Fighting sail is a game which has been on my radar for some time after watching the Joy of Wargaming reports of the game. He transitioned away from FS towards a more detailed game called Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls which had all of the bookkeeping which I felt took me out of the game with Grand Fleets 3. As a result, I was eager to try this Osprey ruleset and see how it panned out.
I bought my ships from Tumbling Dice, they are 1/2400 lead models - and I got the Napoleonic Starter Set which contains a sizeable fleet. In my case, I split it in two with four average (3rd-rate) ships up against a combination of large and small (2nd-rate, 3rd-rate and 5th-rate frigates).
I set up my board i.e. grey PVC tablecloth with a 3x3' space - slightly smaller than the 4x4' recommended but more than enough for the bounds of the game I played. No terrain to speak of, just the vagaries of wind and firing arcs to deal with.
I whipped up two fleets: a British Royal Navy fleet of three 3rd rates (Vesta, Juno and Ceres) against a Dutch fleet of a 2nd rate (Amsterdam), two 3rd rates (Rotterdam, Delft) and a 4th Rate (Nassau). The Dutch were fighting with roughly a 10pt disadvantage.
 |
| Shortly after battle commences, the battle lines form |
Fighting Sail has a hybrid IGO/UGO system - each player sails, then each player fires. The first player on each turn is determined through dice roll.
Early in the engagement, the RN had the initiative and were able to manouvre their smaller squadron in a more tight formation, presenting a devastating broadside.
 |
| HMS Juno and Ceres pulverise ZM Delft, sinking it |
The damage rules in FS are a little odd - damage inflicted ticks down a morale counter for your entire army, even if that damage is repaired or ignored. As a result, unless something catastrophic happens (as above, when Delft was smashed to smithereens) your ships pretty much do whatever they want. When they have an anchor (movement penalty) they can only move on 6's and when they have a damage token they fire/board at half strength - but these are rallied off after movement each turn.
Unlike the English, the Dutch faired terribly with the wind - they had the initiative half the time, but their turns were either becalmed wind (only move on 6's) or gales (move on 3+ but downwind fire is at half strength).
 |
| The wind dies, and most ships are floundering with slack sails |
The Dutch were able to cross the tee of the british ships, but unable to capitalise: rolling pitiful damage, and when successful the British were able to shrug off the hits. I gave the Dutch one last chance ignoring their penultimate morale decrement - they seized the initiative but were beset with a calm again.
Despite all three Dutch ships firing at close range into the British Flagship they were unable to cause enough damage, and a lucky shot by HMS Ceres on the Dutch frigate Nassau saw the morale collapse, and an end to the engagement.
 |
| Ceres lands the killing blow on the 4th rate Nassau, ending the engagement |
The result was 9/16 morale for the RN, versus 0/16 for the Dutch KM.
Though the game mechanically was fairly simple, I'm not sure at all that it actually felt very thematic at all, aside from the need to steer correctly with the wind. Some of the mechanics felt very vestigial - the need for example, to roll at least one '6' on as many D6 as your discipline (typically 6-8) to rally off a damage and then anchor token.
It was a simple and robust game, but there was almost no flavour - like eating ready salted crisps in a white bread sandwich. Maybe I am being too harsh, but like any red blooded Brit I've dined out on Aubrey/Maturin for years and this was more an in-house Channel 5 documentary than Master and Commander.
What felt particularly anaemic was how the battle hinged completely on an abstracted 'morale score' which was disconnected absolutely from the actual board state. If you took lots of damage then your morale goes down - but you rally it off and are operating in tip-top shape and in a dominating position it doesn't matter at all and (as in the case of my game) a pot-shot ticks your morale down to zero you insta-lose. The morale system is pretty closely integrated into the game, so I don't think it's an easy swap to something else.
Overall while I enjoyed the game I'm not sure I've got any desire to play it again, maybe the Joy of Wargaming was onto something by switching to BB&IB?
No comments:
Post a Comment