Review: On the Seven Seas- Osprey Wargame Series

This was the seventh game created for the Osprey “Blue” Wargames series.  The focus of this game is pirate actions on sea and land.  It is a skirmish game with factions numbering 16 figures per side.  Sadly, this book does not really have designer notes, but I can guess at some of the desires for the game.  It clearly wanted to have a strong focus on boarding actions, and land actions were a secondary concern.   The entire “Pirate Loop” mini-campaign focused on boarding actions and skipped any land engagements with a die roll.  In addition, there were some notes that 1 figure equaled about 5 men, so the standard game of 16 models was to represent a crew of around 80.  However, these are more of a guideline than hard and fast rules.  With some of the basic game ideas out of the way, lets dive into the review.

Things I Liked
This time, I am going to start with some of the petty stuff.  This book had some gorgeous art that really captured the “Golden Age” of piracy.  The mini and in-game pictures were also very good.  There was some redundancy with models, but the ships and jungle islands looked amazing!  This book was great to look at.

The most interesting mechanic in the game revolved around Morale.  Each faction had to separate Morale stats called Greed and Fear.  The two stats determined the potential activity of the faction and the order of actions.  Greed and Fear were also mutable stats, in that they would be influenced over the course of the game by the events on the table.

Fear dictated how likely a group was to run away, or be shaken.  If their Fear score ever exceeded their Greed score, they would not advance to the enemy or willingly engage in hand-to-hand.  If their fear score reached 10, they would rout.  Fear could be impacted by casualties, ships striking their colors, and Captain’s threats.  Captain models could move their own factions Fear and Greed scores up and down, and those of their compatriots.  One potential issue, I do not recall a way to make Greed go down.  Therefore, a few turns of a Captain’s choice words and the Greed would be at 10, and Fear could not exceed it until broken.  However, you opponent may not give you the time to rally Greed up that high.  I like the idea of this mechanic a lot, but it may need a bit of tweaking to make it work fully in game.

You might think that this game would focus on that Golden Age, but they have faction lists for Japanese, Chinese, and Barbary pirates as well.  I was excited to see Barbary Pirates in there.  That means I could have them face off against Stephen Decatur and the Americans.

Things I Did Not Like
The ranges in this game are extremely short.  A model can move 4 inches, and a musket can only shoot 8.  Therefore, you will get very few shots off before hand-to-hand.  In addition, you need to roll a 10 on a d10 to hit.  Most of your shooting will miss, so this game naturally has a hand-to-hand focus.  Both of these decisions make some sense in the context of a sea fight, where board scales need to consciously be condensed to get to an actual boarding action.  However, if you were playing a standard game on land it would make very little sense to bother with musket armed crew.  Just give them some hand-to-hand weapons and go for it.

Hand-to-Hand is also much more decisive, as you only need to beat your opponent to inflict fallbacks and injuries.  Again, this makes some sense in the context of boarding actions, but becomes a bit silly if you are trying to have your men attack a fortified camp on land.

The organization of the rules could also use some work.  Rules are scattered about, and there are a lot of arbitrary rolling.  I.E. if you score a 1-3 on a d10 this happens, but a different time might have a 1 on a d10 cause issues.  There does not seem to be a unified mechanic beyond rolling a d10.  Sometimes, you use opposed rolls, others you are rolling for a target number, and sometimes you are just trying to avoid a certain set of results.  This makes the rules feel unfocused, unfinished, and a bit clunky.

Meh and Other Uncertainties
The game has some basic rules for sailing, so you can get up close and start your boarding action.  Considering the focus of the rules, it almost feels like they should just start the game grappled.  However, there are also rules for launching boats, towing, landing ashore, etc.  The rules try to cover every potential aspect of a Pirate game, but it is hard to say as the lay-out is a bit chaotic.

You can give your captain’s some special abilities, and maybe a few men here and there.  However, most of them are unarmored mooks who will die the moment they are hit.  Each faction is also very similar in make-up.  There is also some basic ships/boats and cannons.  

There is a basic map based campaign but this is not a campaign game per se.  Guys do not level up, they do not get serious injuries.  This is more a stand-alone wargame.  Events from previous battles only carry over as casualties, ship damage, and Doubloons.  It is basic, and some arbitrary dice rolling is needed to navigate some parts of the map.

The turn sequence allows your Captain to do stuff, shoot, move (with hand-to-hand).  It is interesting that you shoot then move so slow firing weapons like arquebus and muskets do not really need to re-load ever.  That is abstracted away.
 
Final Thoughts
Well, I don’t think I can recommend this game.  It is too arbitrary with no coherent system, and I was not sold on the short ranges and ineffective shooting.  It would work better for one-off boarding games, but not much beyond that.  I am confident that there are better pirate games out there…. But I don’t know what they are.  I know I will not be rushing out to buy some pirates to play, even though the models showed in the book were amazing.

That being said, I think the Fear vs. Greed system is pretty innovative and something I want to explore more in other games.  Therefore, I am glad that I read the rules for this nugget of an idea.  I can see something like it working well in any game system where the factions are a bit more… mercenary in nature.  

