Form Line of Battle

After the summer vacations Aksu was again around and we played a napoleonic naval game with Form Line of Battle -rules. Now we could benefit from the fact that when we removated the tables we painted them blue with several layers of gloss varnish just for this purpose.

Anyhow, it was a local game set in Finnish archipelago in 1808 where combined forces of Swedish and English seapowers duked it out with Russian ships coming surprisingly from west and thus blocked the retreat route of the former.


This initial formation caused plenty of grievance in the beginning of the game as one Swedish ship ran aground right away as the rock was just a few centimetres from their point of entry.
The Russians used much more sensible initial line formation.

This battle went narrowly to the allied forces, the big British ship certainly being the decisive factor. Everyone was pretty brutally mauled but they managed to limp off the table with one captured Rusian vessel.

The system is fairly quick and starightforward even for landlubbers. Plenty of hilarity usually ensues when every player command his own ship and positions it in places where it causes problems for the movement of his compatriots.

The biggest problem is that biggesr ships tend to be night invulnerable dreadnoughts that enemy is unable to damage in any way and, IIRC; as the same stats are used for shooting, they also tend to pulverize the opposition at the same go.

-Janne
(Played: September 13th. GM: Aksu. Russians: Mr V & Eero & Andy (?). Brits: Janne. Swedes: Aksu)