Spain v.s Dutch Pirates, Oak and Iron.

 The Righteous and Virtuous Empire of His Most catholic Majesty of Spain vs. the Trumping Dutch in the Seventeenth century Caribbean. 

I mean its typical of the Spanish court.  I was appointed Admiral with no experience of this game.  It shows.  You may refer to me as "His Excellency Count Finguin."  Vice Admiral His Excellency Count Manuel McGurk was well placed to support me.

On the other side of the Zoom call those bold buccaneers Admiral van Q, and Captains van Alan and van Mike.  

Young Davy Jones Quilp acted as our umpire, rolling the dice and moving the miniatures. [After several successful games using WhatsApp, this was only our second attempt at using Zoom. The Fat Marshal showed what could be done, in Purgatory, so I was keen to push the boundaries some more. One player couldn't connect on the night, so had to rely on WhatsApp photos and this blog. Admiral Finguin did a fine job of using screen captures to blog 'live'.]

The Oak and Iron table, and table E in almost full zoom mode.

The claw of Quilpius talks us through the setup.

Deploying.  Turns out the Spanish had the Galleon, a King Tiger of the Main.

Turn one sees no real surprises.  Straight sailing by all parties.

The end of turn 1. 

The overhead as turn two begins

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End of Turn 2

Basically more straight sailing.  All Captains were settling in and selecting their targets

The Mighty Galleon edges around the island.  What could possibly go wrong.

Captain Mike boldly slots between two Spaniards.

The battle between the Spanish Vice Admiral and the Dutch Admiral van Q heats up.  The frigate bullies our poor little Corvette. 

Captain Fast Mike gets battered

But it's the bold and valiant Spanish Vice Admiral who shoots most effectively at Captain Mike.  It's a battering.

End of Turn 3.  The Sloop on fire

Turn four, it's already apparent that the Spanish Admiral is just getting in the way!

Captain Alan goes for the prize, gets it aboard, and damages Spanish morale, giving them a strike point.

The Corvette and frigate slug it out to the north of the island.

Dirty tricks alert.   A shoal magically appears in front of the galleon.  Spanish Admiral fans (well just me then) fear the worst.

But the Galleon hits back in revenge.  Ineffective. 

Turn four.  My Glorious galleon gets off that damn shoal

And the Spanish start to run into each other's way

A tight turn for the Spanish Vice Ad...

The frigate of Admiral Q clips the shoal, but is undamaged.  

Spanish Vice swings his Corvette around

The damaged Brigantine limps off

End of turn five. The Dutch have the objective aboard, and the Spanish have a strike point. 

Admiral Q gets the frigate up to speed 5, Zooming around the Island.  He misses the shoal, barely...

Admiral  Q meets Dutch Mike swerving around the island.

The Spanish Vice, in his damaged Corvette creeps nearer the objective.

Do you have a broadside on that damaged Corvette... NO!  

The galleon shoots at the Flyboat again, poor gunnery again.

Huzzah.  Damage on that Flyboat...  End of turn 6.

So at this point a huge electrical storm descended on Pathos.  The Spanish Admiral prudently retired to unplug the TV, laptop and more critically the magic Internet box.   

In game terms I firmly believe that one of his crew pushed him overboard.  It meant that his Excellency missed the end of the sea fight.

That storm went on for hours!

[Electrical storms aside, Admiral Finguin actually retired very near the end of the action.]

The Spanish struggle to close, against the wind, while the Fluyt attempts to haul herself through the eye of the wind to get underway. The remaining Dutch appear to be on the wrong side of the island.

Van Mike and Admiral Q narrowly avoid colliding.

As the game approached the ten turn limit (I think we reached turn 8), the Spanish could not close enough to cause significant damage on the Fluyt. The last remaining Spanish hope was the Corvette which was still windward of the Fluyt. Unfortunately, it had been badly damaged in its fight with Admiral Q and could not take much more damage. In a huge gamble, that sadly did not pay off, the Spanish Vice Admiral brought the corvette into musket range of the Dutch Fluyt. A good broadside followed by partial fire in the next move was enough to see the corvette put out of action. With 3 Strike points and only 2 remaining ships it was game over for the Spanish.

End Game

So that was our first proper game of Oak and Iron, and the Zoom format worked surprisingly well. Hopefully this won't be our last.