"Our Historicon AAR on “Action of 5 November 1813”" Topic

We ran our Napoleonic fighting sail game "Action of 5 November 1813" at Historicon 2024. The scenario was that 8 days of gale force winds drove the British off their blockade stations and back to Minorca. On the 9th day the wind subsided to strong and with the absence of a blockade the French decided to come out of their home port of Toulon and hold exercises. They reached Cape Sicie …and the wind direction changed …and the British blockading ships returned forcing the French to sail back against the wind to return to port while the British tried to cut them off.
First I want to thank my cohorts Marie Alcock Hubley and Richard Greenaway who did an absolutely fabulous job of helping hosting our games using David Manley's "Far Distant Ships" rules. Seriously a dream team of Gamemaster, Rich, and Fleet Advisor and painter of the ships, Marie (I did the scenario, terrain board and everything else). We put on 5 game with 8 players for a total of 40 players and they were all absolutely fabulous players.
The scenario proved to be very well balanced with the British winning 3 games and the French prevailing in 2. By far the most interesting game was our last one where 2 naval historians taught me the doctrine of NEVER tack in front of the enemy except in an emergency and instead wore away from the wind and engaged the elements of the British Mediterranean Fleet. Followed by great seamanship and good die rolls they forced both British squadrons to strike their colors. A stunning French victory.
I also want to thank all the HMGS volunteer staff for all their hard work. From my vantage point everything ran very well. Also a BIG thank you to the HMGS awards judges for awarding us a PELA the first time we ran our game Thursday morning.
We had a GREAT time and look forward to sailing with you next year!!!
Any feedback below would be very much appreciated! Below is a link to my Flickr albums there is one for Historicon 2024 where you can see step by step how I built the terrain and some pictures of the games and some other albums of games we have done. Enjoy!

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Great looking setup! How did you use the board between the tables?

We used it for the arc of fire since its width increases with distance and the tables were suppose to be connected. So we placed one ship on the bridge to do the measurement.

That is a great looking game board I am amazed for all my looking around at every venue I miss lots of negative games.

Ultima Thule, WOW, from the looks of your table(s) alone, you & your colleagues definitely earned that award & then some! A fantastic-looking layout that also sounds like it played out as a terrific game. My sincere congrats to you and your friends!

Looks like a great table, and must have been an interesting game, congrats!

Thanks for all the work-in-progress photos, too!

WOW!!! JUST WOW!!!

EXCELLENT – and you have a lovely singing voice too!

FlyXwire …LOL!!! I'm from the older generation and wouldn't pay or couldn't figure out how to insert audio into my video. So I put my Alexa in the room and told it to play "La Marseillaise" while I videoed ….ROFL!!!!

No wonder it sounded live. :)))