August 29, 2004

Eight of us gathered in Germantown to play Wooden Ships and Iron Men. I prepared the gameboard and environs and Glenn Bramer prepared the ship log sheets for the chosen scenario.

With eight players, we decided to do the Battle of the Chesapeake, a large encounter between the French and the British involving 42 ships of the line. The French have a numerical superiority (24 versus 19 ships) with large crews, while the smaller British crews are of better quality. We did not use the land mass which is normally an obstacle in this scenario; we played open seas.

Glenn and I each took command of one fleet. Glenn was given the choice and took the French. We then split up Eric Haas and Steve Bramer as the other two experienced players. Eric joined the British, while Steve went with the French. Finally, we randomly assigned Rachel Jones, Alex Ruvinsky, Dave Fair and Dan Korn. The former two went to the British, the latter to the French.

Teams having been assembled, we went through a quick explanation of the rules and set up the game.

The wind, blowing to the north, was favorable to both fleets as they entered along the east and west sides of the game map. The French came in two long lines very far apart, while the British formed up in four lines fairly close together. After several turns of sailing full ahead, the first British ship to hit the French line was the flagship, the Barfleur, commanded by Bob. Enduring several rakes from Glenn’s squadron, the Barfleur tied up the front of the French line while going toe to toe with the French flagship, the Ville de Paris and another of Glenn’s ships.

Because of this, and the general pile up of ships that followed, the Barfleur was the first ship to strike her colors with the Ville de Paris not far behind.

Not long after, Alex’s squadron met up with the French line while Rachel and Steve started some long-distance sparring to the north and Dave and Eric began pummeling each other to the south. A number of struck ships started clogging the sea and it became very difficult to break through the tangle. At one point at least a dozen ships were fouled together.

By the end of the game, nine ships had struck their colors (5 British, 4 French) with many more ships seriously wounded (note, one of Rachel’s ships struck her colors but has not been crossed off the tally).

Glenn’s squadron, in the midst of most of the British fleet, took the worst pounding, with only 15 hull points left between his three remaining ships. However, Glenn is responsible for nearly all of the damage to Bob and Alex’s squadrons while killing two ships and capturing one. Bob’s ship, America, visible all alone approaching Dan’s squadron in the next photo, had only one hull box left.

Sadly, Dan’s squadron went the whole game without firing a shot. Starting farther to the north, Steve and Dan were tacking against the wind all game. Steve was in the van and so able to engage around mid-game. Dan was finally in a position to get into the fight when we called the game. In restrospect, we should have mixed up the squadrons a little more (maybe given him half of Glenn’s ships and vice versa) to make sure everyone got involved. Putting Steve and Dan’s squadrons to the north pretty much guaranteed victory for the French, though. With at least two French squadrons untouched at the end of the game, the British fleet would have been hard pressed.

The point of the session was to teach the rules and get as much done as we could in the time allotted. With a smaller scenario, we could have easily finished. With 42 ships, however, combat took far too long. At 4:30 we decided to play until 6PM at which time we ended the game. Another five or six turns probably would have ended the game more decisively.

At the start of the game, the French had 24 ships comprising 347 hull points. The British had 19 ships with 234 hull points. At the end, the French had lost 31% of their hull points while the British had lost 43%.

Note on pictures: The “struck ship” counters were originally used to denote surrendered ships. However, so many ships fouled, we started using the struck counters to designate that. We ended up flipping over the struck ships (as you will see in some of the pictures.) The arrow in the following photo represents the ship Glenn captured from Alex.

I hope we can play again sometime soon. Glenn has a much smaller scenario already prepared. My crystal mega mat will have arrived by then and I’m going to put together some “fouled ship” counters. :-)