Kiss Me Hardy/To Covet Glory - JJ's Game Specific Items

 

Whilst posting about recent games played using Kiss Me Hardy and To Covet Glory, I've had a few questions about the kit I tend to use with my games and recently I've added some new materials, so I thought I would highlight my preferred way of playing these rules and some of the ideas I've come up with to streamline play and make things as easy as possible for the players to just concentrate on moving the models and rolling bones.

Of course these are just rules of play, the old fashioned kind, with none of the fancy tokens and other components you get with some more modern offerings, but I guess 'just rules' understates the fact that they more than make up for that lack of modern day presentation, but they do, in my humble opinion, need a little preparation, which to my eye means personalisation.

All the kit in use during our Cape St Vincent Anniversary Game - On the table is the Wind Compass Rose, extra wind arrow, turning circles, wind gauge acetates, broadside gauge, activation chits and ship record sheets. plus rules quick reference sheets.

This preparation is important, whether you intend to play small, single ship actions and definitely larger ones, as a game is easily spoilt by a lack of items to make the play seamless and flowing and allow the players to simply get on with play, easily able to record damage, indicate that which would be observed by the enemy and all done in a timely way that gets as many turns of play into your game as possible, whilst keeping the granularity, context and story telling that KMH generates in buckets.

Carl von Clausewitz
The Philosopher of Lard and inventor of Wargaming Marmite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz

For example the principle method of deciding who gets to do what and the order of when events happen in the game is card driven, harking back to dear old Carl von Clausewitz' description of war being the closest thing to a game of cards, in terms of its unpredictability, and all the associated 'friction', the marmite of wargaming, you either love or it seems in some cases hate.

The most basic requirement for a game of Kiss Me Hardy, generic activation chits, order tokens used in single ship actions and TCG games and sail/mast damage markers, to which I would also add strike test and struck markers. I have modified still further the sail/mast damage markers by indicating on it which mast has been lost (bowsprit, fore, main, mizzen and all/dismasted). These appear on the model rather than debris and show all players the damage carried and can be used to show which broadside is masked for firing (dismasted ship firing -1 modifier).

I love friction, and the problems it creates to a well laid plan, but I don't like shuffling cards, probably down to having small perfectly formed hands, definitely designed by Devine providence for painting and detailing small models and figures but sadly useless for playing cricket and especially shuffling cards. 

My Ship Record Sheets are designed to tie in with my markers, with two sets of broadside gun boxes shown bottom left, starboard and port, when hit on either side requiring multiples of two or more guns being lost, we mark off the same number of boxes with one less on the other broadside to indicate accumulated damage. Likewise should a mast go down the mast damage markers can be placed to show which broadside gets the -1 firing modifier to represent rigging covering gun ports.

The answer is chits or tokens, drawn from a bag. No need to shuffle anything, because at the end of blindly drawing the game tokens from said bag, you simply gather them all in and draw blindly again, creating a fast play turn around of game turns, so important when administering large fleet actions with multiple commanders and ships.

Mast Damage and Strike Test counters placed on the ship bases during play, to remind players which ships require to take a strike test and should they fail it, simply flip it over to reveal a struck marker, and sail damage, now refined to show which mast is down, and can be placed on the base side to indicate which broadside suffers a negative fire effect when firing, as I now record damage to both broadsides separately on my Ship Record Sheets. These have gone through a few incarnations and I back to back my strike counters, fiddly I know, but it saves time and messing about during a game and once done is done. The markers are deliberately small and discreet. The game is about featuring those lovely model ships from Warlord, not the markers. Aesthetics dear boy Aesthetics!

To compliment my chits, I have created a basic generic set of counters on a pdf, designed to fit and simply stuck on a 32mm diameter by 2mm mdf laser cut disc, which I paint with acrylic green (general events), blue (others fire and move) or red (British fire and move), creating the set seen above, and used to create battle specific sets seen in the picture below that require additional named commanders on the chits plus other additions, such as 'England Expects' and Admiral chits for activating signals.

The rest of the kit includes stuff common to other Age of Sail rule sets. The Wind Compass Rose and Acrylic Turn Circles, bottom right are available from Warbases and make a nice touch to any game. The Wind Attitude Diagram, bottom left, has been copied to acetate and is simply placed over the foremast of a model, lining the forward bow/quarter line with it with the wind arrow, above it, placed alongside the model in line with the Wind Compass to check attitude to wind, if in doubt. At some stage I will get an acrylic version of this from one of the mdf folks. At top are my battle specific chits all bagged up and my broadside gauge, see below.

With the chits and markers came the need to produce a simple Ship Record Sheet, see the example above from our recent game of the Action off Start Point in 1793, that is generic in layout, easily stored in Excel, but that can turn out the stats for any ship using KMH or TCG and with all the factors that that ship will use when firing, testing morale and moving all brought together from the rules and on it for ease of use when playing.

