Black Sea's Spanish v British

For our next few Black Sea's games Dave and I thought we would do a sort-of-campaign by running through the scenarios to fight a theoretical Spanish invasion of Ireland around 1804. Basically we both started with 500 pt fleets and gained extra points after each game to repair/replace ships.

The first scenario was the Spanish attempt to run out of a port blockaded by the English. I took two Frigates, the sturdy "Santa Margarita" and the "Santa Catalina" with the Brigs "Juno" and "Agulia":

The fleet heads out to sea:

The English await at anchor:

The English swing on their anchor cables to open fire while getting ready to set sail:

The Spanish press on:

The Spanish break through the blockaders delivering cannon fire into the English line as they break it:

English return fire forces both Spanish Brigs to strike while the Frigates pass through and out to sea. One English Frigate is heavily damaged but fights on:

We both thought this would be a no contest victory for the Spanish on set up but it didn't work out like that, the English fired surprisingly well from anchor and it does not take many hits for a Brig to strike. The Spanish won the scenario as they got more than 2/3 of their initial ship points out to sea but only just. We assumed that the English would follow the frigates and the struck Spanish Brigs would return to port to be repaired.

The second game was a chance encounter between the two fleets with an island and some sandbars in the area. Dave added another Brig to his force while I repaired my two Brigs and added a third. The Spanish fleet prepares for action divided into two groups by the island and sand bars:

The English fleet is more concentrated and it looks bad for the Spanish Brigs as the entire English fleet heads for them:

One English frigate takes a battering from the Santa Catalina and catches fire. It is also heading directly for a sandbar! The English are in difficulty with not enough sea room for all their ships and the wind direction against them. One of the English Brigs has hit a sandbar resulting in one of it's two masts falling down!:

The Spanish Brigs have slipped past the English line though the "Ventura" has taken heavy damage. Fire continues to rage on the English Frigate and it heads for the sandbank as the crew concentrate on trying to put out the fire:

The other English Frigate is about to hit a sandbar:

The English fleet is in total disarray, the burning Frigate has hit the sandbar and struck it's colour's while still on fire:

The struck English Frigate's crew put the fire out before it explodes or sinks:

By this point it was obvious that there would not be much more action for a while as neither fleet could get at the other so we called it a day with a minor Spanish victory:

Two interesting games which gave us more of an idea how the rules work. The first one was much closer than we expected and in all honesty most of the problems Dave's English faced in the second were from his own ships, when we set up I thought it looked bad for me but in fact Dave quickly found that the island and sandbanks constricted his fleet greatly so they spent most of their efforts avoiding running into things and each other! We have still not tried boarding but I think have learned a bit more and are happy to continue the campaign later.