Battle of Camperdown Preparations, The Leeward Column Attacks! Playtest

'Captain Bligh goes to War', HMS Director leads the attack of the Leeward Division at Camperdown - Geoff Hunt

 

With a new year well underway I have seemingly entered a rather creative stream of inspiration for planned projects in 2024 that has rather distracted me from a lot of other plans I have in mind, but in the spirit of Zen and my new year resolution of going with the flow, I have decided to enter into the spirit of said creative thinking and simply play with the ideas as they arise.

It was back in April 2021 that I wrote a brief note highlighting a, at the time, brand new set of Fleet Rules for the Age of Sail written by David Manley, Far Distant Ships (FDS).

JJ's Wargames - Far Distant Ships, New Fast Play Tactical Rules for Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail - David Manley
The rules are available via Wargame Vault.
https://www.wargamevault.com/product/352181/Far-Distant-Ships

At the time I was very much involved in planning several games, including Trafalgar, based on using Kiss Me Hardy (KMH), and really enjoying the granularity in narrative that KMH offers, that I rather put FDS to one side as I got to grips with building the 1:700th collection in readiness for those first games.

Roll the clock forward into 2024 and I now have a good deal of experience running games using KMH at this scale, that I am now thinking of looking at a specific way of playing large fleet actions over a shorter period of playing time, purely as an alternative for those times when access to a large table and space is limited for one reason or another.

I guess it's the wargaming equivalent of golf clubs, always needing that particular club to be able to play that particular type of hole, different rule sets can often work better in different gaming situations. 

Trafalgar played at Llancaiach Fawr Manor last year using KMH
The Battle of Trafalgar 2023 - 'Kiss Me Hardy!' in the Grand Manner

Thus I thought it might be interesting having another look at these rules, suitably adjusted for 1:700th scale, rather than the more usual 1:2400 or 1:1200 that are commonly used model scales for these types of big battle rules.

Before launching into my ideas about FDS, I should mention that David, who I have met several times at the NWS gatherings at Yeovilton in recent years, was very poorly just before Christmas, and I would again send my best wishes on his rapid recovery.

My test bed table set up to run a game using Far Distant Ships using for the first time the initial group of models constructed for my Camperdown project, together with my new range sticks.

Naval wargames, much like other genres in the hobby are faced with the common challenges of scaling time and ground scale, of perhaps that should be sea scale, to adequately model the movements and firing range capabilities of the models being used in the time each turn of the game represents.

Cape St Vincent using KMH at the Devon Wargames Group on the 225th anniversary of the battle, another big game that added to my thought process
Devon Wargames Group - The Battle of Cape St Vincent, 14th February 1797, 225th Anniversary Game

The dilemma comes with getting a scale that compliments the models in a way that doesn't have movement rates and gun ranges look way out of line with the models used, a problem only exacerbated with more modern periods, where gunnery and missile technology have forced wargamers to use ever smaller model ships to allow the game to fit on a reasonably sized table not requiring an aircraft hanger  

The age of sail presents less of a problem especially in the age of the smooth bore cannon and black powder where getting up close, broadside to broadside was often the aim, but the larger scale models do put an added demand on space and the ability to reach the models across acres of table when it comes to bigger battles.

The Monarch, Powerful and Russel each of 74-guns lead the British leeward column into the attack on the Dutch line, consisting of from left to right Cerberus 68-guns, Jupiter 74-guns, Haarlem 68-guns Alkmaar 56 guns and the Delft 56 guns with the 18-gun brig Daphne and the 44-gun frigate Monnikendam behind.

Kiss Me Hardy is an excellent set of rules with a rather unique activation method that produces a granular narrative game that works really well with the 1:700th models, but needs time to allow for its four to five minutes of real time scaling to replicate say the three hours (thirty six turns of play) of intense battle, at Trafalgar for example. 

At Llancaiach Fawr Manor we fought twelve turns of Trafalgar over two days of gaming, replicating the most intense stage of the battle in its first hour, and the Combined Fleet was well on its way to defeat with the loss of six ships struck, one blown up and one squadron withdrawing, but with still a lot of battle left to game given the time.

Monarch, nearest to camera, flying signal 41 'Engage enemy's rear' leads the charge at the Battle of Camperdown. 

