Hi and thank you for the comments.
LS - You make an interesting point on fighting these historic encounters, especially when the outcome was so dramatically in favour of one side or the other.
I suppose the answer is what an individual enjoys about the games they stage and play and I suppose in the case of a battle like Trafalgar, the exploration of a battle that was so decisive in its outcome can be an absorbing intellectual exercise in understanding why the battle was fought the way it was, given the choices presented to the historical commanders, and then presenting the players representing those commanders an opportunity to see if they can improve on that historical performance.
Thus you move away from the zero-sum game of win-lose, beloved by points based set ups, looking for ‘balance’, something all commanders in history of opposing forces always strove to avoid, looking for as much advantage as they could get, to in my opinion a much more nuanced aspect of our hobby, namely to perhaps come away with a much better appreciation for the situational performance achieved by those we read about in history books often repeating other history books, but still presenting a victory conditions outcome based on comparing game performance to the historical one.
If Trafalgar is fought using those guiding parameters, with a rule set able to reflect the combat capabilities for the theme being played, the final outcome is likely to be the same, namely a British victory over the Combined fleet. The question such a game then poses is how does the victory compare to the historical outcome and can the Allies organise their battle more effectively than Villeneuve, that sees more of their ships escaping and perhaps causing more damage or even more losses to the British in the dogfight melee that occurred by better use of their ships. You might even throw in the potential for a change in the wind, that both commanders had to face and contend with as a possibility, that could have changed things dramatically, and with a fleet battle set of rules like FDS and the time to play, look at the end of a large battle where one side is forced to break off and organise a rally point and rearguard whilst the other looks to pursue and take more prizes, an aspect rarely seen in an AOS game.
I hope that answers your question to some extent.
Cheers
JJ
27 February 2008, 10:39:57 AM