Well, it was about time I ran an Age of Sail game. And I'd bought this waterline atomic horror figure from Khurasan Miniatures. So I decided to combine the two.
The premise: It's 1781 and a British squadron has been sent to capture the Dutch Japanese trading concession. But teh Dutch have sent their East Indies squadron to stop teh British. The two forces meet in the Sea of Japan, close to an ominous looking volcanic island …
I used the forces from the (real) 1781 Battle of Dogger Bank for this game, as I knew they gave a fairly evenly balanced action. One player knew of my liking for things Kaiju, and was suspicious that there was more to the action than it first appeared; the other players just assumed that the volcano was a possible danger.
Anyway, battle was joined, and the Dutch got the worse of it. But after a few rounds of firing there were ominous rumbles from the volcano, followed by the appearence of a 250ft* tall lizard, swimming rapidly towards the two fleets. However rather than settle their differences and unite against the common danger, the two sides kept fighting. Typical. Godzilla (for the lizard was he) flamed a Dutch veseel before eating it. Having acquired a taste for wood and gunpowder (which regenerated his fiery breath), he turned on a British ship, the 50-gun 'Preston', but failed to hit it with his ranged attack. The 'Preston'sailed to safety, even managing a cheeky broadside or two as it did so, but this left the British flag, HMS 'Fortitude' in Godzilla's path. This too was torched by Godzilla's breath, then eaten.
By now, though, the rest of the ships had fled to windward, still fighting and with the Dutch still on the losing side. At this point we called a halt to the game.
We used 1/1200th scale ships from Navwar, and our favourite Age of Sail rules, A&A's 'Form Line of Battle'. I wrote some special rules to cover Godzilla, of course; he was basically run by the game-system, closing in on and attacking teh nearest ship he could see. This led to a small amount oof manuever by both sides as they contrived to ensure that enemy ships were the ones to attract his attention. In fact, despite the presence of Godzilla, most of the game was a conventional ship action; Godzilla ended up picking off ships on the fringes rather than getting right in amongst them. Both sideas had seven ships of the line, and lost one each to Godzilla. However the the Dutch had had three others disabled by the British as well, so the evening was really a victory for the Royal Navy. Again.
Pictures here:
link
*The model is nominally 500ft tall and 1/2400th scale; I was using 1/1200th scale ship. I reasoned that in 1781 Godzilla was smaller than he is now :-)
paints brigs for the British fleet.
