Finally have another battle report, this time of a game of Form Line of Battle, a ruleset for battles in the age of sail.
Given my choice of profession, it's a wonder I don't get around to playing more naval wargames - wait, no it isn't. Naval wargames are notoriously time consuming, complex and space hungry. At least, that was what I thought before breaking out Form Line of Battle.
Certainly, the game still requires a decent amount of space, but the rules are at least able to be taught and played very quickly in their basic format. They also include a huge amount of optional rules, so that as you become more familiar with them you can make the scenarios progressively more complicated as you go without having to worry about any of that when you first go to smash two boats together.
Rather than just smashing two ships together, however, when I first built the ships for Form Line of Battle, I chose an asymmetric scenario to make it interesting. The wikipedia article on it is here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_13_January_1797
The gist being that a larger French ship is attempting to escape two smaller British ships, hungrily nipping at her heels as she runs for home. The French ship is played with a poor crew, which makes both reloading and maneuvering harder, but has decent ability to shrug off incoming attacks and deal damage of it's own when its weapons are loaded.
Asymmetric scenarios are, in my opinion, often more interesting in any wargame, and terrain is the real meat of any scenario. By default, this scenario has been played with no terrain a few times in the past, though last time we spiced it up by playing around a Cape of land with rocky waters posing a threat to a French ship trying to cut the corner.
This time, we laid out very crowded waters somewhere in the Caribbean, at the center of which lay a small French port overlooked by a gun battery. The Droits de l'Homme (DDH from now on) is running from the Amazon, a smaller and normally nimbler British vessel as it makes for Notre Dame dont la Purite Reste en Question, where the governor will greet her crew with wine and cheese of the finest quality for having run the blockade.
Ahead of them and to the East, HMS Indefatigable cruises among the islands, only just having been warned of the French Ship of the Line running the gauntlet.
DDH at the bottom of the photo and her destination on the isles near the corner of the suspiciously brown sea - note the amount of space required, typical of naval wargames. Indefatigable lies in wait at the center right of the photo, cruising through the islands.
Amazon watched DDH riding favorable winds, and tried her luck early on, altering hard to starboard to fire her port broadside - particularly potent when employing the first, carefully loaded volley of the battle - into the French ship's exposed stern.
Thunder rolls across the clear brown seas of the Caribbean, and iron balls soar. The English shot batters the French crew, but they respond, as Montcalm so famously put it, by the mouths of their own guns.
The damage to both sides is not significant to end the chase, despite the excellent position of HMS Amazon - her gamble had failed. Aided by a favorable turn of the wind, DDH rapidly pulled ahead and made for the islands.
Amazon's crew would do their best to pursue, but the failure of their first shots must have rattled the crew. She would play no more part in the chase.
HMS Amazon, at the top of the image, lags ever further behind, but the French crew are startled by the cry from their lookouts - topsails peeking out from behind the small islands ahead, and the royals of another English ship. They are not safe yet...
The chase now lay in the hands of HMS Indefatigable's capable crew, who hurried to place their ship in the DDH's way. By chance and hard work, they managed this almost exactly, crossing DDH's proverbial "T" just as she entered the narrows between First and Second Obstruction Reef.
HMS Amazon's crew struggle to make the best of the shifting winds, as the first echoes of gunfire reach them across the Caribbean sea. Less than a mile away, the silhouettes of friendly and enemy ships merge, and are wreathed in the sickly grey smoke of cannonfire.
The fight is short, sharp, and intense. Against all odds, the French crew, rated poorer in quality across the board, keeps up pace both in maneuver and gunnery with the British Frigate, giving as well as she receives.
HMS Indefatigable, desperate to slow the French for HMS Amazon to catch up and assist her in bringing the beast down, refuses to alter as she closes DDH.
Once again, against the odds, the French crew pull together and, in a spectacular display of seamanship, come hard to starboard, clearing Indefatigable so narrowly their captains can sling insults at each other over the sound of musket and cannon.
The maneuver by the French seems to put her in quite the bind, however. Though she has avoided being spotted by a desperate English warship, she now finds herself pointed squarely at a reef with a shoal nearly adjacent. The British, though they are smarting from the exchange of fire, have a laugh, counting on the French doing their job for them in the next few minutes.
HMS Amazon, only now entering the island chain, watch as the two ships pull apart through clouds of oily gunsmoke. Through his telescope, the Captain has a chuckle at the predicament of the French vessel, though it dies in his throat as he watches her mast swing over.
For the second time back to back, the DDH's crew succeed on their seamanship check to make a hard alteration, this time shooting the gap between the rocks and the reef.
The situation at game's end, with Indefatigable sailing West and struggling to come around, though to do so would put her under the shore guns all too quickly, and Amazon still out of the fight.
For reasons of time constraint, we called the game there, though I should note that it took only about an hour, perhaps a bit more, to have such a ringing game. By the end, the British cut off their pursuit in the face of terrain and the threat of shore batteries, and the French were allowed to limp into port, not even damaged enough to slow them (though their gunnery abilities were significantly reduced).
My friend played the French this game, while I played the unsuccessful British hunters. A hearty congratulations to him and his crew for their able handling of the difficult situation, and of course these ships will meet again on the high seas someday, so look out for that here!
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