Full Sail

For a few years now I've talked about, thought about, even prepared to play the miniatures space battle game called Full Thrust. I even carved my own spaceships out of sticks and painted them up.

To be honest, I did try playing it using the box-style ship markers from Leviathan. I had tried to decipher some conversion tables I found and used them to edit some partially completed Ship Status Displays (SSDs) I found for the same conversion which included huge (by FT standards) amounts of armour on different sides of each ship. I realized part-way through my attempt to play that it was going to take forever to do any significant damage to any of the ships I used. I gave up.

This time I am going to try the fighting sail rule set adapted from the Full Thrust rules called Full Sail. I didn't find any kind of points system to make up roughly even battle groups like Full Thrust ships get assigned, so I decided to use the crew sizes found on the SSDs I downloaded and printed as the points. Each fleet equals 82 crew. We'll see if that is a good way to build a fleet.

Yeah! Five minute MSPaint photo editing FTW!

The Scenario is thus:

The Spanish ship-of-the-line, Argonauta, has left port after repairs and is sailing with the schooner, El Cervantes to meet with three other ships: the Vospero, the Leon, and the Santos Romanos.

However, pirate spies have sent word of this movement to the dreaded pirate trio of "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. These infamous pirates have been waiting to get the jump on a ship-of-the-line. To capture the Argonauta would be a grand feather in their caps as well as a grand flagship for the fleet they have been amassing. They set out in the Revenge, with six other ships split into two groups, to find the Argonauta and capture it.

Unknown to this pirate armada closing on the Argonauta's position is the fact that the the other three Spanish ships are very close.

All four groups are on a collision course.

The Set-Up
The Argonauta is the only 5-mast ship in the scenario. She and her escort, the three-masted schooner El Cervantes, enter from the west.

The Vospero (4 mast), Leon (3 mast), and Santos Romanos (2 mast schooner) enter from the north-east corner.

The pirate ships Revenge (4 mast), Cachas (1 mast), and Sceptor (1 mast) enter from the south. Pirate ships Cassandra (4 mast), Silverback (3 mast), Raven (2 mast schooner), and Jamaica (2 mast) come in from the north.

Set up and ready to go.

Being a solo play, I had to decide on some kind of turn order method and chose slowest speed first with ties broken by heading (i.e. thrust potential due to wind).

Of course I figured I should have some kind of win conditions for each side. The pirates were easy, they win if they capture Argonauta. I decided on two win conditions for the Spanish. A minor win if they reduce the pirates' total crew by half (forcing them to flee). A major win if they capture or sink both the pirate 4-mast ships (Revenge and Cassandra).

After placing the ships, I rolled a d12 to randomly set wind direction, rolling a 4, so I set the indicator arrow to the 4 o'clock position (12 o'clock = north). There are optional rules for changing the wind direction and speed, but I decided to keep wind direction and speed constant throughout the game. In retrospect, I think the wind direction put the pirates at a major disadvantage.


Turn 1
Vospero and company, the northeast group, turned westward to bypass the island in front of them.
Revenge, Calchas, and Sceptor move between the islands in front of them in order to possibly cut off Vospero and to have room to turn toward the main prize of Argonauta.

Revenge et al. split up to cover the two routes through the island chain immediately available to Argonauta.

Argonauta and El Cervantes head for the north route.

Some shot are fired from various stern chasers on both sides, very minor damage dealt.

Pirates (left group) split to cover possible routes Argonauta might take. Three Spanish ships coming in from the northeast.

Argonata chooses the north route.

Turn 2
The Argonauta mis-judges her turning ability and runs aground! There are no rules to cover this situation so I decided it meant a roll for collision damage, ship speed reduced to 0, ship must turn in place (limited to one point per turn) until it is freed of the sand and can start speeding up again. Argonauta and Cassandra are within 10 mu (movement units) of each other and both fire broadsides at each other. Argonauta deals major damage to Cassandra (23 points) triggering a threshold check. Cassandra loses some guns and 1/6th sail rating. Cassandra doesn't even return half the damage Argonauta inflicted. Their escorts fire on each other, each doing minor damage to the other.

