. I at least got to bed before 1 am!
The Game
Preamble: A British force of five ships, tasked with ridding the seas of pirates sights a ship beating into the wind. When their signals go unanswered and no flag is visible, they pursue. Was it a trap? Or was it just dumb luck that this ship led them to a whole mess of pirates?
Roster [ship name (number of masts)]
British: Lord Algermon (5), Guy Fawkes (3), Birkenhead (3), Gallowglass Black (2), Gallowglass Red (2)
Pirates: Harbinger (5), Longshanks(3), Nancy Nox (3), Charles (2), Royal Fortune (2)
The pirates seemed disorganized and unprepared to meet the task force, but with the advantage of the wind with them, the pirates turned to the attack...
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| Fast forward a bunch of turns to where I finally had a camera available and through a couple of lucky shots by the Brits a couple of turns ago, the pirate Longshanks is already sinking. |
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| I got smart and started placing the chips beside their corresponding ships so a person can at least sort out the pirates from the Brits. We see the big pirate ship, Harbinger, get into position to rake the Lord Algermon. On the west, the pirate ship Charles and the Gallowglass Black exchange shots. Nancy Nox takes her life into her hands as she slides along Lord Algermon at close range. |
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| Harbinger's big gamble. Cutting down into the fray, she had raking shots on both the Lord Algermon and Gallowglass Black. It was devastating for the much smaller boat, but not enough to count her out, and merely pebble in the larger Brit's proverbial shoe. As Lord Algermon reloads the port cannons, Nancy Nox takes a licking from Guy Fawkes and is unable to return as much damage as she receives. To the southwest, Royal Fortune takes a raking shot into Guy Fawkes' nose as she sneaks around the edge of the battle. |
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| A more dramatic shot of the previous action. |
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| Nancy Nox survives the gauntlet and a parting broadside from Lord Algermon and starts a turn to catch up to Royal Fortune. Charles moves to join them, hoping to force the British ships they are heading off into a position to receive raking fire from her or her fellows to the east. Harbinger has to reload both sides, but is out of range to all but Gallowglass Black's guns, which do little to slow her down. Gallowglass Black, by now, was only one hull point away from sinking and would do her best from this point on to stay out of the line of fire. |
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| Gallowglass Red had not fired a shot as yet, struggling to catch up, then to get into any position, but now fires a raking broadside into Harbinger. It is as an astounding hit for a ship so small at such a range and while it wasn't much for the bigger ship to absorb, it was only the beginning as all British ships started to concentrate their fire on Harbinger whenever possible. |
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| The other pirates tried to offer support, but were too spread out and too off on their aim with only middling to low damage rolls. |
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| Harbinger and Charles (bottom left) were the only ships able to fire this round, doing so with poor results. |
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| Harbinger was finally brought down after taking broadsides from Gallowglass Red on her starboard and then Birkenhead on the forward port-side. Charles and Royal Treasure knew the gig was up and broke south to escape capture. The Nancy Nox also turned south, but with the condition she was in, probably would not get away fast enough if some of the British ships decided to give chase. |
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| Run away! Those poor swabs 'r' gonna be slapped in chains and carted off to prison to await their fate. |
These are just some great little models! I really enjoy using them as they just brought this game to life. I guess, to add to the look of the game, I could have started removing masts for those ships that had lost a section of sail, but then I'd just have to put them back together in the end.
The tweaking I did to the rules in order to play the game solo took away some of the possibilities that would be present in a 2+ player game, like fouling, but I still had a good time with it. Despite the long rule-book, it really seemed quite easy to play as well. I would, of course, like to try the game with another person because I'd like to get a sense of the hidden movements and the havoc they could play. But that will probably have to wait until we are moved and settled into the new house (I might post about that...).
As for my picture-taking, I realize now for documenting a game like this that a better form of showing firing and such would be helpful. Something for a later installment.
Happy gaming!
