More people than ships! What to do?

[2500kgm3]

I recently invited some of my gamer friends who are really into the age of sail, to give Sails of Glory a go next saturday. Some other friends of mine heard of that, and have decided they'd love to take part too.

Therefore, I will be playing Sails of Glory with 5 other people next week. That's great! We play with advanced rules and some optional ones too (flagships being one of these).

There is a problem, however: I only have the starter set at hand, and we are six players in total. I know they won't agree to split the group, and while I have already ordered two more third rates, due to the time of the year they won't be avaliable until long after saturday. That makes 4 ships to command for 6 captains.

I was thinking about trying to run a variation of the Algeciras scenario for the 2014 scenario contest, since it includes at least one printable town as a coastal battery I could print and play as, therefore freeing one more ship for other players to use.
I was wondering, however, since we are talking three people and two ships in each side, maybe having the player without ships to command being an "admiral" in the flagship (while the ship itself is under command of its respective captain) could work.

Do you have any idea about how to implement this concept? Is there a system we could use to make "admirals" have to take hard and fun decisions without diminishing the captain's enjoyment? Do you have any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks a lot for your imput.

[Naharaht]

I suppose that four players could command ships, one the coastal battery (although they may not have much to do) and you, as host, could simply act as referee. If they are new to the game, I imagine that they will need help understanding the rules.

[7eat51]

One thing you can try is to have a port with a battery at the entrance. One of the players could run the battery. If you have Pirate of the Spanish Main or some other set of minis that you could use as merchant ships, you could run those. You can set points for how many merchants arrive safely minus damage they took, points for sunken or captured merchants, etc. Winning side has the most points. This leaves your five friends to run the battery and fighting ships.

[7eat51]

Forgot, as to an admiral, it would place two commanders, if you will, on one ship which could make for an interesting dynamic, to say the least. We discussed using flag signals, for example here http://sailsofglory.org/showthread.php?2330-Flag-Signal-Communication&highlight=signal. That could be an option, but with so few ships, it probably would be unduly cumbersome.

Depending upon your time, you could respawn ships, have two island forts, and play some sort of capture the flag. With one person running each fort, all six players are engaged with fighting.

[Union Jack]

Make a base with thick card same size as SoG ships base. Take a ship card from the file section ie the card that the model ship sits on and mount this on the base.. Take a profile photo of a ship, say a 74. Print it then reverse image and print that. Stick together on card with a fold of card at bottom. Fold the fold over stick to base and you have a 2 dimensional representation of a 74. All you need is to share a deck. If you plan 1 card only then split a deck as there are multiple choices of same card. Then just share the red border in irons cards when needed.
Us Eric's easy play ship record sheets, from files, with marker pen and hey presto you're good to go.

[2500kgm3]

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody.

In the end, one of those friends who was attending could not come, so we were 5 people with four ships. I opted out, choosing to have my friends with one ship each while I handled turn order, rules, wind, and such.

The experience was not as good as it could have been, but that has a lot more to do with my very bad choices regarding terrain placement and playing field size than with the number of ships. I will learn a lot from this.

Thanks again!