La Gloire! Or Rotten Luck RN!

Being without a game last Monday and not having any time to prepare anything myself my plaintive plea on our club Facebook group brought forward an offer of the Napoleonic Naval game Kiss me Hardy from John which I gratefully accepted.

This was a follow up to an earlier scenario which had resulted in the Commodore of a French fleet and his ship being taken by the RN.  However the French had managed to regain control of their ship but were now being chased down by their former captor.  Peter took the French ship and John P (the game organiser was John E) his British pursuer.

Meanwhile 3 French ships (mine) and 2 RN (Kevan) hastened to join the fight.

I say hastened but I actually made a rather leisurely approach.  The briefing suggested intense rivalry between my commander and his superior (Peter).  I played to character with the hope that sufficient damage might be done prior to my arrival to give me an edge when I got into combat and if my commander ended up being the most senior French officer present well so be it!

In fact John P made fairly short work of his opponent with a vicious stern rake inflicting a lot of damage and Peter was forced to strike.  I speeded up and detached one ship to go after John and sailed my other into action against Kevan.  Now I am no expert on sailing ships and benefited from a lot of good advice from the umpire and indeed my opponents as to what was and was not possible.  However I can (sometimes) roll good dice and started to get the better of my opponents.

The real story of the night was not my good dice rolls but John’s appalling luck.  When firing multiple d6s are rolled to hit.  At the same time a D10 is rolled and if the number on it is equal to or less than the successful D6 hit rolls special damage is done.  This can be pretty devastating with masts, officer casualties and even the magazine at risk.  However on a 1 a gun in the firing ship blows up causing damage on itself.

In the space of very few rolls John rolled special damage 3 times and then proceeded to roll a 1 on each occasion.  This together with other damage (including High Officer Casualties inflicted by myself on a special damage roll) gave him a 15% chance of failing a strike test.  You can of course guess the result of his roll.

So my commander had captured a RN ship and in the process reclaimed it’s prize (and unfortunately its captain) for France.  A change in wind and the advanced hour meant that we called it there.

Vive La France!

Games 60

 Rules played 24 New 9
Places played 10 New 0

Historic Battles – two firsts

I like to play a game which attempts to recreate an historic battle.  They are usually a fair bit of work to organise so I don’t do them as often as I would like.  However both of my last two Monday night games at the Falkirk Club have fallen under this category, with not only my first ‘historic battle’ air game but also my first ‘historic battle’ naval game.

This Monday gone was the Battle of Ortegal, a set to between British and French squadrons in the aftermath of Trafalgar.  Four ships of the line were making a dash for a friendly port and were intercepted by four British ships of the line with some frigates in support.  Myself and Doug took the French and Kevan and Mark the British.  In the terms of the Kiss Me Hardy rules we were sans culottes and they were jolly jack Tars.

John, who had organised the game, evened things up a bit by giving the French crews a higher rating than he might but all to no avail.  Kevan skilfully used a frigate to slow us down (even if he did eventually have to strike) and Mark kept his ships together to give us a pounding.  Three of the French ships were attempting a slow exit when British reinforcements led by Chuck arrived and pretty much finished us off.

All in all an enjoyable game.   We were probably outplayed but the fall of the cards (typical TFL mechanism) was certainly cruel.  Very much an historical result.

A week earlier Doug had brought along CY6 Jet Age for another Indian Pakistan set to.  This was a scenario form the book entitled ‘Stake Through The Heart’.  It recreated the action on 1^st September 1965 over Kashmir.  The Indian army was in danger of being overrun by Pakistani tanks.  In desperation the Indians threw in some elderly Vampires to try and throw them back. The first wave got through but the second was intercepted by Pakistani Sabres (we used Mig 19s).

Doug took the Indians and launched a successful attack knocking out two tanks.  As the Pakistanis pounced some unlucky throwing of one’s meant that 3  of their opponents were unable to jettison their rockets which both slowed them and made them less manoeuvrable,

The superiority of the Pakistani aircraft soon told with 2 vampires biting the dust early on.  The air to air defences then came into play.  Not being able to distinguish friend from foe they let rip at the nearest aircraft.  A Mig 19 was hit by a burst of fire from one of the Vampire’s but then almost immediately had to jink heavily to evade ground fire (from his own side) and tore his wings off.

The outclassed Vampires broke for home but both were brought down, the last by a lucky long range shot.  All four Indian pilots were killed but the Pakistani pilot managed to bail out successfully.  When victory points were totalled up it was a dead draw with the early brewing up of the Pakistani tanks as well as the downing of the Mig 19 offsetting the loss of the 4 Vampires.

Two great games – thanks to Doug and John for organising them.  Both games I am keen to play again in 2013.