Review: Fighting Sail- Osprey Wargame Series

I have a copy of Osprey's Fighting Sail: Fleet Actions 1775-1815

I am by no means an expert on sailing ships or the time period beyond basic knowledge of Naval history.  However, I know many people love it thanks to a few famous fictional heroes of literature.  My interest has mostly been in passing.  However, there are a few things I love about Naval wargaming in general: 

1, Typically a smaller model count

2. Easy to make terrain

3. Small gaming room foot print

Therefore, I was eager to pick up these rules when I saw them become available.  It is a fleet game, and designed to use Ships-of-the-Line more than Frigates and small craft.  It is not really meant for ship-to-ship duels.  However, it can accommodate those fleet types.  For example the American Fleet is all 5th and 6th rate ships!  I.e. Frigates.  The book contains fleet lists and some special command rules for fleets including: French, British, Russian, Spanish, American, Dutch and Pirates.  Some claim that it misses out on the Danish, Turks, and Swedes as potential enemies.  I sort of agree since how can a British fleet pull a Copenhagen without a Danish fleet?  Well, I guess you wouldn't really need the stats for a Danish fleet in that scenario since they were all sunk in port, but you get the idea! 

Anyway, I digress.  The scale is 1/1200 and the GHQ Micronauts range is mentioned several times.  However, it does cover how to use the larger 1/2400 scale as well.  It does not give any indication on how to use the scale of the Sails of Glory ships though, since they are (of course) a unique scale.      

The author of this work begins by sharing a bit of his pedigree in the genre.  He mentions that his first foray into naval wargaming was GW's Man-o-War rules, and that led him eventually to historical naval games.  After trying those for a while, the Golden Age of Sail became his favorite.  You can tell he knows a bit about the period as he peppers the rules with actual nautical lingo like; In Irons when sailing into the wind, Crossing the T when raking, Waring when turning sharply into the wind, etc.  These official terms are actually part of the rules, so this may lead to a bit of confusion for us land-lubbers. 

The game has three parts:

1. Initiative- Determine who goes first.

2. Sailing- Player with initiative moves all of his fleet, then the other side does.

3. Cannon- Initiative fleet fires, then the other side. 

It covers the basics of movement, shooting, boarding, collisions, etc using a pretty simple and straight forward method.  You roll a number of d6's based on the abilities of the ship in question.  Depending on your relationship to the wind or target, you might have slightly different target numbers fo a success.  In movement, you convert successes into how far and how many turns your ship can make.  When firing it is the number of hits.  When resisting it is to eliminate hits.  It is pretty straight forward and easy to grasp, however a reference sheet would be handy.  Thankfully, this game has a reference sheet you can photo-copy in the back.  The basics of sailing and fighting are laid out clearly and include helpful diagrams. 

When moving, your relationship to the wind is important.  Shocking I know!  However, once you have determined the number of Sailing successes you have, you can maneuver without worrying about the wind, until your next turn.  That means there are times where you might be able to move relatively quickly into the wind.  To some, this may feel a bit odd as you don't pay the penalties for your moves until your next turn.  Another thing that is interesting, is that no ship can just go straight, it is always maneuvering at an angle called .  I suppose this is accurate to sailing but since I am not a sailor myself I really don't know. 

Some folks will also be horrified to learn that there is a mechanic similar to an "Exploding 6!" mechanic to incur extra hits.  However, in most cases it is limited to a single extra potential hit, unless you are raking someone.  I know this mechanic can be considered controversial.  However, it seems to make shooting up close very deadly, just like the flavor of the period would suggest.  I imagine battle in this game take a turn or two of maneuver, followed by a couple turns of brisk shooting, and then a decision in many cases.  Only a lucky few would need to re-position themselves again for another attack.  However, without an actual game I am guessing based on my reading of the rules. 

A final point that some people will not like is that games of this nature tend to use templates a lot for turning and determining how you are moving into the wind.  Some gamers do not like this at all.  In addition, you will also need damage and anchor tokens.  These are all provided in the back of the book for copying. 

Each fleet has  set number of moral points, as ships are hit, strike their colors, captured, or sunk it reduces the fleets morale.  The first fleet to 0 moral loses.  Interestingly enough, you can gain Fleet Morale by capturing enemy ships as prizes.  The author recommends a 300 point per side game, so 30 Morale to start.  That is about 6 ships per side.  

Of course, the game also covers some advanced rules in a separate section about wind and weather changes, multi-player games, sea terrain, and special ships.  It then has a small selection of scenarios that cover the basics.  As a bonus, the rules also have a couple pages of rules for single ship frigate duels, that have slightly more detail, but follow the basic rules of the game.  In the Fleet Lists it also covers special characters, also known as Historical figures; and legendary ships.  A nice bit of flavor. 

The book as diagrams to help illustrate its rules.  It also has some shots of GHQ Micronauts line on the table and with some smoke to represent the battle.  Nothing to inspiring but enough to give you the flavor of the gaming.  Finally, it has very nice artwork from the Osprey library that really make you want to get a few ships and go to town. 

Overall, this seems like a pretty easy to learn but hard to master set of rules.  Aren't those the best kind?  It has just enough spice and flavor to make it fun, but not enough to overburden the game.  It definitely focuses on immersion and away from simulation and compared to other Age of Sail/Naval games I have looked at tries to simplify the book keeping and focus on the game play.  However, it is also crew-centric as the main difference between ships is the abilities of its crew to sail and shoot which is reflected in the stats of the different Navies ships.  A British 1st Rate and a Spanish 1st rate have different strengths and abilities on the table.  Again, enough for flavor but not enough to be a deal breaker.  They look to strike a balance between the strategic (list building and fleet org) versus the tactical (How you maneuver and shoot with your ships) to make a fun looking game. 

Let me know your thoughts about the game below and feel free to add any links to battles using the rules.  I would love to see it!