Warlord Games Black Seas

[dartfrog]

As others have said it's horses for courses. I'm one of the many who have never played much in the way of AoS battles and am happy to have a simple game with a little colour thrown in. I'm not looking at a brain wracking game that leaves me walking away. If I find the game fun, but a little lacking, I can go hunt for more 'crunchy' rules in a few months time.

[El Frantico]

Yeah Oak and Iron has some appeal, I just wish the ship models were a bit tastier.

I am curious to see if Black Seas goes into other periods over time as the designer mentioned... I mean he did talk about a kraken as well so he may have been taking the piss.

Hey Rick, may I ask what you find lacking on them? Also, have you seen some of the final prototypes? If not, there are some pictures here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/firelockgames/oak-and-iron/posts/2636126

By the way, a new video detailing the games mechanics just went up today: https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/round-breakdown-oak-iron/

[SteveBurt]

As an age of sail grognard, I have been waiting for play through videos on YT at a minimum before critiquing. Now there are several out including one with a Warloard employee and another by On Table Top. Suffice it to say that some of what I have seen is troubling for those looking for granularity in combat. For those gamers who don't know the difference between a motor torpedo boat and a frigate the basic rules are certainly sufficient for a fun club game. This is certainly the intent as noted by the designer who is an age of sail aficionado, which makes me hopeful for the advanced rules. To a certain extent you won't completely turn a beer and pretzels game into a sim with just 4 pages of advanced rules though.

Several examples that trouble me. One playthrough (On Table Top) video showed that brigs have 2 heavy  cannon dice which do 2 points of dmg per hit. But there is nothing that distinguished those guns from the heavy cannon on the Santisima Trinidad. The Santisima carried a battery of 36 lb guns and a battery of 24 lb guns, plus a battery of 12 lb guns on the upper deck. Most small unrated brigs carried 6 lb guns unless rearmed with carronades. Put it another way it made a difference that USS Constitution was armed with 24 lb long guns opposing frigates with the standard 18 lb batteries.

Another is in the basic rules running with the wind is the fastest point of sail, which is incorrect. Apparently the sailing and wind rules are a bit different with the addition of the advanced rules. Also the attacker in boarding combat gets a +1 to the dice? Like to know the rational for that one. And grappling can occur when the ships are 3 inches apart!?!

Anyway I do like the fact that everything, except paint, you need is in the box including rigging. Since the models are larger I was hoping to use them for lake battles however I am not sure the rules have sufficient granularity on the low end of the stats for that, despite that they do have gunboat models.

I've just received the Master & Commander set this morning, and I'm pretty impressed with the amount of stuff (islands, sea mat, markers etc) you get as well as the ships. The basic sailing rules are indeed unrealistic, but the advanced ones are not. They don;t allow you to sail as close the the wind, restrict you to light sails when the wind is coming for forward of the beam, and restrict you to battle sails when the wind is coming from dead aft. You only get to use full sail when reaching or broad reaching. The rules look ok from a read through, but we'll need to play them to be sure. The 1:700 models are nice and match up well with my existing 1:600 scratch built ships.
So the game looks fine to me. I've also looked at the video for Oak & Iron and those rules look a lot more fiddly to me (as much as I like Blood & Plunder there are a lot of fiddly bits in those rules as well), although I'll probably end up buying those as well.....

[Grumpy Gnome]

Hey Mike, those do look better than the ships I had seen previously. I like the idea you folks are considering on the different sail sprues. Options are generally a good thing. The galleon and fluyt certainly have my attention.

I have been off line a week and have not seen any game play videos of either game. I will need to play catch up.

DeRuyter some of your concerns I understand. Certainly the cannon and weight of shot issue. The boarding stat? Maybe a bonus for attackers having the initiative, ie attacking when they are ready rather than having to react? But yeah, 3“ for boarding? Sounds like some house rules tweaking to be done.

[SteveBurt]

The attacker does get +1 in the first round of boarding

[SteveBurt]

The two heavy cannon on the Brigs bother me a bit as well, but it is easy enough to fix - just make some ship cards with 2 light cannon (and probably 20 points cheaper since that seems to be roughly point difference for heavy v light).
No doubt there were heavy cannon armed brigs, but most had 9 pdrs or carronades.