Thus prompted by my experience I have reached the stage experienced by many of those who have been on this journey before me, namely how best to compromise to still get the granularity of the game and its representation of a particular battle and still retain the look on table of a Nicholas Pocock battle portrait.

So my search for a possible alternative big-battle rule set turned to looking at the board game arena and two tabletop rule sets,  Far Distant Ships and  Grand Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail (GFA).

In short, I dismissed the board game options such as Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Close Action and the more recent Flying Colours from GMT, with no desire to return to hex gaming, and with GFA having some interesting concepts, especially around command and control and command radii, but still using the familiar method of crossing out hull, gunnery and crew boxes, similar to the board games and lower level tabletop rules, and something I was keen to avoid, looking for a cleaner way of recording damage over a longer time period, possibly with discreet on-table markers.

Vice-admiral Reijntjes aboard his 74-gun flagship, Jupiter, prepares the Dutch rear for battle

So in the end it came to Far Distant Ships, with my primary interest based on the needs boxes seemingly ticked, namely, the players are put firmly on the quarterdeck of the fleet flagship as the commanding admiral, and similarly subordinates such as squadron commanders. 

The players are solely concerned with bringing their fleets and associated squadrons into battle in the most favourable way, signalling their intent in good time, and in true Nelsonian style leaving the rest of the initiative to ships captains once the action gets up close and personal.

As an admiral, you are not concerned with the minutia of the ships under your command, namely how many hull boxes are undamaged on HMS Boaty-McBoatface but rather what damage level are they at overall, namely worn, light, medium, heavy or struck, and FDS makes clever use of these damage levels either on the hull or the rigging, depending on where enemy fire has been directed, to model the damage that could be received in a ten minute turn of combat.

Haarlem (nearest to camera), Jupiter and Cerberus lead the Dutch rear squadron ahead of the smaller fourth-rates 

The time period per turn was important and ten minutes makes refighting battles lasting several hours much more do-able in a normal gaming day and the only major adjustment I needed to make was scaling the rules to 1:700, that is one inch to twenty yards or one centimetre to eight yards, with some new range sticks seen in the picture of the test-game table segmented into close, medium and long range bands.

Of course regular followers of the blog will know that I never play rules as written and am an inveterate house rule writer and adapter, and I did see David on a YouTube video talking about FDS and saying he was happy for players to make additions and changes as they saw fit, so I will be holding him to that. 

The Dutch 56-gun fourth rate Alkmaar 

So my changes are tweaks rather than massive alterations such as preferring my regular KMH turn circles rather than the 45 and 90 degree turn templates and my own angle of fire templates.

Signal flags and squadron record cards complete my pre-game preparations.

In addition, with the rules covering signalling, I have sought to define certain 'General Order' signals in terms of the requirement they place on the recipients, for example:

Engage the Enemy 

No ship shall start firing broadsides except in self defence until this signal is made or until the Admiral's flagship opens fire.

A new game required some specific new markers to be used on table, thus negating any record keeping

Additionally I have continued with the PPV or Point Preservation Value used in KMH to determine when a squadron will break due to losses inflicted on it, adding a bit of variation to different nationalities, and have created some simple record cards on which dice can be used to record PPV loss and break-point threshold, together with a die for counting the use of Command Points.

I'm not sure how much signalling will be required in any given game, but have included the full range of flags or orders as included in FDS so that they can be used if and when the opportunity arrises.

 

With all the preparation work complete I'm really looking forward to getting this test game going

As when I started this little adventure into 1:700 age of sail back in 2021, my old pal Jack is coming over to Chez JJ to help me playtest FDS and the ideas I have for using the rules and like the earlier preparation with KMH, I have adapted the Camperdown collection to form a Leeward Column scenario, set up in the pictures above, to try out the rules recreating the attack on the Dutch rear by British Vice-admiral Onslow's leeward command.

The scenario will pitch Onslow's British squadron against the Dutch rear or white squadron as arrayed at the Battle of Camperdown to test FDS for 1:700 big battle use

The nine British ships of the line, including the 50-gun Adamant, pretty well demolished the Dutch rear in about two hours of battle or twelve turns of FDS so it will be interesting to see how well the rules model this historical scrap in a very discreet part of the Dutch line of battle and I will post an AAR in the wake of our game. 

More anon

JJ