Scourge vs Le Sans Culottes - Kiss Me Hardy/To Covet Glory

[carojon]

This week was a first for me in the hobby as following a presentation by Richard Clarke of the Two Fat Lardies, together with friends discussing the pros and cons of remote web based wargaming, I decided to give it a go organising a game via Zoom to refight a single ship action between the brig-sloop HMS Scourge and the French Privateer Brig-Corvette, Le San Culottes fought close to the Scilly Isles on the 13th March 1793, the first ship to ship action of the French Revolutionary War.



Taking advise from Richard and the chaps to start small and the advantages age of sail ship actions offered to this way of wargaming I set the table up as seen and the game rolled along effortlessly, providing the next best thing to wargaming face to face, with all the social chat and banter through the game that our hobby offers.



In addition Chris Stoesen's rule additions to Kiss Me Hardy, To Covet Glory, designed to better model actions between the small ships under the rate, worked very well and added to the original rule set perfectly.

If you would like to know more and see a short video presentation of our game then just follow the link to JJ's

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2021/01/all-at-sea-scourge-vs-le-sans-culottes.html

JJ

[Flinty]

Excellent - I wanted to offer some encouragment, as I note replies to AoS posts can be a bit sparse...

I bought War by Sail after watching your run thorugh, I really like it's gunnery mechanics. It's gratifying to know someone else is following the same process of mixing features from various sources. I'm in the process of attempting to mash elements of KMH, War by Sail and Perfect Captian together, not sure it will ever be workable, but then that's half the fun isn't it?

Always interesting to see solo options, so the Gina Will's AI is on my list - thanks for the heads up as I would have  missed that one.

I can't recommend JJ's blog highly enough - your Black Seas conversion ideas solved some serious head-scratching on my part and your finished ships are a pleasure to behold.






 

[Vagabond]

JJ that was a most excellent video presentation, very well done.

I've no knowledge of any of the rule sets you are using but they look to have given a quick and decisive game,  the Black Seas ships you have built rigged and painted are pretty damn nice as well.

I recently started down the Sails of Glory route and am enjoying them a lot but recognise the rule set is probably much simpler than yours. It's interesting to read this as I've just proposed playing a sailing campaign to a couple of likely chaps and I need to flesh out the proposal a bit more this evening.

I had thought to post it here as we progress with the game, but in view of Flinty's warning that might not interest anyone, who knows.

[carojon]

Hi Chaps,
Thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

As you might have guessed I’m having a whale of a time messing about with model ships and rule sets, something that started way back in the 70s with my first set of rules ‘Action Under Sail by S. Birnie of the Halifax Wargame Society of which I still have my 1977 second and 1984 third edition copies, although the 1:1200 Navwar models are long gone.

I have plans to do Trafalgar with the 1:700th models and am busy identifying a set of rules I can jury rig into making that a fun exercise in game management and both KMH and War by Sail are serious contenders but I’m also planning to try out David Manley’s ‘Form Line of Battle’ which have also undergone a bit of fiddling and are close to having a trial test game to see how well they work.

As well as the big game format I also like the small ship scenario stuff and finding rules that can cope well across that spectrum is also an interesting challenge, as obviously having the same rules and becoming familiar with them makes the whole process much simpler.

When I get a test game sorted out I will put up another video report on how it goes.

Thanks again
JJ

[SteveBurt]

For one on one ship duels, ‘Post Captain’ (by ODGW) are excellent - but I wouldn’t use more than one ship per player. It’s a pretty complex set of rules, but really gives a good feel with constant decisions to be made (do I use the crew to reload or do they need to get up the masts and change sail settings or help with tacking?).
For fleet actions, Osprey ‘Fighting Sail’ are great as there is no off-table book-keeping; if you use them, make sure you get the author’s errata (on Boardgamegeek and possibly elsewhere) as that abolishes ships sinking after one broadside.

[IronDuke596]

Yes, I second " Post Captain" a bit of steep learning curve but they make sense once you start playing. We had our first game pre COVID using two ships per side and it was manageable. You certainly get an accurate feel for the AoS using these rules.