THE BATTLE OF THE BOOK

Finallly I managed to borrow some time for posting a battle that took place the last month when I was abroad learning German. I played at Hahnc's house and was a battle between Ralgard and Iron Dwarves just as it is shown in the last Uncharted Seas Rulebook.


DEPLOYMENT

The battle took place in an archipielago and the deployment is shown in the following picture. The ships involved were the equivalent of each faction, except the Ralgard included a Battleship and I included submarines and an extra heavy cruiser and a destroyer squadron instead a frigate squadron.

EARLY  TURNS

The dwarves suffered a crippling blow when after suffering a second hit, the Bellows airship was destroyed by a double critical hit thanks to the Ralgard Warballoons that scored a bucket of exploding dice. So the airship was destroyed without contributing to the battle

The submarines and destroyers managed to sink a frigate here and there, I decided to attack in two waves. First one: the flagship, then followed by the Anvil Heavy cruisers. The hammers were badly damaged by shooting from the Ralgard Assault cruisers and war balloons but managed to sink many frigates and put some damage in the assault cruisers.

ENDING TURNS

The Dwarf flaship damaged the Ralgard battleship and the cruisers with experimental ammunition and in return, the cruisers and one of the submarines were sunk, and destroyers were badly damaged....

... When the destroyers were finally sunk by surviving frigates and the surviving submarine attempted to turn around (the submerged token has 360º turning rate, but once you surface they need the small template to turn from the last position they moved surmeged) so it took it another turn to turn around and fire the enemy frigates. The real problem was in the middle of the board. The Dwarf flagship found itself surrounded by enemies after sinking the last Ralgard cruiser and destroying the surviving war balloons. Also, the Anvils, that were almost untouched had no room to maneuver in support of their flagship....

... so the Flaagship was rammed by Ralgard Assault cruisers and slaughtered all the crew and the Admiral :( giving the Ralgard the victory.


AFTERTHOUGHTS

It was an interesting battle, I learned a lot. Hahnc told me about battlelines, but I had difficulties in making these maneuvers with so many islands around, and dwarves have not specially agile ships :( It also was a bad Idea to attack in separate waves leaving my flagship unsuported. I ended up blocking my own movement and firepower. Also, the destruction of my Bellows airship was a decisive blow (It could have bombed the assault cruisers), so I feel myself out-activated, and out-gunned the rest of the battle.

I will talk about dwarf tactics in the next entry on this blog. I promise... ;)

Dan