Black Sea's First Tryout

Having been lured into buying a Frigates and Brigs starter set after painting up the free frigate in Wargame's Illustrated I'd painted the ships up but failed dismally to rig them.

Luckily Dave kindly offered to rig them for me so I'd handed them over a short while ago and, as he had finished them, we arranged to play my first game.

Firstly I have to say what a difference the rigging makes, Dave had done a fantastic job and made the ships look so much better. I'd liked the paint job I did on them but without the rigging they just didn't look right. Now they looked so much better and, for around £12 expenditure, a fleet of sailing ships was ready for action!

Dave had painted his ships up as British while mine were still rather generic (though destined to be Spanish or French). We used two frigates and three brigs a side and didn't use any nation-specific rules or many of the advanced rules.

The Spanish (or maybe French but certainly Johnny Foreigner) fleet heads for the enemy:

The first move and the Spanish are somewhat constricted by an island and a sand bar:

The British come into view:

Despite the constriction caused by the island and sand bar the two Spanish frigates look well placed to fall on the British brigs while the British frigates are a little far away to support them. What could possibly go wrong? Well for a start the British brig in the centre could open fire and kill the helmsman on the leading Spanish frigate, that's one thing:

So with the helmsman hit the Spanish frigate goes out of control. It could go to port and maybe clip the sandbank, ahead and demolish the impudent British brig or starboard and hit the island. Of course the helmsman falls to starboard and the Spanish frigate hits the island reducing it's hull strength by half and preventing it from firing. It also blocks the following frigate which has to slow down to avoid running into the grounded ship. A single Spanish brig makes it through and is now facing three British brigs:

The battle continues with shots being exchanged. The Spanish plan has fallen apart very quickly!:

One British brig has been forced to strike:

Both fleets are suffering slightly from the end-of-the-world effect. Most of the Spanish ships have taken some damage, for the British two brigs have now struck but the rest of their force is in good shape:

The Spanish frigate that ran aground fights on and refuses to strike despite taking a lot of damage:

One of the Spanish brigs has struck however with the relatively undamaged British frigates dealing out a lot of firepower:

A lucky shot from the second Spanish frigate sets fire to one of the British frigates. Maybe this will turn the tide of battle which seems to be going against the Spanish?

The British close in on another Spanish brig which is heavily outnumbered:

The British frigate which was on fire manages to put the fire out. Three Spanish brigs have now struck their colours and one Spanish frigate has left for home before it too had to strike. As is traditional the British take the victory and the Spanish are left wondering what might have been but for the loss of the helmsman at the start of the battle:

So how did Black Seas play? Well it looks fantastic (thanks again Dave!) and the rules seem fairly easy to pick up. We probably missed a lot of things but that's inevitable in the first run through especially when I haven't even got a copy of the rules yet. We both enjoyed the game (and, due to my ineptness in sailing games that's by no means a given in a sailing game for me) and I'm sure will play again.

Downsides? As we played it the game did suffer a bit from the 'end of the world' syndrome but I'm sure we can overcome that. There isn't as much variety as there is in Cruel Seas which has various weapon types and more variety in the ships for sure plus there is my inevitable confusion over wind direction which is something I just can't get my head around.

As can be seen from the photos the flags improved Dave's British further so I'll be adding Spanish (or maybe French) flags to mine soon. I think the 74 gun ships would look very impressive and it would not take much encouragement from Dave for me to invest in a few of those.