All at Sea - Cape Ortegal

[carojon]

Picking up from our last gathering to playtest using War by Sail with my growing collection of 1:700th model ships, I was joined by three friends to run a larger set piece action as opposed to the chase scenarios worked on previously.



This action from the fall out from the Battle of Trafalgar has been seen played many times, but I was keen to look at an alternative way of playing it based on the opportunities offered to Vice Admiral Dumenoir to make a better fight of it than he did.



At the end of our game the French had indeed given a very good account of themselves and the scenario provided a tense finish to the day as the victory point tally was made at the close of play.

If you would like to know more then just follow the link to JJ's

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2020/02/all-at-sea-cape-ortegal-4th-november.html

JJ

[Admiral Hawke]

Thank you. I enjoyed that. :-)

You have done a fine job painting and rigging the ships, and complemented them with a good sea mat.

1/700 ships involve similar trade offs to 28mm armies: the individual units look absolutely fantastic, but you quickly run out of room for manoeuvre in anything much bigger than a skirmish unless you have a really big table. But they do look good when done as well as yours. :-)

Please keep the posts coming. :-)

[carojon]

Great, glad you enjoyed the read, and thank you for your comment.

Yes this scale is a trade off for space, but unlike 28mm figures there is not much you can do with sea terrain to make a game more interesting for the eye.

The smaller scale ship gamers tend to try and liven the table up by including islands and other coastal terrain to compensate for very small models in a mass of blue.

I suppose I am more interested in putting the focus back on the ships themselves and unlike the modern era vessels, battles in this period tended to be up close and in daylight so allowing a much tighter area to game in. This scale is, as I point out in the post, the one that allows you to create a game that looks just like a Pocock battle scene.

As the collection grows, I will hope to better illustrate that theme with more of the bigger ships on the table getting in close to exchange broadsides.

Cheers
JJ