Sail the Spooky Seas - Sails of Glory AAR

Last Saturday was supposed to have been one of Bob's big games (Halloween-themed, appropriately), but last minutes problems came up and the event was unfortunately cancelled. Not having anything else to do, (other) Bob suggested we play Sails of Glory. 

The scenario was a simple "line up and fight" game, with my ship-of-the-line Genereux and frigate Unite against Bob's ship-of-the-line Terpsichore and frigate Defence.

The first few turns saw us maneuvering closer together. I was lucky in that I had the wind in my favor, although I made the mistake of assuming that Sails of Glory measures movement from front to front like most other wargames. This turned out not to be the case, and so for the first couple turns I was moving slower than I should have been! This was quickly corrected.

Maneuvering continued. Bob's ships were forced to sail into the wind, slowing their progress. My ships, however, had the wind angled right into their sails, and they plowed through the waves.

When the ships finally closed, their cannons boomed, with wood and men both flying apart, cut into tiny pieces. The Defence, caught between the Genereux and the Unite (which had started the game loaded with double-shot) was quickly shattered and sunk below the waves.

The Terpsichore came to a full stop and began to reverse, as the Genereux and Unite turned. Crews on both sides scrambled to reload their cannons.

Thanks to some poor planning on my part, the Genereux found itself out of the fight, and would spend the rest of the game trying to turn with poor sails and even poorer wind.

Meanwhile, I had sent the Unite after the Terpsichore. I fully expected this to be a suicide run, as even with the damage that had been done to the British ship from the Genereux, I didn't think the Unite's small armament could do much damage. What the frigate could do, however, is do enough damage that the Genereux could come in and finish the fight.

Events turned out a bit different, however. The British ship-of-the-line and the French frigate came close enough that muskets and swords were readied, and the resulting musketry and boarding action left both ships weakened.

As I had expected the Unite to go down after getting into close range, I had ordered for grapeshot to be loaded into the cannons. Now that the two ships were no longer touching, I fired a broadside into the Terpsichore's decks, along with musket fire from what crew remained on the Unite. This last volley was enough to disable enough of the British ship's crew that it could no longer fight. Victory to the French! 

As Bob and I discussed afterwards, Sails of Glory does have its share of problems. Most of that comes from how complicated the game is in some areas (like orders) and how simple it is in other (like movement). It's definitely a game that becomes challenging to run if each player has more than a couple ships under their control. I prefer it the way it was played in my first experience with the game - a large event game with each player controlling their ship. 

But that doesn't mean it can't make for a fun game, and I'm glad Bob decided to bring it out as a replacement. 

As an aside, we also discussed a set of rules Bob is working on to make use of his Dreadfleet models. They sound interesting, using playing cards for movement, activation, and attacking. Hopefully we'll get a chance to play in the future. 

High Time on the Open Seas - Sails of Glory AAR

I'm back, and this time with an after-action report! Bob Fanelli was once again running a game demo at 7th Dimension Games, and this time it was the recently released Sails of Glory! 

After an explanation of the rules (and there were a lot!), the sides were drawn - both the French and British squadrons were formed of two frigates and two ships-of-the-line. Apparently a standard game of Sails of Glory takes place in a 2'x3' area, so our 4'x6' space allowed for quite a bit of maneuvering before our ships were close enough to open fire. 

This was the ship mat for my ship-of-the-line, the Aquilon. Just looking at all of the spaces and chits was a little daunting at first! But we quickly found that as the game progressed the rules made enough sense to be easily remembered without constant rulebook consultation. 

Like Wings of Glory, Attack Wing, or X-Wing, our ships used cards with distances drawn on them that changed the maneuver depending on the deployment of sails and windage. Since these old wooden ships were relatively slow, each move had to be planned out a turn in advance - so mistakes have to be corrected over a number of turns. Which explains why the Aquilon is a little off-course in the back. 

We quickly realized that frigates were really fighting out of their weight-class when a fresh broadside from a frigate fore-raked a ship-of-the-line and barely managed to do any damage. Their only advantage was in their speed, which meant that a frigate with the wind in it's sails could fire on a larger ship and then quickly dance out of range. 

The game progressed with the French coming to an early advantage. The two French ships-of-the-line managed to trap a couple British ships between them and pounded them down to kindling, while the frigates danced around with round- and grape-shot. 

At the end of the day, the French carried victory by sinking the two British ships-of-the-line and a frigate while only losing a single frigate of their own. I had to leave at that point, but the guys were setting up another 3 vs 3 game with only ships-of-the-line, which seemed to me to be a better fight. 

Playing the game, I can see that Sails of Glory is much more like Wings of Glory than either X-Wing or Attack Wing due to the complexity. With so many chits and actions to handle, I couldn't imagine a player handling more then one or two ships without causing themselves a major headache. However, this method means the game is perfect for larger games like this, where each player only needs a single ship.

I had a great time with Sails of Glory, and judging by Bob's collection, I'm hoping we see the game played more often.