Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Salty Squigs a'Sailing - Man O' War AAR

At what may become a regular session on Thursday, John hosted another game of Man O' War, with myself commanding the opposing fleet and Sam watching over the game.

John decided to stick with his previous Greenskin flotilla, with a Hulk surrounded by two squadrons of Drillakillas and two squadrons of Bigchukkas.

Since we were adding wind rules to this game, I commanded an small Empire fleet, with a Greatship supported by a squadron of Wolfships and a squadron of smaller Wargalleys.


Like last time, John's Drillakillas surged forward in front of his fleet, hoping to use their massive drills to sink my ships before the rest of the Orc fleet chugged into position. The Imperial fleet shifted to the right, readying their cannons.


And of course, because it's an Orcs & Goblins force, pure luck came into play against John. One Drillakilla was immobilized by a cannon from a Wargalley. Another managed to hit a Wargalley but sunk in exchange for a bit of damage. And the last Drillakilla hit the Greatship but only sunk itself!


I had to split my fleet in two, with the Wargalleys moving to intercept the second squadron of Drillakillas. These managed to do some actual damage, with one of the Wargalleys losing its oars and begin left out of the fight.


Now the fight was between the Greenskin Hulks and Bigchukkas, and the Imperial Greatship and Wolfships.


I scored a lucky critical hit early in a turn on the Hulk, which resulted in the crew panicking and wounding the admiral. This left the hulk unable to act in the turn, which gave my Wolfships free reign to turn and engage with their bow guns.


Unfortunately for John, he tried to board the Greatship with his Hulk after I rolled extremely lucky against his Smash-hammer attack (which should have done a lot of damage, but I stopped five of the six hits). Between my cannons, crew, and a Man O' War card that gave me an advantage in boarding actions, the Greenskin ship was quickly denuded of its crew.


However, the small crew I assigned to the Hulk was then boarded by the crew of a Bigchukka, who tossed the humans overboard.

That crew was then evicted by a ramming attack against the big hulk! (Although I messed up here - ships can't ram using their sails, only under oar power. Sorry, John! I'll study the rulebook more.)

The concentrated fire of the Bigchukkas was able to sink one of my Wolfships.


With the Hulk uncrewed and the Imperial fleet mostly concentrated in the same area, John decided to concede, since the Bigchukkas were outmatched.

Apart from a few rules hiccups, I enjoyed the game. Like I said, it looks like we'll be making Thursdays our Man O' War night as we add in more rules like Wizards, Magic and Fliers (and make sure to double check old rules!).

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