Looking for a smallish naval engagement from history to try with the Full Sail rule set, I came across the Battle of Lissa (read about it here). It was a turning point battle during the Napoleonic War. Four British ships effectively held off a force of seven French and Venetian ships who were attempting to take over a garrison on the Isle of Lissa in the Adriatic Sea.
This was a perfect scenario for my PotSM collection as they battle was fought by fifth-rate ships and smaller. So I sorted out the ships I needed and printed up some ship status displays (SSD). Using only the larger ships, I arranged them as they appear on the map at the blog I linked to. The blog takes the reader step by step through the battle with little drawn illustrations to ship movements. Since I'm doing this solo and hidden movements are not possible, I decided to loosely follow the actual ship movements as explained.
So here is the setup:
The Brits are the four ships protecting the island, Lissa. They are faced by a larger French and Venetian fleet coming straight at them. One may notice that even though the British ships are outnumbered, they will have the advantage of likely being able to fire two broadsides before the oncoming enemy turns to use their broadsides. This means that the French/Venetian forces will be subject to the raking fire rule for those two turns. The rule is that a broadside fired into the front (or rear) arc of the target ship causes damage to the next available row of damage boxes. If the ship is required to make a threshold check, there is a higher possibility of losing cannon and sails.
Turn 1:
Movements made, firing starts. French forces can only fire using chasers and cause minimal damage to their targets. Birkenhead (lower right corner), fires into Leon (leading bottom column). The other three Brits fire broadsides into St. Michel. They trigger a threshold check and a fire.
Turn 2:
Leon turns, firing chasers at Birkenhead and a broadside at Guy Fawkes. The rest of the Frenchies fire chasers, again with little effect. Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes fire broadsides into Leon and trigger a threshold check that takes out a third of her cannons. The crew remaining on St. Michel attempt to put out the fire and can't. A fire damage roll results in a ship-board explosion, causing minor damage to her compatriots and starting a fire on Silverback (far ship in the English column). Scratch one French ship.
Turn 3:
Now the French ships are close enough to start turning broadsides towards the English ships. Threshold checks on Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes result in minimal loss of firepower. Hangman's Joke (the two-masted Brit), on the other hand, loses half her cannon. Silverback's crew manages to put out the fire as she turns to engage the remaining two ships on the far line. The other three English vessels start turning and speeding up to bring themselves about. Birkenhead and Guy Fawkes target Leon again and put her entire port-side array of cannon out of commission, knock out a mast, and start a fire. Leon is likely out of the picture at this point.
Turn 4
Some bad rolls for the Brits and some really good ones for the French!
Raking fire from Freedom, combined with fire from Leon II and Plata, and Silverback slides beneath the waves. Leon II also does a number on Birkenhead, triggering a threshold check. The Guy Fawkes, Birkenhead, and Hangman's Joke concentrate fire on Leon II and barely trigger a threshold check. after these checks, the Birkenhead lost much of her firepower, Leon II only lost a couple of guns.
The Leon started turning away from the action. She also had to check for fire damage and rolled an explosion, which did enough damage to Guy Fawkes to trigger a threshold check, which left her in as bad shape as Birkenhead.
I think I'm going to call the game as the remaining Brithish ships, in the condition they are in, have pretty well no hope of winning out over the remaining French ships, which are still in near-perfect condition. They would have to hit with every roll and the French would have to miss every roll.
On the other hand, the French did lose their flag ship with the Leon. Birkenhead is the British flag ship. Maybe the British can board some of the French ships...
Update:
Nope, I played out one more turn the next day: the British ships had not a prayer of surviving even long enough to try and board the other ships.
I still wonder if the British ships have enough of an advantage off the start for this scenario to end in a British victory. Maybe the use of morale checks with modifiers for crew losses and/or loss of flagship along with making the Brits would be more resilient to loss of morale. Something to think about.
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