The Planning and Preparation for the 225th Anniversary Game of Cape St Vincent, and Other Stuff! (Part I)

HMS Captain capturing the San Nicolas and the San Josef by Nicholas Pocock (RMG)

 

This post picks up from my previous one (see the link below if you would like to read it) looking at the time line of events that culminated in the pivotal Battle of Cape St Vincent of the 14th February 1797, changing the course of the war at sea in the French Revolutionary War.

JJ's Wargames - The St Vincent Campaign, October 1796 to February 1797

When sitting down to plan this particular battle, my process involved pulling together several strands of different work that had been done in the last two years whilst building my collection of 1:700th Black Seas model ships produced by Warlord Games.

Those other strands of work entailed playing several rule sets that were vying for my attention to use for playing small historic ship actions as well as the large age of sail games like this, with both sets of work informing the other, and once having settled on a choice to tailor the rules around the games I wanted to produce, which always involves an element of 'adapt, adopt, improve' to fashion a set of rules that creates the games that develops the narrative created in the historical accounts of those actions and battles.

JJ's Wargames - War by Sail
War by Sail was a strong contender for playing these 'big battle' type games.
I like a lot about these rules, especially the detailed gun layouts
and may well come back to these at some stage

This process is very subjective and for me tends to be a process of selection based on playability, fun with the inclusion of a certain level of detail and game mechanics that give the feel of the battles I'm looking to create, a by no means unique set of criteria to me but I hopes clarifies what I am trying to do.

I agree very much with the idea that the personal choice of rules is like personal choice in shoe size with absolutely no concept of 'right or wrong ', purely what suits one person to another being the deciding factor.

https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product-category/kiss-me-hardy/

In the end I decided to use 'Kiss Me, Hardy' (KMH) from the Too Fat Lardies and written by Nick Skinner, with my original copy dating back to 2003, so by no means 'new'.

Any look through the back posts on the Devon Wargames Group club blog will show that the rules are well used and understood from our previous games at club which commended them to my thinking, that and being a fan of the Lardy ethic of friction, friction and a bit more friction please to create the games I love, and Kiss Me Hardy having the merit of having been used before to run large games, such as Trafalgar, meeting that essential requirement as well.

The chit draw method (I use chits rather than cards as I can't be bothered with shuffling and dropping stacks of cards) of activation is probably my favourite way to play age of sail, generating the situation where a perfect plan falls apart because some idiot of a junior commander doesn't quite live up to your demanding expectations or the enemy have the temerity to do something different from the plan you had mentally assigned to them and then you just have to get on with it and come up with a new plan, rather like the real thing.

Important bits of my game playing kit, my chit draw bag, game specific chits and the old 'angle of dangle' laser table pointer.

However that said, KMH in its original form has evolved a lot over the intervening years, thanks to Nick Skinner and the playing community, with ideas developed in the multiple editions of the Lardies Specials.

These additions include rules around Command and Control, Signalling, Squadron Building, deaths of key commanders, campaign development, fictional and historical encounters and battles which includes the 1797 Battle of Cape St Vincent, and rule changes to allow for better play with small ships and more detailed differentiation between ships, with even a look at the time scale and move rates used; all this added over the years in articles written by Nick and others that I have accumulated and that form a treasure trove of ideas if rather spread about in various printed sources, than can be problematic for referencing anything at any particular time, in a game for example.

The cover and index to my KMH compilation of every article, update and additional rules for the original core set of rules which is now on version 1.6 and includes 138 pages.

Thus I sat down over a year ago to rewrite KMH for me and the chaps I play with regularly, to include all those additions into a new complete master copy of the rules, indexed for easy finding of any particular rule, plus some additions that I have play tested, taken from the ideas in other rules that were part of the original mix, that now includes for example fleet and squadron morale; and I see my new format as very much a living set of rules to which I have other ideas to add, and test, in games to see if they will fit and join with those already included.

The master list of Lardy Specials with KMH related articles that helped in my new rules compilation

The other key aspect of KMH that commended them is, thanks to articles such as Brian Weatherby's 'Messing Around With Boats' that was published in the 2011 Christmas Lardy Special, and his work looking at the scaling of KMH and better defining of ship characteristics, illustrating the ground (sea) scale approximating to 1:900 and a time scale at two minutes per turn, allows for no need to adjust the basic measurements laid out in the rules and the easy adoption of the turn circles and gun ranges for 1:700 models.

https://toofatlardies.co.uk/product/2011-christmas-special/

So what you see here is a culmination of that work which necessitated some new game tools married with the new collection of models that has now been played with using these updated rules built around the core of Kiss Me Hardy.

