Truants Game Day - 8/19/11 - War of 1812 Naval Action

This is our second to last Truants game day this year; Mark and Kevin need to get back to schooling another generation of young Americans soon. Today's game was hosted by Dave S., a US Navy veteran with a love of it's history. Here you can see one of his many fine handmade ships for today's game. EDIT: The ships were actually scratch-built by Mark W. - my apologies. The scenario was based on the Battle of Lake Ontario (another oops, I initially thought it was Lake Erie - oh, well, they're both Great!), and we used rules Dave designed himself. The turns are based on activating ships in order of highest cards assigned to individual ships. All ships get two cards, and the player can select which one to use - consulting with fellow players on the same side is allowed. I liked this sequence, although I felt placing the cards next to the models at the start of each turn distracts from the otherwise nice setup.

Here are the US ships, whose guns far outclassed and outnumbered the British ships' guns. Even the small schooners initially being towed had some heavy firepower.

Along with Bruce M. and Adrian, I ran some British ships. The two I had were small and had only guns on the port and starboard side. In fact, none of the British ships had guns on the bow or stern. Most of the US ships had these. Here is the ending stages of the battle - clearly an American victory.

All the players agreed the firing mechanism was fine; just enough detail, but not super chart heavy. There was some recommendations for tweaking little things - like speed and turning, but nothing big. I think keeping the cards with the players and not next to the ships would make the game look nicer while being played.

I'm hosting next week's final Truants game for the season. It'll be a Peninsular War skirmish game using Sharp Practice. Haven't played the rules for sometime, so should be refreshing. I really like these Sharp Practice for "black powder" era skirmish. However, for larger games, I'm going to try using Warlord's Black Powder.

Finally, when I got home today - the long-awaited (about a month) order from Warweb.com arrived. Well-worth the wait. It contains the Old Glory Ashigaru spearmen and teppo to fill the rank and file of a Sengoku army; and also several packs of Crusader Spanish Scutarii to add to a planned Carthaginian army.