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Tuesday, August 4, 2015

The Flagship duel of the Battle of Mon 1677

Hi everyone!
As promised in previous posts Soren and I meet at the club yesterday and fought our first Naval engagement of the Scanian War. 

Both sides fire but the Swedes miss there mark

This was the first time we used the rules so we only put out one ship for each side. Soren had the Danish flagship Christianus V (85) and I had the Swedish flagship Amarant (52).

Christianus V comes to claim her prize

The basic set us was around the historic battle of Mon.  Here is an overview of the battle

"A smaller Swedish squadron under Admiral Erik Sjöblad attempted to sail from Gothenburg to join the main Swedish fleet in the Baltic Sea. It was intercepted by a superior Danish force under Niels Juel and decimated over the course of two days. The Swedes lost 8 ships and over 1,500 men dead, injured or captured, including Admiral Sjöblad himself, while the Danish losses were insignificant."

Christianus V scores a heavy hit on the Amarant

With this in mind, during the actual battle the ships broke from line of battle and the fight became a fight between individual ships. Here is a description of what I was trying to set up in this game

The Amarnat is stern raked by the guns of the Christianus V

"Since the wind was too light for coordinated maneuvers, Juel gave orders for every captain to attack the nearest enemy ship to sink or capture them. By 4 o'clock, Juel's flagship Christianus V had caught up with Sjöblad's Amarant and after an intense artillery duel that lasted two hours, the Swedish flagships lost a yard and had its largest topsail shot to pieces. Per Rosenlund of the Andromeda tried to turn around to assist his admiral, but his crew refused to follow orders since they "did not want to go back and let themselves be slaughtered like sheep".[5] Sjöblad had to surrender and was taken prisoner." 

tools of the game
 Well Soren and I set up the game and we started to learn to sail and eventually we got within range and Soren was able to score first blood in the game.  I was not able to score any hits on Sorens ship.

 
a pregame shot of my two ships

 We maneuvered and Soren was able to score two stern rakes on my ship and the damage was sever and eventually the Swedish failed the strike test. The Swedish ship had to strike her colors and basically the game was over.

 
my Danish ship looks good on the board

 

 The rules were perfect for what we are looking for, we were both able to start playing with little prep time and we plan to play another couple of games with more ships.  this way we can see how the rules work when we have multiple ships in line.

learning to drive....sail


 Enjoy the pictures from the game.

 
moving to get into a good firing position



 
the Danish score fist blood

 
both sides get in shots


 
another miss


 
a view from the Danish side of the game



the Amarant took a lot of damage early and was not able to recover
 
a historic end to a great game


 Thanks for stopping by and checking out the battle pictures.

 

18 comments:

  1. I agree with Michael, thes game and ships look great!
    How long did the game take to fight to conclusion?

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    1. Even with the two of us not having played the rules before we were able to finish the game in about 2 hours. It was fast and fun. We will be doing a three on three game soon so we can see how long it takes when we get into larger actions.
      Thanks for checking out the post!

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  2. Beautiful and interesting AAR. Those broadside markers (plastic?) work surprisingly well and look great with the ships. /Mattias

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    1. I think those markers are from Litko?

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    2. Hi NW Crew, Yes I did not have time to get cotton or something like that for broadside markers but the Litko smoke screen markers I have for our WWI Naval wargaming worked really well. I was surprised how good they worked.

      Thanks Jay you are correct!!!

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  3. Replies
    1. Thank you!
      Maybe you can join us when we start having larger battles! The more the better!

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  4. Very cool! Having played the rules now, what do you think is a reasonable number of ships for a single player to control for one side?

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    1. Hi Jay,
      After playing the rules I think a squadron of 6 or up to 10 ships is reasonable for a single player to handle. There is not much paperwork to track so I think a game would flow well with one person having that many ships. We will soon find out, Soren and I will be doing a three Danish ship vs three Swedish ship battle soon.
      Stay tuned!!!

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    2. Excellent, thanks - looking forward to the next report! :-)

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  5. Thanks for setting up the game Mark, it was fun and fast to learn - plus we had a historical outcome to the battle, which is generally a good thing when you're playing as the Danish Admiral ;0) Shall be interesting to test the rules with 3 ships a side!

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    1. Thank you for joining the battle. Yes I think it will be good to see how the rules are with multiple ships!
      Now I will start working on the rigging on one of the ships as a test.
      See you soon!

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  6. Excellent report! I hope you can give those danish bastards (Danskjävlar!) what they have coming next time =)

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    1. HI Ulf, thank you or checking out the blog post! Well the Danish Navy was very good during the Scanian War. We will see what the next battle hold for the fate of the Swedish Navy!

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  7. HI Engel!

    Yes it is a good solid set of rules and the history behind the period is great!

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