Part of my QRS rewrite indexed by subject and page in the rules.
The QRS also incorporates Chris Stoesen's 'To Covet Glory' small ship rule adjustments

In addition to a comprehensive indexed rule book I decided to write my own QRS having been dissatisfied with others I had downloaded from various sources, seemingly always finding that key rule  missing during game play and requiring reference to the rules.

My QRS is broken into the various sections covering movement, firing, boarding etc with all the rule notes linked to the page covering them in more detail within the full rules if required. 

My own experience shows that playing KMH produces that comfortable 'unconscious-competent' mindset very quickly, thus reducing dramatically, reference to either rules or QRS in equal measure.

Example of the Victory ship record sheet for Cape St Vincent with all the usual record data as well as the key crew abilities listed as a ready reference for this particular ship.

With the rules sorted out to my satisfaction I then turned to preparing my own Ship Record Sheets which having been play tested in a few games including at Clotted Lard have gone through a period of evolution to adopt suggestions for improvement by players using them and I am now happy with the current format which carries all the die roll modifications for firing, moving and strike test resolutions on the individual card saving time, having to reference them from the QRS, and significantly speeding up the process of assessing these key parts of any game, particularly during a large battle.

The Leeward Line Scenario played at Clotted Lard last year provided another opportunity to try out the new rules format to get things up to speed for bigger games in 1:700

As these record sheets were being play-tested I had been printing them out as required, but now I have a format I like, and that has proven itself under the rigours of a multi-ship games, I plan to laminate them on thick card ready for use in future games with the simple wipe of a cloth.

A sample page from my compilation of a hundred small actions, initially covering 1793 to 1801, which will provide ready to go historical scenario play set ups, married with the prose of William James explaining the situation that is presented, and contemporary artwork/maps (when possible) illustrating the vessels involved and where the action takes place.

In addition the new Ship Record Sheets work just as well for Small Ship actions using Sloops or smaller vessels and the To Covet Glory (TCG) rules from Chris Stoesen,

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/279600/To-Covet-Glory

and I am busy at the moment converting the Sapherson & Lenton 100 Small Actions into a ready to use format using KMH or TCG.

Scourge vs Le Sans Culottes from our game in January 2021 which started the plan to pull together these first one-hundred small scenarios around a set format using KMH and TCG
JJ's Wargames - All at Sea, Scourge vs Le Sans Culottes

This work started this time last year with a playthrough of the first action of the French Revolutionary War, Scourge vs Le Sans Culottes, 13th March 1793 with Bob and myself utilising ideas on how to play a game during lockdown with mobile phones and Zoom.

I put together a short video presentation of the scenario for YouTube, see link above, which gives a flavour for how these little actions are designed to be fought out, even with the checking out of a strange enemy sail flying false colours and challenging them with the signal of the day.

Each scenario will present the set up instructions depending on whether the game is based on a chase or meeting engagement and an indication of victory assessment based on the historical outcome and performance of the captains involved.

As I go I will use the Small Actions format of compiling my scenarios to do the same for the larger battles such as Cape St Vincent, so it should make setting up and running the games in future far less of an organisational chore and a very easy to run arrangement for club and other games.

Using the ideas from 'Messing Around With Boats' by Brian Weathersby, and 'To Covet Glory' by Chris Stoesen, I have been better able to tailor the stats around the historical records of the ships involved in these small actions, to hopefully produce some really interesting replays of these actions

With regard to large battle management, anything likely to slow the turn around of each game turn had to go. and that included cards and any shuffling required with managing an activation deck, and so all game turn management is governed with a bag of chits drawn and played accordingly, with all the chits simply put back in the bag to recommence a new turn.

Other game materials designed to save time and effort during play, with wind dials and arrow for placement about the table to help assess wind on a particular ship when in doubt, together with, gunnery angle device, turning circles, game chits in green, activation chits red/blue in the bag and strike test reminder chits that are placed by any ship that might need to test later in a turn. Laminated ship record sheets complete the set up ready to go, together with an angle indicating laser pointer to check those rakes are really rakes!

The work on getting KMH ready for big games has been very much looking at time saving and ease of play to get more turns played out on the table and a game resolution, and so I now have a kit of other stuff, such as turn circles, strike test markers, extra wind indicators, angle of wind checking circles and firing angle predictors which with the use of the laser pen easily checks if the target is in or out of any given broadside.

Cape St Vincent Force Specific Activation Chits. These are simply mixed with game specific chits and command chits for signalling and simply drawn from the with not a card shuffle in sight.

So with the collection of models constructed and the rules given a bit of reshaping I am now ready to play big games such as Cape St Vincent, and indeed others, and am now very much interested in shaping those game set ups, a process for which I will cover in Part II of this post. 

More anon

JJ