Black Sea's Spanish v English

Dave kindly agreed to give me a game of Black Seas using all the larger ships I'd made up over lockdown.

Having only four English ships (1 x 1st Rate and 3 x 3rd Rate) against seven Spanish (1 x 1st Rate and 6 x 3rd Rate) I made all the English crews veteran and all the Spanish inexperienced to try to even the fight up a bit and gave Dave the choice of sides.

Dave opted for quality over quantity and chose the English. The Spanish deployed in a long line (Monarcha, San Justo, Santisima Trinidad, Argo, Santa Ana, Santa Margarita and San Francisco) while the English deployed heading for the Spanish line:

The English charge forward though their 1st Rate is falling back and out of the action for now:

The fleets close and will open fire soon, the English look very outnumbered:

An English 3rd Rate catches fire! Despite a whole load of lead being thrown at the English very little of it hits:

The entire Spanish fleet is firing while the English have mainly bow chasers to reply with. The veteran English crew easily puts out the fire:

The Spanish line breaks up and the rear ships come under fire from the English 3rd rates:

The Santa Maria and San Francisco take a pounding as does the Santisima Trinidad. Spanish fire is still ineffective:

The English 1st Rate moves into range:

The San Francisco is on fire as is the Santisima Trinidad. The inexperienced Spanish crews can't put the fires out:

The English 1st Rate pounds the Spanish:

The San Francisco has struck her colours while the blaze on the Santisima Trinidad rages on inflicting more damage as the crew fail to douse the flames. The English 1st Rate also catches fire but again the veteran crew quickly put the flames out:

The Santa Margarita exchanges close range broadsides with an English 3rd Rate:

The Santa Margarita strikes! The Santisima Trinidad is close to striking when the crew finally put the fire out. With two of the fleet struck and the flagship close to striking the Spanish admit defeat and flee from the English:

The ships looked great and it was nice to get them on the table. They are also reasonably sturdy surviving the trip to the club and back plus the game with only a couple of dropped sails and ratlines.

Making all the English veteran and all the Spanish inexperienced more than made up for the numbers, in the firing at long range on a D10 the Spanish only hit on a '1' while the English hit on a 1 to 5! Thus while the Spanish had vastly more shots they hardly did any damage while the English regularly hit home. At close range the Spanish hit on 1 to 3 while the English hit on 1 to 7. The crew quality also made a huge difference to putting the fires out.

Looking at the points values in the rules the ships are 20% more expensive for veteran crews and 20% less for Inexperienced ones making a Spanish 3rd Rate 224pts compared to an English one at 336pts. The English 1st Rate would have been 540pts and the Santisima Trinidad 544pts.

The entire Spanish fleet would equal 1,880pts while the English total 1548pts so in theory the English should have had another ship.

I confess Dave had a better plan than me (though if I had tried sailing head on into the English fleet I'm sure that would have been a disaster!) but I don't think I'll be using veteran ships against inexperienced again. If we'd played the national characteristics as well Dave would have had another +1 to hit for being English which would have made it even worse!