 War Artisan  | 27 Feb 2015 7:30 p.m. PST |
Ahhh, "What if . . .". In August of 1759, Admiral De la Clue slipped out of Toulon and attempted to pass Gibraltar unnoticed, in an attempt to join the French squadron at Brest. Admiral Boscawen, who had left off his three month long close blockade of Toulon to refit and reprovision at Gibraltar, received word of De la Clue's departure and set off in pursuit. Unfortunately for the French fleet, half of the ships missed a signal from the admiral and were separated on the night of the 17th. The next day, De la Clue mistook the sails of Boscawen's pursuing squadrons for his own missing ships returning until it was too late to escape, and what followed was a disaster for the French fleet. But what if the French had remained united? When Boscawen arrived in their vicinity on the 18th, he would have found an opponent of approximately equal force, which his instructions would have compelled him to attack (not that he would have hesitated, anyway.) I have just finished my fleets for a game based on this scenario, to be played at this year's convention of the Seven Years War Association, finishing up with De la Clue's flagship, the 80-gun l'Ocean:
Seen in their entirety, the fleets look like this:
I also found my fleets to be, like Nelson, disastrously short of frigates. My solution was to batch-build a set of four, simultaneously, the procedure for which I have documented here, if you're interested: PDF link Now, with a month remaining before the con, all I need to do is put the finishing touches on the rules and print out some charts, and I'm good to go. Jeff |
| 138SquadronRAF | 27 Feb 2015 8:25 p.m. PST |
Great looking work as always.
Plus, Jeff's fleet rules are elegantly simple and very playable. |
| D6 Junkie | 27 Feb 2015 8:46 p.m. PST |
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| Louie N | 27 Feb 2015 10:53 p.m. PST |
Fantastic collection. Proud fleets |
| jambo1 | 28 Feb 2015 3:22 a.m. PST |
Wow!! That is superb, they look absolutely cracking en-masse. Always fancied doing Napoleonic ship wargaming but just feel my painting and modelling skills would fall way short, and when I look at this I realise they will!!! Lovely looking models, well done. |
| David Manley | 28 Feb 2015 5:58 a.m. PST |
Excellent work there, well done! |
| Rhysius Cambrensis | 28 Feb 2015 6:40 a.m. PST |
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jurgenation  | 28 Feb 2015 11:17 a.m. PST |
Great Jeff,can't wait to see them in action off the stormy waters off South Bend Indiana. See ya there sincerely Juergen.I am always amazed that they are made out of paper. |
| Texas Jack | 28 Feb 2015 11:26 a.m. PST |
These look fantastic! Never mind what I wrote in the "when do you have enough stuff?" thread.  |
Volunteer  | 28 Feb 2015 11:40 a.m. PST |
Jeff, you absolutely astound me! Always do. |
 Yellow Admiral | 28 Feb 2015 1:48 p.m. PST |
That looks lovely. If my employer gave me more vacation time, I'd go buy plane tickets to South Bend today. - Ix |
| War Artisan | 28 Feb 2015 1:53 p.m. PST |
Not to worry, Ix. I can bring the same scenario to NavCon next autumn. You'll be there, right? |
| Charlie 12 | 28 Feb 2015 2:10 p.m. PST |
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| whitejamest | 28 Feb 2015 2:12 p.m. PST |
Wow, what a gorgeous collection! Really breathtaking! |
| 138SquadronRAF | 28 Feb 2015 2:28 p.m. PST |
I can bring the same scenario to NavCon next autumn. Dibs on Admiral Boscawen! |
| devsdoc | 28 Feb 2015 3:02 p.m. PST |
Jeff,
Hats off, it is a great looking set-up. Oh! to see them for real. Or to play a game with them. Some people are going to be so lucky.
Thanks for showing.
Be safe
Rory |
| Yellow Admiral | 28 Feb 2015 7:40 p.m. PST |
Dibs on Admiral Boscawen! Are you sure? This is only 2 years after they shot Byng on his own quarterdeck. Pour encourager les autres, non?  Of course, it was Boscawen himself who signed Byng's execution order… perhaps he had insufficient political enemies to worry. - Ix |
| Yellow Admiral | 28 Feb 2015 8:04 p.m. PST |
Not to worry, Ix. I can bring the same scenario to NavCon next autumn. You'll be there, right? If all goes according to my nefarious plans, yes I will. Bwahahahahahaha!!!! The battle you bring to Navcon should be the next logical "what if" scenario, e.g.:
- de la Clue is intercepted again before he reaches Brest (assuming he won at the Seven Years War con), perhaps with a smaller fleet, or perhaps with reinforcements sent from Brest to escort him in
- the battle of Quiberon Bay but with both fleets intact (and probably outside Quiberon Bay, at sea in the Bay of Biscay somewhere)
- etc.
- Ix |
| dantheman | 01 Mar 2015 6:26 a.m. PST |
Four ships in under 8 hours with rigging. That's just sick. Must have been the multiple applications of malt. Great job!!! |
| 138SquadronRAF | 01 Mar 2015 10:47 a.m. PST |
Are you sure? This is only 2 years after they shot Byng on his own quarterdeck. Pour encourager les autres, non? Of course. I'm English with Cornish ancestry. ;-) Well as Hughes in Jeff's Hughes and Suffern game under these rules I really only used two orders from the signal book: "Keep to Windward of the Enemy"
and
"Engage the Enemy more closely" True both side did break off the engagement at about the same time but that's because we had two commanders who had read their orders and understood the briefing on the strategic situation. |
| Yellow Admiral | 17 Apr 2015 3:00 p.m. PST |
How did it go? I see some photos and a brief description in your Flickr album, but a full write up would be even better. - Ix |
| War Artisan | 18 Apr 2015 8:10 a.m. PST |
I have a few more photos, and I would have liked to do a detailed write-up while the game was still fresh in my memory, but I'm in the middle of the very time-consuming and tedious task of writing the instructions for a new set of 1:600 scale Anglo-Dutch ships. Mike Matthews, who was one of the British admirals, has a few of his own pictures and a brief overview of the game on his blog: link |
