Saturday, May 6, 2023

Cape Finister Play test at Wicked Gaming

I'm running Cape Finisterre this year at Huzzah and I got to run a play test at Wicked Gaming in Peterborough NH. The map above shows the action as recorded by a Spanish Maritime museum. Frank and John played the English while Landon and John both new to the game played the French w Spanish.

We begin the action with both fleets turning to close with each other. The Allied fleet has the weather gage. 
The two leading Spanish ships head south while the third turns east and the French line follows her. HMS Orion took fire from all three Spanish ships. The wind shifted from the northeast to due west forcing English ships to tack furiously.
Orion finds herself isolated talking French fire.
Orion thunders back as the Spanish ships Argunata and San Justo find themselves facing the rest of the English van. 
Ships make individual turns as the fight becomes a melee. Orion is hit repeatedly and her crew stikes and anchors to deal with a fire.
The Spanish Monarca hammered repeatedly by the English sinks. Argunata is boarded by Ajax but wins only to be boarded again and then hit by friendly fire. This is too much Argunata strikes.
Meanwhile the rest of the French are coming up. Fougueux is raked by HMS Revenge and strikes but Tonnent stern rakes Revenge inflicting terrible damage.  At this point we are out of time one two English ships struck but both would be recovered. The English sank one Spanish ship and captured another and would probably capture one French ship. 5 French ships are in good order while almost all the English have been hit and some badly hit badly. It's a bit of a draw and a messy one at that, possibly messier than the historical battle. My fog rules played well and everyone had fun a good day of gaming.

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