No Scenario Ever Goes as Planned

On October 13, 2018 I took the ships out to the Texas Broadside! convention and ran the Battle of Cape Ortegal scenario that I mentioned in the post about HMS Caesar.  As an aside, Broadside is a convention held aboard the former USS Texas, the world's only surviving WWI era super dreadnought.  She served with the Grand Fleet in WWI, and was at D-Day, Cherbourg, Iwo Jima and Okinawa in WWII.  All the money we raise goes to help preserve her, and this was our eighth year to do so.  If you're ever in the Houston area, you should pay her a visit.  Her official website is: https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/battleship-texas and there are plenty of other unofficial tributes on the Internet.

So, with a carefully designed, historically accurate scenario and a group of historical gamers, we should have a refight of the historical event and the overwhelming probability of a British victory.  Because, after all, it's Napoleonic Age of Sail, right?  Well, go back and read the title of this post again.  It's OK; I'll wait.

The scenario starts out looking like the picture below:

The French are in line ahead at the bottom of the photo and the British are bearing down on them.  I had two players, both of whom wanted to play French, so I took the British squadron.

The starting range between the two forces is 800 yards, or 24 inches. In Post Captain, ground scale is the same as the scale of the miniatures you're using.  I explained the situation, and how the French players could achieve a victory.  Basically, if they could get a British ship to fail a command check, then they could earn a draw.  If they could get a British ship to strike, they would win regardless of what happened to them.  I also told them about the frigates that had harassed them before the battle.  What this meant was that if they turned left, then each ship would get a single broadside from 12 or 18 pound guns. The French commander's response was, "We're not worried about that."

At the end of the first turn, I saw why he wasn't worried.

The French had decided to turn as close to the wind as they could, and bear down on the British.  Well then, this was going to be fun!  I was ignoring the fact that my line was nowhere near as neat as theirs, which you can see in the above photo and the one below:

Namur is trying mightily to close the gap.

The two groups continued to close on each other, and both leading ships opened fire on each other at a little over 100 yards.  Unfortunately, I lost the initiative die roll after that, and a French 74 parked itself almost directly in front of HMS Caesar.  I put the helm hard over, but still managed to foul the Dugay-Trouin.  Fortunately though, I did manage to avoid breaking Caesar's bowsprit in the fouling.

"Damn Frenchmen who don't watch where they're going!"
"Damn Englishmen who drive on the wrong side of the road!"

From this point things started to fall apart for the British, although it wasn't apparent at the time.  HMS Hero tried to avoid the mess, and turned towards the French so as to try and provide some support for Caesar.  HMS Courageaux wasn't so courageous, and turned away from the action to try and clear everything.  What I didn't do was think two or three moves ahead, AND didn't consider what the French would do.  Hero wound up colliding with the French flagship Formidable (yes, they fouled as well), and it cost Hero her bowsprit, four rigging boxes and a sprung foremast.  At the end of the turn, the two lead ships were organizing boarding parties for next turn, and the two lines now looked more like the picture below:

So that went pear-shaped pretty quickly....  Namur is still far from the fight.

While the two pairs of fouled ships tried to separate themselves, the marines on all those ships were firing away at each other.  Crewman and marines were falling on both sides, and then came what I think was the most important shot of the game.  During the firefight between the marines of Formidable and Hero, the Hero's captain was killed.  This meant a command check would be taken at the end of the turn, and the ship could only move straight next turn.  While the ship passed her command check with ease, the straight only movement would wind up dooming the British.

My picture taking had gotten pretty sporadic by this point, so there aren't a lot of "in action" photos of this part of the game.  Caesar had cut free of Dugay Trouin but fouled again trying to get past her. (I lost that initiative roll even with a +2 advantage.  My rolling was so bad I threatened to line the dice up and smash one with a hammer. 😡)

Formidable didn't want to keep Hero around and so didn't try to grapple her.  Hero  repaid Formidable with a broadside and started to move away.  Before Hero could get too far away, Mont Blanc moved up and fired into both Hero AND Formidable in an attempt to give some more rigging damage to the British ship.

The last good moment for the British

While Mont Blanc damaged her comrade as well, by the end of the turn Hero had no rigging boxes left.  The die roll for this was bad enough that a mast fell, and it was the main topmast.  The foremast, which was sprung due to losing the bowsprit was still standing, but I couldn't be sure for how long.  Hero now had just two movement points left, and the wrecked maintopmast hanging over the side meant that she would lose two movement points until it was cut away.  So, she's dead in the water with Scipion bearing down to deliver another initial broadside at close range.  We were starting to run short on time, and the general consensus was that the British had managed to work themselves into a defeat.  Everyone involved had a good time though (myself included), so that's what was important.

Since I'm kind of short on actual gameplay photos, I've also included some generic ship porn photos from the beginning of the game.

I'm running this same scenario next Sunday, so we'll see what happens then and write up another report!