After seeing the gunboat Philadelphia in the Smithsonian a few months ago, I caught a bit of a bug to do a Valcour Island game. Last weekend I finally had an opportunity to get it on the table, and I've written up a report on the action.
I used GMT's Flying Colors: Serpents of the Seas, because I think it was the best option available. It is simple enough to play out large games in a few hours, and for inexperienced players to learn the basic mechanics fairly quickly. It's the sort of game people play very differently after they have a little experience with it, but at least it gets them sailing quickly. All players here were playing the rules for the first time.
I had 4 players, and set one up as the Americans and 3 as the British. After the first 2 turns, I told the British that from then on they would not be able to talk to each other to coordinate actions, only to ask questions about rules mechanics, and that the player controlling Pringle, the British naval commander, would make all decisions about which sub-command to activate when the British had the initiative. I wanted to give them a modest challenge in working together.
I also tweaked a few points of the rules. I modified the firing arcs of the gunboats, since Flying Colors gives them a huge penalty for firing straight ahead. That seems strange to me, as single gun gunboats mount their guns in the bow. I also forbade anyone from raising full sails, because I think a key part of the scenario is that the larger British ships take a while to get into the action. (I have mixed feelings about the effects of this one – on the one hand, it did indeed make it take longer for those ships to move up, but it meant the American vessels that peeked out below the island to draw the British in spent more turns being fired on before reaching the rest of the American line).
When you look at how the scenario played out, it's worth bearing in mind that in Flying Colors, T rated vessels (which here included all of the gunboats on both sides, and several of the small American vessels) have no bearing on the point at which one side will break off. The game incentivizes you to be pretty reckless with them, which is a bit of an issue. If I were going to run the scenario again, I would probably try to tweak that.
Anyway, more pictures and too many words here:
link
paints brigs for the British fleet.
