Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay), 1-3 August, 1798 Scenario

[Walram]

Thanks Fred for the additional comments. I certainly admire whoever played the French as they took quite a beating. Great follow up.

Fred, thanks as well from me for your write-up. Much more detailed than I provided (and a much better story teller too!)

I've also asked Aprilbooks to provide a French Commander's counter-point. And just to let you all know, she volunteered for the job!

Fred, you were also right about the ship and division commander assignments. I did put a fair amount of consideration into that. Who best to lead in, who I thought was the strongest commander for the initial approach, etc. You were an unknown but I had a strong feeling from your contributions to this site that you would do great! Wish I had known how good your son was with the game.

One of our players, when we do "Wings of Glory", appears to have a magnet in the nosecone of his aircraft so I wanted to place him where collisions would have the least amount of impact. I wasn't disappointed; two ships, two collisions! In fact, we've named it "the [his last name] effect"; not to be confused with the "Nelson's patent bridge for boarding enemy vessels."[!!

[Aprilbooks]

I've also asked Aprilbooks to provide a French Commander's counter-point. And just to let you all know, she volunteered for the job!

D'accord, voici le français après action Rapport de l'Amirale Aprilbooks, commandante de la flotte française à la bataille d'Aboukir aux Ministres de la Guerre - le site Anchorage.

Whoops – sorry (should be in English). Okay, here is the French After Action Report of Admiral Aprilbooks, Commander of the French fleet at the Battle of Aboukir, to the Ministers of War - Anchorage site.

Caveat: Even though I *did* volunteer to handle all 17 ships of the French Fleet (and the “really dangerous fort”), there were times that it felt that all the boyz were picking on the only guurrrl.


When Walram started getting serious about doing this, we had no idea how many people would be there to play. As we have both run various gaming scenarios (including a SOG at the annual Enfilade in Olympia, WA) he would occasionally bounce ideas off me. I felt that as the French couldn’t move until after the Orient went “down”, one person should be able to handle if not all 17 ships, then at least all the ships until movement was required.

Because I dislike being a commander unless I am only responsible for myself and I prefer not to captain more than 2-3 moving ships, I did volunteer to “command” the French Fleet. I also got voluntold to be in charge of the Phase Card, some photos, and the order of firing. And, like Fred said, *try* to keep the British in line (I also read this last one as getting as many verbal shots off as possible – I did my best).

The hardest thing I had to cope with was having the British drop anchor between my ships and hit me with raking fire and not being able to return the favor. However, there was a [very] short moment when I thought I had a chance – one of the English captains moved someone else’s ship {snarky comments about not reading his ship card deleted} into a position that I would have been able to get some cannon action. Unfortunately (for me), the error was discovered before I could take advantage and again I was subject to severe pounding.

I *did* try to lure some of the Brits into the shoals (the space after last line on the mat closest to where I had the French deck cards setup was designated as “shoals”), but nobody stepped up to the mark

I usually fired as soon as I could get range – often using just the front guns. And shot with anything I could (including pistol fire). With so many mobile units coming at me, I wanted to reduce the gun levels as soon as possible, knowing that there was every chance that I would get hammered before I could get another shot in. Occasionally, I was able to use the center broadside, but often I was half way down my damage card. It was not uncommon to have between 20-30 total chits per ship per turn.

One thing I had going for me was my ability to draw mostly “0” when I pulled my damage chits – unfortunately, I kept drawing “0” when I wanted to draw a “crew” (we were using E chits for blowing up and decision to depart the battle – “0” for not blowing up/not leaving and “crew” for blowing up/departing). The “House Rules” should be somewhere – Walram said he uploaded them.

Once the Orient went down, I welcomed Walram’s help – 10 ships or so were too much for me to handle all by myself. He would draw the E chits for leaving (doing better than I did), and would plan the movement for the eight ships that tried to leave. I would move about half of them (he would move the rest) and I was still be in charge of all firing of stationary ships and those leaving.

Bottom line – I had great fun!! I went in knowing that the French were going to go down (stupid Napoleon) so I wasn’t really bothered. I did try to keep the guys on their toes – like I said, what I couldn’t do with gun fire, I gave it my best verbal volley (keeping within the boundaries of camaraderie and fair play). And no matter what any of the guys say – I’m NOT dangerous.

Thanks so very much to Fred for his kind words, his narrative and his reporting of the stats – I had no idea what went down/how badly damaged the ships were. I was amazed at just how much damage I was able to inflict.

Thousands of thanks to Walram who put in uncounted hours to put this all together, to everybody who showed up to play and especially to the designers, Angiolillo and Andrea, for creating a GREAT game.


Below are examples of just how bad the French ships got surrounded (the ship card is what used to be the Orient). One of them shows the beginning of one of my "stack o' damage chits" (one of the previously uploaded pictures shows a bigger stack).