Despite running aground, Argonauta deals a devastating broadside into Cassandra!

These Spaniards must have been keeping up on their gunnery drills! The Vospero deals a whopping 24 damage to Revenge, triggering a threshold check! It was raking fire to boot, so the threshold check damage possibility was increased as well.

Are these really Spanish crews? They are exceeding their reputation.

Turn 3
Not much going on for Turn 3 but maneuvering. Revenge does get a raking broadside in on Vospero, but doesn't trigger a threshold check.

Revenge fires on Vospero. Should I add a rule that any misses be re-rolled against other ships in the line of fire?

Argonauta is still turning, but fires bow chasers into Cassandra, inflicting minor damage.

Action around the islands.

End of turn 3: Silverback takes a long shot at Vospero to support Revenge's raking fire. Scepter joins in with her bow chaser, too. Overall, not too much excitement.

Turn 4
Turn 4 sees the action turn up again. Scepter and Santos Romanos fling broadsides at each other.

Scepter has to make a threshold check and loses a cannon and some rigging.

Calchas fires on Leon, minor damage is exchanged. I think Vospero did not follow the rules of gentlemanly conduct earlier and fired at Calchas. Oh well.

El Cervantes successfully grapples with Jamaica. Both ships loose their broadsides and the boarding begins. Jamaica is captured and the prize crew makes preparations for sailing to the nearest friendly port.

I think Turn 4 is when I decided that the ships' top speed should not exceed wind speed (except when reaching, as indicated on the wind rose).

I had seen others make comments about this rule set that the ships move too fast. The other comments raised concern over slowing the ship movement perhaps transferring too much power to the guns. I don't think I really saw that, but that may be due to my marking which sides had fired and using a

Turn 5
Argonauta is mobile again and slowly starts to pick up speed. Cassandra takes more damage from Spanish ships.

Argonauta continues on its ponderous way, pirate closing in from the south.

Leon and Vospero (out of frame to the south) fire broadsides into Cassandra, causing two threshold checks. It's only a matter of time for her.

Turn 6
Some close calls as maneuvering ships in the middle of the action narrowly avoid colliding with each other. Pirates lose two more ships as Calchas is sunk and Cassandra is captured. Pirate crew losses exceed one half their start levels, so according to my win conditions, I end the game.

Leon finishes off Calchas with a broadside.

The very weakened Cassandra is boarded by the Santos Romanos. Cassandra's disheartened crew puts up very little fight and she is captured and taken as a prize. But with so much damage and the Revenge bearing down, it might be better to leave her adrift or scuttle...

Raven misjudged her speed and turning ability, ending up run aground in the same spot as Argonauta. She fired a raking broadside at the bigger ship, but the sudden jarring against the sand bar must have thrown off her gunners as only four balls hit the Argonauta. Meanwhile, in the background, the prize crew from the El Cervantes takes the Jamaica away from the fighting.

Ship positions at end of game.

It's a minor win for the Spaniards, though they did manage to capture one of the large pirate ships.

Post-Game Thoughts

Lawrence decided a treasure island was needed.

I am liking the Full Sail rule set. It's detailed enough to feel the loss of each cannon or sail or the frustration of not having the wind on your side, but not so much that the game is slowed down by record-keeping. It was easy to get a handle on movement (the wind rose is very handy). And rolling lots of dice is always a good time. Translated well enough to a solo mode for me.

I think, with this play under my belt, I may be more motivated in the near future to try the Full Thrust rules with my carved space ships. I'll try to find the solo scenarios that I had run across some time ago.

There is one other rule set I want to try, quite different, basically the PotSM rules but applied to a sand-box sort of fleet builder treasure race. I don't know if it can work so well in solo mode.

P.S.

Immediately following clean-up of this adventure, I cut and installed a neoprene layer. Still debating in my mind about the necessity of a microfiber sheet to go over that. The purchase of the neoprene puts my total amount of money spent on this table to roughly $60. I like that.

I have been having saving and formatting issues with this post in Blogger. I've edited a few times now. Hopefully this latest one worked!