[DeRuyter]

I've just received the Master & Commander set this morning, and I'm pretty impressed with the amount of stuff (islands, sea mat, markers etc) you get as well as the ships. The basic sailing rules are indeed unrealistic, but the advanced ones are not. They don;t allow you to sail as close the the wind, restrict you to light sails when the wind is coming for forward of the beam, and restrict you to battle sails when the wind is coming from dead aft. You only get to use full sail when reaching or broad reaching. The rules look ok from a read through, but we'll need to play them to be sure. The 1:700 models are nice and match up well with my existing 1:600 scratch built ships.
So the game looks fine to me. I've also looked at the video for Oak & Iron and those rules look a lot more fiddly to me (as much as I like Blood & Plunder there are a lot of fiddly bits in those rules as well), although I'll probably end up buying those as well.....

Thanks for the heads up on the advanced rules. Eases my mind a bit. I think someone has posted a lets play video using all the rules as well. I think O&I will play much like B&P and I did think that B&P was fiddley the first time I played it. Of course for O&I I just had to have the 17th century ships!!

I think on the brigs I would do as you suggest - change to light cannon or better yet to carronades which for 1812 is more the norm. I will also kitbash several brigs into schooners.

[SteveBurt]

Well, we had a game of this last night. We used the 'Cat and Mouse' scenario from WI, so 1 frigate vs 2 brigs.
We used the advanced wind rules, and 'fire as she bears' but not any other advanced rules.
A really fun game; it was a draw after 6 moves (1 brig on the point of striking), but we continued for another 4 moves or so and an unwise attempt to swing round using the sea anchor saw the frigate hit several times without reply (helped by great dice rolling from the brigs), and striking her colours.
Only one thing I don't like about the rules as they stand; a hit on a roll of 1 is a critical, but this means that when it is hard to hit, it is more likely that any hits will be criticals, and also means that a light cannon is as likely to score a critical hit as a heavy one or a carronade. Easy to fix: instead of using the to hit rolls, roll 1d10 per damage point, 1s (or perhaps 10s so low rolls are not always good) are critical hits.
A shot of the action; I've not build the starter ships yet, so the frigate is one of my scratch built 1:600 ships and the brigs are WizKids Pirates of the Spanish main ships which I based and painted the white edges a while ago - they make pretty good gaming models.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Sadly it does not look like I will be making it to Crisis but fortunately I got to Spiel in Essen a couple of days ago. Had a nice chat at the Warlord Games stall. Got a good look at Black Seas But had no time for a demo game.

Beautiful minis. Nicer than I actually expected. The acetate ratlines And shrouds were better than I expected but still not as good as I would wish. I was told new sails would be coming out in the near future with battle damage. Lots of new things in the pipeline but I think they were reluctant to spoil the surprises.

I was told the release has been a smashing success for them, far exceeding expectations. This is good news because it means they are much more likely to explore other periods, like the Age of Piracy.

[Warboss Nick]

Dumb question from someone who hasn‘t had a chance to test the game yet: what would I miss by buying the rulebook and a fleet box but not the starter set? Anything essential?

[SteveBurt]

You'd miss the damage markers, the scenery, the sea mat, the measuring gadgets, and you'd find you don't have the right ships for half the scenarios which requires frigates & brigs.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Speaking of galleons....



.... just sayin‘....

Looks like Reaper is helping the 28mm nautical crowd.

[Warboss Nick]

You'd miss the damage markers, the scenery, the sea mat, the measuring gadgets, and you'd find you don't have the right ships for half the scenarios which requires frigates & brigs.

But the fleet boxes also contain frigates & brigs. Wouldn‘t I end up having too many of them?

[DeRuyter]

Steve thanks for the AAR. Very helpful.

Looks like I am in for a starter set - best value as well. One idea for the extra ships if you also get the fleet box. There are definitely too many brigs but you can convert several into merchant brigs (file off the guns paint all brown wood hull and done!). Or with a bit more work into schooners.  One of my favorite battles involves 10 frigates so no worries there!

[SteveBurt]

But the fleet boxes also contain frigates & brigs. Wouldn‘t I end up having too many of them?

You'd end up with lots of frigates and brigs. Whether that's a bad thing I don't know. You could convert some excess Frigates to small merchants, or American super Frigates, and you could convert brigs to sloops and cutters. Or you could use the extra ships to make 'sunken ship' bases.
I already have ships of the line + 1st rates in 1:600 scale scratch built many years ago, so I don't need any more of those. What I was short of was small ships; I only had 2 frigates, so the starter box has been ideal for me. It also turns out that the WizKids Pirates ships are a good match size-wise so can fill in for missing models, merchants and so forth.