Warbases - Kiss Me Hardy Turning Templates
Warbases - Compass Rose

Nymphe and Cléopâtre slugging it out in a recent game, with the former shown here bow raking the
latter and seeing a 'strike test' counter placed on Cléopâtre's base to remind us that she needs to test when the Strike chit is drawn, which if passed, as she did in this case, you remove it, if failed, you turn it over to reveal the enemy ship has struck her colours. Note the Warbase turning template in the background.

 

One aspect I was keen to alter slightly in my adaptation of KMH was the Firing Solution calculation for judging a full, partial or raking broadside, as I wasn't entirely happy with the idea in the original rules of using the body of the model, bow and stern to measure out the 15 degree angle of fire, or the raking assessment of a full on ninety degree plus or minus two degrees either side of the firing ship to stern of a target ship.

Arc of fire illustration - British Frigate vs French Frigate, Mark Lardas, Peter Dennis (Osprey)

This is all subjective I know, as we need a contrivance to allow for gun captains angling their cannons as shown above, that provides a common method of assessing a fire solution that is easy for the players to calculate at a glance but with an easy check to confirm should that be necessary.

My Broadside Gauge adopted and adapted from the old rule set
Form Line of Battle by Stephen Harrison and Robin Peck

I used to play a very simple but fun set of fast play age of sail game, Form Line of Battle, by Stephen Harrison and Robin Peck, which I still have my original copy of, published in 1987. 

It came with a set of simple items on card that you could cut out for use with the game that included the Broadside Gauge you see above, and which I have used in countless other games over the years to decide broadside and raking solutions, purely for its simplicity and to me seemingly reasonable representation of this kind of naval firing.

The Broadside Gauge in use in our Cape St Vincent game, seen top centre placed alongside HMS Culloden as the British assess an early broadside opportunity. If in doubt the laser is used to extend the line out to the potential target.

So the two angles measured out from a single point represent the arc of fire for a broadside to broadside 30 degree fire solution and a broadside to stern or bow rake, 20 degree solution with the centre point placed alongside the mainmast for broadside to broadside looking to have the mainmast of the target in the 30 degree angle for a potential broadside shot and with the stern or bow within the 20 degree angle for a rake.

My Target Lock laser pen, Mr Steve picked up for me at Firestorm Games in Cardiff. This is a really useful piece of kit for any naval game where firing can be quite often at long ranges and the need to check the angle over distance.

Having the full length of the target's base within the broadside arc determines whether it is a full broadside, with just the mainmast but only part of the ships base in angle determining a partial one.

For deciding the range to the target, I take mainmast to mainmast as the measure for a broadside and mainmast to the centre of the stern or bow of the model, with the whole length of the model in the arc for a rake with the additional requirement that rakes can only be delivered at short or point-blank range.

Close up, the fire solution assessment is very easily judged by looking, but for a ranged shot where the angle is in doubt the use of the old laser 'Target Lock' comes in really handy, by running the line out from the gauge held over the firing ship's mainmast to the target and is another piece of important kit that is always in my bag for these games.

Finally I come to my most recent addition to my kit and by no means less important, my brand spanking new range sticks, that will make tape measures being used to assess the range to the target redundant.

My new range sticks for Kiss Me Hardy

When running my Talavera project a few years ago using the fantastic Napoleonic computer moderated rules Carnage & Glory, I very much appreciated the range sticks we used using pdf markers produced by the rules author Mr Nigel Marsh affixed to pine wood strips, that saved so much time calling out gun and musket ranges to be input on the computer during combat calculations.

Ok so KMH doesn't need a computer to run things, but hey Nigel, if you're reading this, what about Carnage & Glory at Sea?

Anyway, the beauty of KMH is its simplicity of design in that gunnery is a case of find the range to determine the die score needed to hit, which remains a constant. The only thing that modifies the chance to hit is the number of dice you roll, based on number of guns, crew quality, first fire and other such factors.

So I now have my range sticks delineated into range bands with the die score required indicated, point blank 2 or more, short 3 or more etc.

The great  thing is that KMH ranges extend to forty centimetres and the pine wood finishing strips I picked up from my hardware store come in 240mm long x 16mm wide x 5mm thick, lengths that perfectly facilitated the production of six sticks, spray panted black and then sticking on my prepared range bandwidths, on both sides, as there is nothing more annoying than picking up a range stick only to find you are looking at the blank side and wasting time, twiddling it over.

Kiss Me Hardy - Facebook Page

If you like the ideas I've come up with to create my KMH kit then you can download the PDFs of my chit designs, markers and range stick graduations in the pdfs I've put together which I will post here and on the Kiss Me Hardy Facebook page, and feel free to grab the jpeg of the Broadside Gauge if you so wish.

JJ's Kiss Me Hardy PDFs - Chits, Markers & Range Sticks

Above all, I hope these ideas will help improve your Kiss Me Hardy games and get more ships out on the table.

JJ