NOVA Close Action group game of scenario JA-03. This is a hypothetical action from 1740 between two small roughly-equal squadrons. If it seems familiar, this is the same scenario as our previous outing with the addition of one ship on each side. An unusual hitch is that the new Spanish ship, Princesa, begins already having lost her first rigging section and most of her second, and so begins under tow.
The British need to destroy at least three Spanish sections by game turn 16 or the Spanish win, so the onus is on the British to engage. Assuming the game continues at that point, the match is decided by victory points.
(Click on any image to see an enlargement.)
The image shows the results after scatter, which mostly spread the two fleets a bit farther apart.
On the British side (red blocks) are, left to right, Lenox (70), Kent (70), Orford (70), and St. Albans (50).
The Spanish squadron (yellow blocks) is, left to right, Castilla (60), Principe (70), Princesa (70) under tow, and Esperanza (50).
We had fewer players than last time so everyone controlled two ships each. My ships weres Castilla and Princesa; since the latter was being towed and hence just follows the tower, I had much the lightest load.
The white "MS" blocks atop the ships indicate that they are at Medium Sail. The remaining Spanish ships are at Fighting Sail, and cannot raise sail until game turn 5.
The Spanish run. The British are (surprisingly, to me) in no hurry and stay their course, barring spunky little St. Albans.
Now broad-reaching, the Spanish run faster. The British prepare to start to begin to get ready to chase.
Castilla slips left to start tightening the Spanish formation as the chase begins. Orford seems unconcerned.
The chase continues. Note Lenox, as the only fast ship present, slightly pulling ahead from Kent.
More chasing. Castilla and Esperanza raise sails.
Looking at the shaded areas on the map, it looks like everyone moved backwards, but we had to reset positions since the Spanish ships were moving off the map.
Apologies to Orford for cropping her out of the shot.
Another map reset. The Spanish line returns to close-hauling. Ranges are still too long for gunfire.
Castilla opens fire and knocks a sailor box off Lenox.
Lenox gets her revenge, taking out a rigging and hull box from Castilla. Principe fires at Kent and St. Albans fires at Esperanza, but neither has any effect.
Apologies to St.Albans for cropping her out of the shot.
The Spanish fleet turns away to avoid having their T crossed.
Everyone that can fire gets their licks in this turn.
The British lead ships tighten up. Castilla slips left trying to get into some sort of formation with the towed mass. Arguably I should have forgone the turn of shooting and just pivoted running instead.
Kent fired on Castilla with a half-broadside (rather than taking a full broadside at Principe or Princesa) and is rewarded by hitting my crew, as did Kent. Castilla has now lost three of the four boxes in the first sailor section. Despite taking a lot of further damage as the game continues (spoiler!) she will luckily suffer no further crew hits and the first section survives the battle.
Note that we had another map reset to avoid falling off the edge of the world.
Kent no longer has a shot on Castilla and switches to Principe instead. Princesa, with a modifiers for an E-rated crew and being towed, opts not to fire this turn. Probably a mistake on my part.
St. Albans and Esperanza's duel take a pause this turn as they both avoid each other's arc of fire.
My notes are failing me, but at some point around this time Principe took a Waterline Damage critical hit which effectively knocked out a number (4?) of crew boxes.
Another map reset. Everyone gets a shot in this turn as Orford has finally joined the fight, to Esperanza's dismay. Castilla is again double teamed by Lenox and Kent.
Things get exciting as St. Albans lands a critical hit on Esperanza, forcing a morale check, which she passes. (What type of critical hit? My notes fail me again here.)
But it's not all rosy for the British. Principe knocks out Lenox's first rigging section, which cuts her signal halyards. Since the British were being played by two experienced players who knew what to do anyway, the running joke became that British morale increased as a result of the admiral not being able to send signals until the damage was repaired. (Turn 16, I think.)
Castilla gets a break as Kent's moves behind Lenox, preventing her from firing this turn. But no breaks for Esperanza, whose first rigging section goes down to a shot from Orford. At least St. Albans, with only a half broadside, does no damage.
Another board reset. The Spanish flagship begins turning to running.
And another bad turn for Esperanza, as Orford destroys her first hull section and the resulting hull check of Leader Casualties on the Quarterdeck inflicts a marine loss and a second morale check. She fails one of the two and drops from D quality to E.
On the other side of the map the Spanish luck is a bit better. With Kent still masked, Castilla sustains just one hull hit, while she and Princesa deal out four boxes of damage to Lenox.
The Spanish squadron follows the flagship's lead.
Another hard turn for Esperanza, who loses her first sailor section to Orford and fails the subsequent morale check, dropping to F quality.
With Esperanza now having lost three sections, I thought the British had just narrowly avoided the sudden death victory condition. But it turned out that we misinterpreted the Waterline Damage critical hit on Principe and that at some point she had actually lost a sailor section. So the Brits were good even without this turn's results.
It's some small recompense that Castilla takes out Lenox's second rigging section. She used to be the fastest ship on the board. Not now!
Principe initiates the Spanish running away again.
Princesa takes her first damage of the game, losing a sailor box to Kent's half broadside.
Since we were stern to stern, Principe and Castilla exchanged messages. I said I'd follow Princesa, in hopes of forming some kind of line.
The Spanish fleet continues to try to get away. There's very little firing but Orford knocks out Castilla's first hull section with a critical hit also causing extra marine casualties and resulting in three(!) morale checks at the end of the turn. She passes two of them but the remaining failure drops her from D to E quality.
At this point it was getting late and we called the game.
The final section losses were:
| Ship | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | H1 | H2 | H3 | H4 | S1 | S2 | S3 | S4 | M |
| Lenox | ● | ● | |||||||||||
| Kent | |||||||||||||
| Orford | |||||||||||||
| St. Albans | |||||||||||||
| Castilla | ● | ||||||||||||
| Principe | ● | ||||||||||||
| Princesa | |||||||||||||
| Esperanza | ● | ● | ● |
The one-box-aways were Castilla's marines and first sailor section, St. Albans first hull section, and Kent first rigging section.
The barely-toucheds were Princesa with one box of damage, and Orford with two.
I found it interesting when writing this up that every section loss on the Spanish side was caused by Orford, which was effectively out of the first two-thirds of the battle. The other British ships contributed to the damage, of course, but Orford got the kill shots in, so to speak.
Also of note was that this battle was generally fought at medium range, with consequently moderate gunnery effects; with eight ships over eighteen turns, I count only eight shots (ignoring critical hits) which inflicted more than a single box of damage. It was an interesting change of pace from the Nelsonian melees we often see in Close Action.
Speaking of critical hits, there were just two or three, all on the Spanish. In general, the British had better luck when firing. Principe's gunnery was notably unlucky.
Tactically, the British clearly won on VPs. The players were kind enough to suggest that strategically the Spanish may have pulled it out, in that it seemed we'd be able to escape with Princesa. The Brits also expressed some concern about their formation during the game, but for a number of turns they had effectively ganged up 2:1 on the Spanish flanking ships, which seemed like good strategy to me.
Princesa was under tow the entire game but upon reviewing the scenario for this write-up it appears that she doesn't have to be, which I had assumed. We probably should've discussed if/when to untow her. Getting rid of the -1 gunnery modifier to both towed and towing ships might've made a difference.
Anyway, another enjoyable outing. Thanks to all the participants!