Battle Report - Age of Sail

Hello All,

Time for another Wednesday wargaming battle report. This we we are playing some age of sail games again, once more using Trafalgar but with the sailing system from Fire as She Bears. On to the next scenario now, the Pursuit. We have chosen the Spanish to be running the gauntlet this time, while the British are chasing.

Here is a shot of the set up, the Spanish have all their ships on the west end of the table, and the wind is to the North. I have splits up my ships with 2 large third rates in the south, and the second rate and small third rate in the north. This time I upgraded some of my ships with chain shot. My plan is to break the masts of the escaping ship and then hammer it down.

Turn one we all move off into lines. The Spanish heading north. I decided not to put my far away ships on full sail thinking I would be able to make it, but the Spanish did go on full sail.

Next turn we are just about in range and start firing some shots. But due to range and not many ships shooting no to much happens.

Next turn the Spanish line slips behind my ships. I fire allot of chain shot into the rigging of their first rate, which is the ship I have to stop from getting off the far edge. But it is actually hard to hit up high so I get a few good hits but not quite enough luck. We got another round as the Spanish sailed past, this time went a bit better and I broke the Main and Mizzen masts. But the Spanish first rate has a real ton of guns, and a few of them got stern rakes, so Royal Sovereign took a royal pounding, and was left crippled. But the Spanish ship was now only able to limed along.

Sadly my other 2 ships were never quite able to catch up.

I almost got 1 more chance at the very end of the table, but that sneaky ship was just out of my firing arc. If I had put those 2 ships on full sail from the beginning I probably would have been able to get another chance. But that Spanish ship have a real crazy amount of heavy cannons, so I am not even confident they could have won really.

Still an interesting scenario with some hard choices to make. I would possibly say that aiming high is not set up exactly right as it never seems to be the right choice, but a bit better luck could have made a difference to so who knows really. Need to play some more games to try more different approaches. I set my ships up as far forward as possible, but maybe they would have been better off further back.

Next week we are going to try some Heavy Gear games, time for Earth to invade!

Thanks;
Mike