I'd originally planned to run a Battle of St. Vincent scenario last night but inclement weather and illnesses cut down the player count to just two. As the other guy had never played SoG before, we just ran a simple, open-ocean battle between the Brits and the French with each side controlling a frigate and a 3rd rate ship of the line.
We set the wind at a constant speed and direction and then set up our ships in parallel lines, sailing with the wind. I played the Brits.
Brits are at the bottom of the pic. This is after the first turn with my line making a gentle turn while the Frenchies cut a much sharper turn and came straight on.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4649/38779035750_03a676b02d_b.jpg)
Ships closed the distance. My frigate is the leftmost ship in the pic. I tried doglegging out to stay out of range of his 3rd rate but it changed tack and started making straight for my poor little ship.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4761/26717418228_369f161604_b.jpg)
His frigate took a devastating broadside from mine as we passed and he lost a lot of crew. He didn't have enough hands left to man the pumps to fight the flooding and manage sails and he ended up plowing into my 3rd rate which easily shoved him out of the way and gave him a point blank volley of cannon fire and musketry for good measure. the French frigate struck her colours soon after.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4771/40546834052_c9dd159789_b.jpg)
Unfortunately, his 3rd rate managed to close the distance with my frigate, grappled it and engaged in a boarding action. Here's my frigate's damage log and control panel. If you look at the top portion, you'll see a single yellow and several blue chits with the silhouette of a sailor on it. Each one of those chits represents dead crew. The boxes fill in from left to right and when they're all filled in, the crew's been wiped out and the ship will surrender. This was the carnage after a single round of melee. The orange and brown chits above represent ship damage and you'll see that I've lost some sails and I'm flooding as well.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4801/39878520954_432de57062_b.jpg)
Our Jack Tars gave as good as they got though and, despite being heavily outnumbered, they managed to inflict a good number of casualties to the French crew before succumbing and surrendering next turn.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4787/26717418378_4af035918b_b.jpg)
While this boarding action was taking place, my 3rd rate was able to park herself right off the stern of the Frenchie and rip her apart with raking shots. She struck her colours the turn after taking my frigate.
Fun game as always.
man that looks beautiful!
It's fun to play as well. I've had a chance to play a couple of basic games but we had a blast.
Great pics! O0
Awesome pics, SDR. I've often been tempted to get into SoG (like I need another game to get into).
The lovely wee ships call you alllllllll...
^ SHUT UP SHUT UP
because that DOES look pretty awesome, and while I'm not much of a fan of the age of sail (I know, blasphemy) type games, I could totally collect this, which I DO NOT need to do. :(
But you want to...
When I first opened this thread, I thought I was looking at a screen shot. Those are really good looking maps.
SDR, I take it those mats are sold seperately?
It's a great game that's a lot of fun to play, not overly difficult to learn/teach, and quite thematic but it's not without its problems.
It's not a very clean design. There are a lot of components and it can get quite fiddly. You have your command console with 2 damage tracks, a crit damage box, 2 loaded cannon boxes, 2 ammo boxes, 1 sail setting track, and 4 orders boxes. Each of these will have one or more chits place on them and with one bump, you're in for a headache sorting things. In addition, there is a space to store your 13 crew orders chits but it's far too small so people usually just pile those to one side. Very often, they'll accidentally mix two piles together and confusion reigns as they try to find out where their "issue grog ration" chit went (and I have to spend an hour or so reorganizing when I get home). In addition, each ship comes with a deck of maneuver cards consisting of 18+ regular maneuvers, 3 into-the-wind cards, and 8-12 damaged mast cards. If you're controlling more than one ship, it's very easy to put the card you used into the wrong pile so one ship will end up with cards from another ship's deck (even more sorting!).
Because of all the components involved for each ship, I've found that most players get overwhelmed and stop having fun if they're asked to control more than two ships.
Also, the sequencing of the rules in the advanced game takes some getting used to as certain orders trigger right away whereas others require a turn or more to finish. Some are counter-intuitive and this causes grief at times. New players will often issue a fire order and a reload order in the same turn, thinking that they'll fire their guns and then start the reload action as the turn order is:
1 - resolve crits,
2 - plan orders/maneuvers
3 - reveal orders & conduct maneuvers
4 - fire
5 - reload
They see that reloading is after firing so assume they can do both. Thing is, your orders trigger during the reveal phase so you can't start reloads until your gun is empty, therefore the reload order is illegal. Repairs is another. People plan it before they've taken damage in the fire phase so it's a wasted order.
Finally there are a few rules that I just don't agree with so I've house ruled them. In the game, chain shot is very short range and only fires as far as cannister. As the Frenchies were known for lobbing the stuff at rigging from long range, I've changed the range at which it can fire.
Also, ramming rules are a mess and I'm still trying to devise a proper system. In the official rules, ramming an enemy ship does no damage, the larger ship simply pushes the smaller one out of the way. Ramming a friendly ship does ridiculous amounts of damage to both ships. I get that they were trying to punish poor sailing yet prevent the game from turning into a ramming spectacle more suited for Roman era naval games but the system they have now encourages a lot of bumper car action with the big ships just ploughing into little ones and then broadsiding them. It also causes a lot of boarding actions early on.
The rule I'm using now is that if a collision occurs, you subtract the hull size of the smaller ship from that of the larger one and the smaller ship takes the value of the difference as "B" chit damage. The larger ship also takes 1 B chit damage. It's still not quite right though. I'm thinking of giving both captains the option of trying to avoid with a blind chit draw system but haven't tried it yet.
Well, that's all the negatives but there far more positives. Great game despite these flaws. Find a session somewhere and sit in!
Quote from: BanzaiCat on March 04, 2018, 03:04:59 PM
SDR, I take it those mats are sold seperately?
Yup. The base game comes with 4 ship models, a wind rose, 2 wind direction rulers, 2 range rulers, 4 maneuver decks, 4 control consoles, 8 ship types (each model represents 2 ships and has a reversable base and control console), 5 sets of damage chits, and the rules.
The damage to friendly ships from a collisions may be based on the French SOL Zele.
In the lead up to the Battle of the Saintes, the Zele collided with one French SOL, sending her out of the line of battle on one night, and the next night collided with the fleet flagship. Zele was so damaged that a frigate was detailed to tow her. Morning found the two between the fleets and ready for a britsh swoop.
Trying to Save Zele was a major mistake by deGrasse.
https://books.google.com/books?id=abPUKDlNmRsC&pg=PA249&lpg=PA249&dq=ship+of+the+line+Zele&source=bl&ots=lEGoBUGhYG&sig=rRz5t7rs-JBjNHc5X-jl9VOlkjA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQ6PbLkNXZAhVKUt8KHXcrCKMQ6AEIZzAJ#v=onepage&q=ship%20of%20the%20line%20Zele&f=false