"Not quite the Battle of the River Plate?" Topic

Today, we had another game of Sails of Glory. to try out the new points system we tried an unusual battle reminiscent of the seminal WW2 battle of the river plate, but with Napoleonic ships!

Fun was had!

The full AAR is on my blog at: link

I hope you enjoy reading it!

That engagement would be essentially impossible for the 'squadron' to win, unless the bigger ship was in serious trouble before it started – battle or storm damage, mutinous/ill crew etc. (For a closer analogue to the River Plate you might try multiple frigates against a small liner or 4th rate – Nelson aboard Agamemnon once beat a dignified retreat from four unenterprising French frigates, for example.)

Spot on with your analysis, Peachy, but remember: the whole purpose of Herky's match up was to try out the new Points System.
We all reached the same conclusion as soon as we saw the set- up.

The points system looks good for 'fine tuning' ships which are already broadly similar – using the 'Captain's abilities' rules and so on.

What it doesn't do is give you an aggregate Points value of 'little ships' which corresponds to a 'big ship'.

I feel like a points system for AoS would work best for strategic-level games, where the superior mobility of the little guys would really be an advantage. For tactical games, I think you'd have to really weight the scale to favour the big guys, to the degree that 'upsets' would be difficult to achieve. (Though you could improve the odds for the small ships in some cases by emphasising 'soft' factors like crew quality.)

I still think it is possible for 3 frigates to beat a first rate, but I think its a hard ask, its for the frigates to win but any mistake and the 1st will almost win by default.

Lawrence has asked for a rematch, with me running the frigates and him the 3 decker, and I will be happy to do so. It should remove the player variable on the result, i hope.

Three 18-pounders might indeed have enough aggregate fire-power to take down a first-rate, but they're just so *fragile* by comparison. Of course, if you knock away a topmast right at the start…

Will be interested to hear how round 2 goes.

3 18pdr frigates against a full bloodied 1st rate? Any 5th rate that catches a full broadside from a 1st rate is done for. A better match may be a 74 gun 3rd rate, but even that will be an uphill battle.

Sails of Glory does give smaller ships more chance than in real life, it is, after all, a game.
Its really funny when a huge 3 decker shoots at a frigate and causes no real damage, that is the joy of wargaming after all….or at least one of the joys!