Blood and Plunder Sea Battle

Having finished my second ship it was time today to have our first sea battle with Blood and Plunder.

Brendan chose to play the French in the sloop and I had the English in the brigantine. We both had experienced buccaneer commanders. Brendan had his militia unit replaced with extra marins. I however hadn't got the extra sea dogs painted to do the same for the English, so was trying to man cannon with inexperienced troops. Not a good plan at all.

The scenario was Raid and I was the attacker. I was supposed to capture Brendan's ship.

I had the wind gauge, whereas Brendan was sailing into the wind all the time. Luckily for him this didn't make too much difference for a sloop!

We sailed slowly towards each other trying to get decent broadsides. Brendan managed to get better shots in than me and soon I was losing crew. He lost a few, but not so many. 

From the start it was harder to man the guns with my troops. They really were not ideal for the task. I could have done with the extra sailors which are still on my painting workbench. However we continued. Brendan was being far more successful.

Pretty soon we were just sailing alongside trading broadsides. Though an unfair trade, I was getting far more iron from Brendan than I was sending to him. I was also getting a lot of lead sent my way by his flibustiers. Their superior shooting was really causing me problems.

I desperation I tried to grapple his ship so I could board as that might well have gone better for me, but two grapple attempts failed.

Brendan saw his chance and grappled onto my rear. His marins and flibustiers both charged across to my worn out freebooters, wiping them out. With my captain dead and only three men left, I struck my colours.

An excellent game, quite different from the land games and also quite different from any sea games I've played before. It's a lot more detailed as you'd expect. Much more about commanding the crew than sweeping around in clever manoeuvres. 

We had a few issues with the rules at the start, but were soon in the flow of things, though Brendan did keep on forgetting to spend his command points.

We'll certainly be playing a lot more of this.