Formigues 1283

 John put on another Postcard game, this time covering Medieval galley actions in 1283. Not a period I'm very familiar with!

Evidently there were a series of engagements around the Formigues Islands, NE of Barcelone in 1283 between the Catalans and Franco/Genoan alliance.

The game comes with three scenarios, and we actually played the first one the previous evening, but my phone ran out of battery so I didn't get any photos. 

Apologies for the appalling pictures. The French ships stand out OK, but the Catalans blend into the background.

Essentially each unit is a flotilla of galleys, and they have different ratings for ranged combat and melee. The Catalans were generally better at shooting than the French. The fire represents crossbow attacks, and while they can damage a flotilla, it can never sink it, destroying enemy ships is by assault combat (boarding).

Unlike many of the other games we've played, each side takes it in turns to activate a single unit, no random activation. The weather gauge gives and advantage in that a unit can row/sail into combat and fight on the same activation, normally this takes two activations.  

Units from the same flotilla can support each other, hence in this battle we all tried to sail around in groups. irl  I gather this was literally soldiers running from one ship to another in the middle of the battle, not something I'd fancy doing in mail armour!

Being supported allows a neighbouring ship to add in half its combat factors, and also absorb hits. This is a really clever and simple mechanism which opens up a wide range of tactical choices. 

On the screen above the wicked Catalans have sailed into a French ship, and as they have the wind gauge, they can initiate combat immediately.

This results in a bloody exchange as the Catalans loose off the crossbows, damaging one of our ships, then score another hit in assault. We chose to spread the hits across our support ships, and eventually saw the Catalans off but at the cost of 3 hits. 

This left my flotilla at below 50% strength, so it was forced to pull back. Fortunately Pete and Simon still had fresh flotillas (of two ships each). 

We then got stuck in and once again took out a Catalan ship, this time only for the cost of two hits, which were spread over both of Petes ships. We'd also managed to break up the Catalan formation so they went out of support.

The Catalans counterattacked and took Petes flotilla out of the fight, but cost them another ship.

Finally it was all down to Simons flotilla who bravely took on the remaining Catalans.

And once more took out a Catalan ship at the cost of both of ours being damaged (the Catalan ships were better than ours), and the final Catalan ship had to withdraw.

By now we'd amassed enough VPs for an easy win so we called it.

I've probably not done it justice in the account, but it was a really interesting game system, and it very much felt like you were trying to fight a land battle at sea, which I gather is what a lot of this thing was all about. For a set of rules which fit on a postcard it is very impressive indeed, and to my mind, a better game than the Mortain one.

We are playing the next scenario in a few weeks.