Hi, YA.
(My /comments/responses = >>>>> bolded)
The rules we used were called Admirals, written by the War Artisan himself, Jeff Knudsen. You can download them here.
>>>>> Thank you. I will check them out
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IRL, the French were unprepared for the approach of the British and had to form line as best as able, in somewhat randomized order, on the way out to sea – but Graves dawdled about outside the strait getting his fleet into a line just so, which gave de Grasse time to form a line. Then Graves faced the age-old problem – how to make the approach without getting shot to pieces? He failed – his lead ships got badly shot up before his rear ships even got into range.
>>>>> From what I have read, this was a tactically complicated battle for both commanders. My impression has been that Graves was very "old school" in the handling of his command (not to say that he did not have a number of challenges on his plate. I know that the younger, more aggressive Hood was tearing his hair out.
FWIW, I found the following to be a good summary account – link
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To be fair, Graves was of the generation of officers with personal memories of Byng's fate, so "the line" had special weight in his mind. Since I was never going to face a court martial, I felt free to eschew a proper line-to-line engagement and brazenly ordered Hood to cross the French T across the exit instead, forcing the approach conundrum onto de Grasse. It worked. The French players decided to come aggressively straight in, but suffered more damage on the approach, which made up for the disparity in numbers.
>>>>> In my experience – an all too common mistake among impatient newbie AoS players who have digested too much Nelson. It's nice to see that the rules levied an appropriate penalty for such rashness.
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To your other questions:
• This was 1781, really early for carronades. I don't recall if any of the ships present had any, but I doubt it, and the gunnery factors are very abstract numbers anyway.
>>>>> Just checking "for the sake of good order" as my Dutch friends were fond of saying. While it is true that carronades were in RN service during the AWI, they were not by any means present in any meaningful numbers aboard the British line-of-battle ships until later in the war. Getting reliable data on carronade outfits of these ships is a challenge indeed. My best estimate, after long hunting, is that only about half of Rodney's ships at The Saintes carried carronades and, even then, mostly lighter calibers in relatively small numbers – perhaps 3-5 such pieces on a broadside.
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• The rules pretty much require that French aim high, British aim low, but Lady Luck carries some shots higher or lower than aimed. The net result is normally that the British tend to do more harm, but have trouble organizing a pursuit after some time in action.
>>>>> No real disagreement here. Dismantling fire was doctrinally preferred by the French navy, before poor/inadequate gunnery training in later wars more or less removed hulling fire as a practical option. OTOH, in the AWI, Suffren was a legitimate "wild card" on that score.
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And an answer to a question not asked:
• The game took no account of the disparities in hull bottoms. That was a real factor in the war of the Revolution, and also in this battle. Part of the problem Graves had forming up his fleet was that some of his ships were dragging a kelp forest. That wasn't a factor in this game.
>>>>> DEFINITELY a criminally overlooked aspect of AoS gaming! And one that could produce a dramatic effect. It is not altogether appreciated that coppering of ships did not eliminate the problem of bottom fouling, it only (appreciably, to be sure) slowed the process down. And that still omits the factor of innately slow (HMS Britannia @ Trafalgar;), uniquely fast (Endymion 44; Swiftsure 74; French 2-decked 80's) and "crank" (British 3-decked 80-gunners) ships. Different ship classes can have quite unique "personalities", often depending upon nationality.
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For me, the best part of this game was getting to play the part of the admiral in a genuine fleet action. I've run dozens of games like this, but have hardly ever been able to play any. Most "fleet" games are really just overstretched tactical games with excessive accounting and rates of damage, so players get 2-3 ships and only one real maneuver: the approach to gunnery range. Admirals is a genuine fleet game where division and squadron maneuvers matter more than individual ship actions, and are conducted at a pace that allows many fleet maneuvers in the space of a few hours of gaming.
>>>>> I wrote my rules to accommodate actions up to fleet-level (biggest to date – about 25 ships on a side) and was faced with the challenge of incorporating pre-battle tactical management and the approach to action. It's abstracted – in the sense that, rather than maneuvering lines of battle on the table. Basically – First, weather is generated. Next, successive contested dice rolls, first for weather gauge (winner chooses), then for formation heading (loser declares first), then for type of formation (loser declares first), then for "tactical advantage" (loser lays out his fleet on the table, winner then sets his up in accordance with previous dicing results and certain set-up dictates). The game would then start from there. If the winner of the tactical advantage dice roll dislikes his resulting tactical situation, he may opt to decline the set-up. If so, 2D6 are then thrown to dictate passage of time until the opponents (theoretically) once again get within combat reach of one another; at the point the a/m process is repeated.
It can generate some interesting situations.
B
looks at a multi-period building.
