Best. Day. EVER! (In gaming terms, anyway. . . .) Part I

As readers of the blog might suspect, I don't get to play naval games as often as I would like.  So, when I have a chance to get TWO games in on a single day, that's something that I jump at!  Actually, it's three games but I'll explain that later.

Mark, who is one of my oldest friends, came into town specifically to play some games.  As he wanted to learn Post Captain, I decided to set up a simple frigate action.  My go-to war for this is the War of 1812, usually one of the engagements of the 44 gun frigates as they are the best known.  Now playing one of those scenarios as the British is like having your teeth pulled without anesthetic, so I always give the new player the American ship.  For this one, I chose USS Constitution versus HMS Java.

The starting position looks like this:

Java bearing down on Constitution.

With Mark being new to this set of rules, I expected he would sail along,  or slow down and wait for me to run down towards him.  What I didn't expect was this:

Yep, a tack.  As his very first maneuver in his very first game.

He decided to tack his ship and turn towards me.  It's not really as crazy as it sounds; with an elite crew, Constitution has an 83% chance of success (1-10 on a D12) and I'm still far enough away that if it isn't successful he has time to recover.

1-10 and he rolls a 7.  No problem.

"Well, this Yankee looks like an aggressive customer, eh?"

So we continued to head towards each other.

And then, he slewed to deliver a broadside at me.  I wasn't too worried about it, because I had already started to turn and deliver mine.

It turns out that I should have been worried, because out of a 9 box broadside (5x24 LBR, 4x32LBR carronades) I took 8 hits!  Yes, 8 and he was shooting high.  I didn't think to take a picture of the damage dice, but it was bad.  The mizzen topgallant went over the side due to a critical hit.  That cost me 4 rigging boxes, and I rolled another 4 rigging boxes for damage.  That triggered a rigging check at the end of the turn.  I failed that, and the mizzen topmast went over the side.

That's a lot of wreckage in the water.

The next turn didn't make things any better for the Royal Navy.   Between my maneuvering and the mizzen in the water dragging me around, I had a chance for a return broadside by the white phase of the next turn.

I inflicted a little bit of damage, but nothing like the pain I was feeling.  At least I was striking back, or so I told myself.  Then, it happened.  The combination of my maneuvering (and pivoting around the wreckage) and his maneuvering, ran us into each other and fouled the rigging.

Since these were batteries that had not been fired, both side's gunners went to work right away: 

At 25 yards with an elite crew and first broadside it's almost impossible to miss.  In fact, he didn't and all 9 salvos hit home!  The devastation was most impressive.

For anyone not familiar with Post Captain, this is how those damage rolls would break down:

And this is what my ship would look like with no damage:

At this point, Constitution sailed away so she could repair some damage, and I continued to try and cut away wreckage.  I got the mizzen topgallant away, but the topmast proved to be more stubborn.

All I could do was run straight downwind due to the wreckage, try and keep passing command checks to keep the ship in action, and watch Constitution come stalking back down towards us.  I finally got the mizzen topmast to go away, but then failed another rigging check, and this time the fore topgallant mast went into the water.

While I had a broadside loaded, I could only have fired half of it, due to the wreckage blocking the forward part of the ship.  When the command phase arrived, Java finally decided she had enough, and struck her colors.

It's a very historical outcome, but it still stings a bit.  At the end of the fight, Constitution looked like this:

and poor old Java looked like this:

Mark liked the rules so much he wanted to play a second game right away.  Since this is already a pretty long post, I've decided to break the day into two parts.  Part II will cover the second battle and maybe a little extra too, depending on how long that post turns out to be.