The year is 1885. The defence of the Norfolk coast is only a sideshow in the gigantic struggle between the French invaders and the British defenders, yet defended the coast has to be, and in this task the Royal Navy is ably - even though some may contest the last word - assisted by local volunteers. In order to guard the inlets on the Norfolk coast against possible intrusions by the enemy, a small fleet of requisitioned steam yachts, pinnaces and elderly gunboats has been organized and put under the command of Captain Octavius "Taffrail" Stormer; the old gunboat HMS "Rainbow" serves as a flagship for his small command.
Lt Algernon "Algy" Smythe-Fythleswyth has been put in command of HMS "Bloody Lance", a small race yacht that after being requisitioned was fitted with a 3pdr QF gun and a spar torpedo. Boatswain Benedict Tiller is tasked with conning the boat and serves as second-in-command to Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth. Both share a long history of serving together, ever since Smythe-Fythleswyth was a young midshipman.
Test Scenario 1.
HMS "Bloody Lance" is pitted against two French pinnaces, one armed with a Gatling gun, the other with a spar torpedo. A small cutter with a small crew of picked riflemen adds to the Gaulic punch.
HMS "Bloody Lance" in all its glory - Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth is the fairy haired chap to the right of the gun crew (and yes, the gun still lacks paint; that's probably the reason for its, uhem, suboptimal performance in the game).
The French boats; luckily, the wind was in favour of using the cutter - somehow we decided on using the cutter before determining the wind direction; that could have gone seriously wrong...
Boatswain Tiller is conning HMS "Bloody Lance", the Lieutenant is with the gun crew, while a party of three men armed with rifles led by a mate is assembled on the foredeck. The French Lieutenant decides to put the cutter in between the two pinnaces, personally leading from the gatling-armed one. His chances to succeed are slim at best, which is why no-one bothered to remember his name!
And off it went. Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth astonished everybody by employing the scandalously innovative tactic of lying still and waiting for the enemy. His gunners certainly profited from this novel approach, as a well-aimed shot by the 3pdr sent the gatling-armed pinnace to the bottom - first round, and the French have already lost their only major weapon.
On the left, the French pinnace is slowly going down; it took two turns to slip beneath the waves, allowing a final angry burst of defiance - which hit nothing at all. This started to look like an easy victory, particularly as the French commander, ahem, struggled with the fact that the sails on his cutter prevented the soldiers aboard from firing at the enemy.
Argh!
However, some deft manouvreing actually resulted in the second pinnace making a mad dash for HMS "Bloody Lance" - and actually succeeding in a textbook spar torpedo attack. Boatswain Tiller, however, was not impressed: "Yer spar torpeedo is not peeinted, ye eediot!" Which indeed it wasn't - and which certainly was the reason for the b----y thing not going off at all!
Instead, the gun crew turned onto the pinnace and let go - only to miss, and miss again once the two boats had seperated. Rather a poor showing by what was assumed to be a veteran crew.
Undaunted, the French commander yelled something incomprehensible, which probably meant something like "I still have a cutter with three soldiers in it! Be overawed by the magnificence of my power!". As a result, the gun crew on HMS "Bloody Lance" turned the gun towards the cutter...
... and missed again (who would have thought it). And even when the cutter rammed the boat, the gun continued to just make holes into the sails.
The two ships finally made contact, and one of the soldiers hit Boatswain Tiller, who went down unconscious. The French army lieutenant jumped aboard the "Bloody Lance" as well, and a brief and bloody melee ensued.
The gun crew tried to blow the cutter to pieces - with the predictable result of yet another hole in the sail!
This left finally only Lt Smythe-Fythleswyth and one of the gunners standing aboard the "Bloody Lance", and a lone sailor in the cutter (the other pinnace had in the meantime drifted off map).
In the end, a clear but rather bloody victory for the Royal Navy. The rules already work fairly well; close combat needs some adjustment as it is currently absolutely deadly for nearly everybody involved.
Apologies for the poor pictures - not a lot of light, and we had to play on the floor, as I, uhem, seriously underestimated the space you need even for simple manouevres. Good fun it all was, though.
We'll have to do some minor rules adjustment - and to finish the models... - before we'll be off into the second round of tests.