Defence of St. Helen’s Scenario
June 22nd, 2012
Context from the previous battle report:
I also set up for the Defence of St. Helen’s scenario. I used the dimensions given (the table in the link is too small for what they have listed, probably because they don’t play huge games
), and tried to set up the islands and icebergs the same way.
There will be five fleets, five 500 point deathmatch fleets (so a total of over 2500 points in play, just like the regular 500 point games). The fleets of the Spanish and the French-Americans are the defenders, and have worked out a sort of strategy before the game’s start. Their biggest and best ships are concentrated in the rear, while they send their other ships out first to annoy the attackers while the forts do some damage. Since I only have one Spanish fort (El Puerto Blanco) and two French forts (St. Pierre and Paradis de la Mer), and four are required for the game, I have let the defenders use the Pirate fort Dead Man’s Point. The English, Pirates, and MercCursedRebels (I may refer to them as the MCRs, not to be confused with My Chemical Romance) are the attackers, and have similarly positioned their uncrewed/weaker ships at the front of their formation (one of those awesome sights, a ‘forest of masts’). The ratio is 3:2 in favour of the attackers, with 1500 points and 1000 points. The attackers command 81 ships, and the defenders, 56, for a total of 137 (not quite 200
Original as seen on Deviantart
The game has started, with the first three turns down. Five defender ships have been sunk, and Dead Man’s Point has been destroyed. The defenders are harassing the attackers with some of their smaller ships, and have formed a defensive line blocking the southern path from the edge of the game area to the islands protruding from the centre. I would play more today, but the ten masters have ruined my gaming experience for the day 
. I would rather not go on a long rant, but if they keep disappointing me I think I will flip out. Basically, they all stink. The Baochuan went 7 for 20 in her double shoot action today thanks to a rare 6 from Zheng He. She has 7 rank-3 guns, and they were essentially rank-2’s thanks to world-hater Chang Pao. Whatever. In a rage, I ignored the ‘can’t shoot at ships in your own fleet’ rule and sunk all three of them easily. HMS Leicester sunk the Baochuan without any help, and she didn’t even have Hermione Gold (MI version) on board. I think I will redo the turn and place them back where they were, and give them a final chance. I know they aren’t designed for just combat, but the fact that they are this bad is just plain embarrassing. Hopefully they will prove me wrong when I resume play again tomorrow.
I have finished this game, and the attackers won on turn 14, one turn before the time limit. The ten masters did reasonably well, so they are safe for now. The attackers basically just flooded the top, middle, and bottom of the game area with tons of ships, and the defenders were overwhelmed. The last defending ship afloat was El Acorazado, but her defences were bypassed by a Broadsides Attack from HMS Bretwalda. A good scenario, although a chunk of attacking ships didn’t get to see action.
Today I played a three game set of deathmatches between two 300 point fleets. The idea was to have a small group of true super-gunships against a much larger group of good, cheap, smaller gunships. The only restrictions were the 300 point limit, but I also only let the small ship fleet have ships that cost less than 10 points, and have 3 masts or less. The big ship fleet contained just 6 ships for all 300 points, with the Baochuan, Delusion, Shui Xian, El Acorazado, HMS Dreadnought, and Le Bonaparte (DJC version). The small ship fleet contained 25 ships, with most of them either Pirate or Spanish, although there were also ships from England, France, America, and the Cursed. The big ship fleet won 2 of the 3 games. They lost the third game only because the small ship fleet had incredible luck with the dice. The ten masters were respectable in these games, although at one point the Shui Xian (with world-hater MI Hermione Gold on board) missed five times in a row, and Le Bonaparte rolled four one’s in a row 
. If not for this aberration, the big ship fleet would have won all three times. Their biggest advantage was that they had a sac captain, three cancelers, and two SAT crew.
My next few games will be much smaller, as I intend to test out this fleet and possibly some others.
The above fleet went 1-2 against a Pirate fleet.