first outing with flashing steel

[petercooman]

Had a go at flashing steel by ganesha games last night. Decided to go for a big game right away (450 points). Went smoothly and after two turns i was pretty much "racing" through the game.

Scenario was as follows.

A band of privateers is negotiating with the local governor, in order to get a "letter of marque" for the nearby spanish shipping routes. They decide to meet on neutral ground, on a small abandoned island with a derelict colony. While some privateers and marines guardthe ships, a small detachment of marines and sailors search the overgrown colony for something salvageable. Just of the board, the privateer captain and the governor are negotiating in what must have been the town tavern. The negotiations go wrong however, and the privateers despatch of the governor and his bodyguards, and now have to make it back to their ship. They will have suprise on their side the first turn.

The layout at start:
marines inbetween the dock and the privateers at the bottom


privateers start at the edge, with two marines and a sailor in the first derelict building


the second derelict building has a bigger search party


the men guarding their ships


first turn sees the privateers rushing and killing a marine, the sailor (who has the green ability) flees the board.


first marine turn sees them responding and shooting 2 of the 3 privateer guards, the 3rd one recoils and falls of the peer (face down is out of action, face up is fallen)


second privateer turn sees the last marine in the first building run towards his ship.


as the privateers get closer, lots of shots are fired, and one marine falls to the ground


he gets back up and runs back to reload in safety, while some of his companions reload as well.


meanwhile, the last man guarding the ship gets attacked by a marine and a sailor, but somehow evades all the lead balls whizzing around him!


the first mate (redheaded lady) gets inside the walls and knocks down a sailor, her companion is not so lucky and fails his quality check to jump over, and falls on his back!(guy with the cloak, think his cloak got snatched on a branch of the bushes as he leapt  ) one marine gets shot in the back by the privateer captain and stays down


the last privateer guard knocks down the sailor with a point blank shot. I think the sailor just dropped to avoid getting killed


both parties exchange shots point blank, but everyone misses!


the first mate kills the sailor in front of her in melee, and goes for the marine behind him. (she has the follow on ability) The privateer captain makes a dash for the navy captain for an epic duel!!


the first mate kills the marine and immediately follows through to the navy  captain's 2IC, and knocks him down


the marine shoots the last privateer guard down, allowing the sailor to pick himself up.


the first mate stabs the navy 2IC repeatedly while he is down, and when he stops moving, she charges the navy captain, her own captain coming to her aid. togheter they knock him down


one of his marines comes to his aid, while a marine on the dock shoots a privateer in the face, who was looking to tip the numbers in the privateer captain's favour.


however, more privateers are close by, and they quickly despatch the marine who just joined th fight.


on the other side, the remaining privateers are closing in on the currently unengaged marine and sailor (the guy with the cape is behind the building in this picture


the marine on the pier shoots down another privateer while the captains fight


on the other side, a marine falls prey to the guy with the cape.


but then the navy captain loses the fight and gets cut down, one of the marines flees for his life, and a sailor gets shot down trying to reach the ship. the privateer captain rushes the last marine


He quickly kills him, as the privateers turn to the last sailor


the sailor however fails his morale roll (i made him test morale because he was the only one left), and surrenders. Victory to the privateers!!!



All in all a very fun game, with some nice cinematic action. double pistol wielding guys are good, but not over the top, as they can miss and just stand there with nothing more than two empty pistols. needing 2 actions to actually load a firearm means you are not constantly firing, wich opens up the game for tactical thinking, supporting shooting heavy characters with melee fighters and the other way round. Running up, discharging everything you got and then following through with the sword for an epic 'bum rush', looks like a great tactic, but the way the turns go back and forth really make you think twice about it.

The two factions also played very well, with the marines (primarily musket armed) hurting their opponent in shooting, but being on the back foot when fighting up close, while the privateers are good up close with pistols and swords, but didn't do a lot of damage from far away. This was not helped by their only musket armed figure getting shot down on the pier in marine turn 1!

Really recommend this one! Just keep it simple, give your captain and first mate/2IC some special abilities, and maybe distribute some green or elite status among your troops, but for the rest keep them fairly 'generic'. Only special rules i gave my troops were weapon types. Saves a lot of looking up in the game.

I think this is where i went wrong in the beginning with the SOBH system. I tried to give everything and everyone a special rule, but the games took too long, and there was too much 'rules browsing' during the game. After a game or two i gave up and kept special rules to a minimum, and the game really shined after that!

[sunjester]

A great write up, sounds a lot of fun.

Where are the ships from?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Good looking game

[petercooman]

A great write up, sounds a lot of fun.

Where are the ships from?

They are paper models from Dave graffam on wargamesvault, I bought a  ton of his stuff when he had his dollarsale.The big ship I actually lower, but I scratchbuilt an extra deck.

It really was fun!

[d_Guy]

Wonderful report and very spiffy game layout. Beautifully photographed as well. Your fixed light source also gave the scenes a very atmospheric  look. I'm a long time fan of "Flashing Steel" and look forward to more reports from you.

[petercooman]

Wonderful report and very spiffy game layout. Beautifully photographed as well. Your fixed light source also gave the scenes a very atmospheric  look. I'm a long time fan of "Flashing Steel" and look forward to more reports from you.

Being phone camera shots, they came out ok!

I am currently exiled to the kitchen table, so see a lot more games on a small table. The big table is next to the heating, and that's just too warm for me. I rather play in the kitchen then  . The lightning is not optimal but falls over one side pf the board, wich can look cool.

[paulr]

Looks like a lot of fun

Great to see a couple of forces from your list on the table

[petercooman]

Thanks!

I actually put up a game, in the hopes of getting me inspired to paint the rest of the pirates.So far, no luck 

In my defence though, i have just got a very s***y week. Still, hoping to finish them this month!

[Womble67]

Looks and sounds great

Take care

Andy

[ronan]

Looks and sounds great

Take care

Andy

+1 !