Having completed the coastline and the harbour it was time today to get a game in. 

We decided to play the Search and Recover scenario which allowed lots of land whilst being an amphibious game. One side of the board would have the town and harbour and the other the jungle coastline. Five objective markers (chests) were placed around the board, though only one was the one we needed. However in the rules killing combatants and taking ships would also count as objectives.

Brendan had the French in the Sloop and I had English with the Brigantine. We came on with some troops in the ships some on each piece of land. Though I couldn’t have any troops on the harbour at the beginning as the land on that side of the board did not run all the way up to my deployment zone.

The first turn saw our ships sailing towards each other as usual, not much going on as our broadsides were not lined up. Our troops on the land rushed towards objectives.

The second turn saw us start to fire. My swivel guns on the prow of my ship shot at Brendan’s gunners and musket fire was traded. A few sailors on each side were hit. We began to turn our ships to bring broadsides to bear.

We were both getting close to the objective in the water. To capture it we’d have to get within 3″ of it though and to do that would risk being out of position and rather susceptible to fire from the other ship. So we let it slide by.

My militia on land ran up to the first chest on the coast. It was empty. This left them with a good view of the ongoing sea manoeuvres. 

On the other side in the harbour, Brendan’s boucaniers advanced through the harbour towards another chest.

Brendan turned his ship and opened up with a broadside on my forecastle. The medium cannons dealt 6 damage to the hull and killed all of the sailors on the section. This meant he had a critical hit, the first we’d ever rolled, and my ship sprang a leak. If this wasn’t repaired it could mean my ship would sink. On top of that the coastline was getting very close and I didn’t have time to change sail settings!

Brendan’s flibustiers ran forward to check the chest on the jungle road. It was the one with the treasure! All eyes fell on that. I started to move my Forlorn hope towards it.

Instead I fired everything I could at Brendan’s sloop. I killed most of the sailors manning the medium cannons. He’d be unable to reload them! After the damage they’d done on the first shot I was more than happy with that situation.

I realised the way to deal with my ship hitting the coast was to grapple it into position. This I did successfully, pulling the ship up to the cliffs. I’m not sure if that’s how its supposed to work, but there were no arguments. Brendan let his ship stop at the beach, allowing him to unload.

Brendan realised that his troop numbers on this side of the channel were falling quickly. He brought the longboat alongside the sloop and sent two sailors with it over to collect the boucaniers who were now far from the objective stranded on the other side of the channel.

The other sailors he sent up the beach to try to support the flibustiers with the objective. But they got to close to my forlorn hope and were charged and destroyed.

This left the forlorn hope stuck out in the open and the flibustiers peppered them repeatedly with fire. They survived but their numbers were severely depleted.

At the harbour the long boat now only manned by a grizzled veteran reached the boucaniers. 

 

They started to sail back… but in the meantime I’d been shooting the remaining forces on the sloop. The last shot with the re-manned and re-loaded swivel guns wiped out the last of Brendan’s veteran freebooters and his captain. The boucaniers came back to an empty ship!

This was the end of turn 6. The end of the game.

Though Brendan had the objective, I’d killed much of his force and was in a position to take his ship. He’d just killed a few of my troops. It was 2 strike points each. It came down to the value of casualties to determine the winner and I’d certainly killed more of his than he’d of mine. We didn’t bother to count them up and Brendan accepted defeat.

That was an epic game. So much happened and it was great to see so much stuff on the table.