Sheep In Wolves Clothing?

[Coog]

Since I have a model of a 44 gun East Indiaman, I've been thinking on how to use it in a scenerio. Here is a battle I ran across while doing research which involved a few trying to pass as SOLs and defeating a French squadron:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pulo_Aura

[rrrreubanks]

That would be a very cool scenario; I think you'd have to have the French player go into the game blind as to the fact that the ships are HEIC and not regular SOLs, though, or the French player would just go right in and press the attack. Some fog of war injected, n'est-ce pas?

[Coog]

That would be a very cool scenario; I think you'd have to have the French player go into the game blind as to the fact that the ships are HEIC and not regular SOLs, though, or the French player would just go right in and press the attack. Some fog of war injected, n'est-ce pas?

I don't think I would ever have enough East Indiaman models for that one. I have had players go into a game with merchantmen representing unknown ships on the table until they could be indentified.

[David Manley]

This is one of those tricky "battles" where a fog of war element is essential. Even with SoLs on table to represent the Indiamen (at least until identified as such) I could see this being a problem to pull off in a single game scenario. After all, if the French player has bothered to turn up for the game he's going to want to play a game, so he'll close for action anyway. Which isn't a bad thing of course, but I suspect this scenario would work well in a campaign setting, or at least in a set of linked scenarios where ships available in succeeding games depend on the actions in the previous games. The French player would then be rather less likely to want to engage a seemingly superior force as it would risk what he had to play with in the next one. For added "fog" I'd move the setting to another part of the world, and maybe even change the nations involved but keep the essential aspects the same as a disguised scenario.

[rrrreubanks]

Yep, fog of war would be vital yet tricky to pull off. Depends on your gaming group, too. I have friends wjo would be timid approaching mercantmen, and others who are bold approaching an obviously superior force! And then there's that random dice thing that sticks its nose in!

[Coog]

An actual occurence of mistaken identity: On 27 April, 1815 USS Hornet 18 engaged HMS Cornwallis 74, having mistakenly identified her as a merchant vessel. Hornet managed to escape by throwing overboard boats, guns and other equipment so to enable higher speed. Can you imagine the reaction of Hornet's crew when they realized they were attacking a 74!

[csadn]

That would be a very cool scenario; I think you'd have to have the French player go into the game blind as to the fact that the ships are HEIC and not regular SOLs, though, or the French player would just go right in and press the attack.

I can see a couple options here:

1) A-historical: Linois sees through the ruse, and attacks; the question becomes "how well-armed and -crewed are the HEIC ships?". If the HEIC are heavily-enough armed, and have marginally-competent crews, the French smaller ships could be in a world of hurt trying to engage; and if the French player decides to hold his smaller ships back, what's to stop the HEIC ganging up on the which do engage? Or does the HEIC player sacrifice some ships so others can get away?

2) Points-based: The HEIC player has a number of ships, some HEIC, some RN, from which he assembles a force equal to the historical convoy size. Every combat ship costs him points, to where if he selects a "pure" combat force, he cannot win the scenario at all (the French force is a fixed value); so he must select a mix of HEIC cargo-haulers, and RN battlewagons. At the start of the game, each HEIC ship is shown as a "blank"; only when the French player gets within a certain range can he correctly ID the type of unit, at which point the blank is replaced with the "correct" unit. The French player can score points for IDing HEIC units, tho' not as many as if he captured or sank them.