Fightin' Frigates - a War of 1812 game

 

I wasn't sure how many takers I'd have for the themed naval game at the Wollongong Wargamers, so I kept the planning very simple...

In the end it was just Daniel and I, so we set the points at about 100 with an open seas encounter battle. Daniel chose the Royal Navy and went with three actual frigates:

To provide some 1812 flavour, I decided to go with a super heavy 'Frigate', Constitution, 'Old Ironsides' herself, leaving me with only a standard frigate, Chesapeake to get my points up:

Both fleets started in opposite corners with the wind fine on the beam. I sailed my fleet on slightly divergent courses: I was relying on Constitution's toughness to set up a hammer and anvil approach on whichever RN frigate we met first...

Daniel sailed his three as a squadron. Note some of these Royal Navy warships are sailing under foreign colours to confuse the enemy. (Laughs in British...)

With the wind remaining steady, my overthought maneuvering allowed Daniel's HMS Sirius to fire first. Not only was it at point blank range, it gained the extra dice from being the first broadside. USS Chesapeake was fair riven - A second broadside from HMS Themis was enough to sink her! Half my command gone in the first few turns...

However this left some sea room to get in a crafty stern rake on HMS St Elena, also at point blank range and with extra firepower dice!

St Elena was set afire and was barely afloat. However the fire immeadiately spread to Constitution!

St Elena's gallant crew failed to extinguish the fire and she sizzled down to Davy Jones. Constitution's crew however did a stand up job and the fire was extinguished, not without causing a fair bit of damage.

Which meant that further broadsides from Themis and Sirius were enough to force her to strike. Daniel's squadron of light frigates had completed a clean sweep!

Friendly Enemies

 

Its a nice problem to have, but when a game is so engrossing, so exciting, I get distracted from taking enough pictures to blog the game properly. Which is a shame, cos Daniel's Fate of a Nation scenario was a doozy!

Peter and Daniel were playing the Jordanians:

I was playing the Israelis. We rolled for the scenario - the Israeli's would be the attacker. That suited me fine, because this scenario is a real challenge for the defender!

The attacker gets to lay the objectives down, then defender has to deploy first, and leave 40% of their force in reserve, so the attacker has it easy - put the bulk of your forces in the pocket closest to where you laid the objectives! These started the game thinly defended...

Plus the Israeli Air Force put in an early and devastating appearance, knocking out one of the dread Centurions on Turn 1!

Given this action pitted Centurions against Sho'ts - which let's face it is simply a Centurion with a proper engine - lethality was going to be high!

Short story short, my Centurions were nice and close to the deep objective which was initially lightly held, and under early and continuous bombardment by the Israeli 155s. Once the Jordanian reserves turned up that firefight started getting bloody for the Sho'ts, but a second, even more devastating airstrike evened things up a little....

By which time my venerable old Shermans had dragged their sorry asses sufficiently into the action to take the Centurions in the flank. 

A hasty infantry assault cleared away the surviving Jordanian riflemen to seize the objective and end the game!

A short game but riveting - interesting to pit Jordanian Cents against Israeli Sho'ts. The only difference of course being the training, motivation, and skill of the crews:

Does this Israeli victory mean that the man matters more than the machine? Only further games will tell...