Idea: Moving cannons to an island?

[Torrence]

After playing a (rather short) round with too many islands and reefs, I thought about the possibility of transferring cannons from a stranded ship to the island it is stuck on (not including reefs, only land with enough "flat" area for a small battery).

You are able to decide if you want to bring one or both broadsidebatteries ashore, the damage they are able to inflict depends on the current state of the ship (full damage for all guns, halfed damage (rounding up) for the guns of one broadside). Of course such a land battery wouldn't have as much hitpoints as a fort, maybe the damage it can hold should depend on the status of the ship (or be only one field with the burden of the ship, symbolising the number of single cannons that can be destroyed by hits).
My first prototypes are made of sawn off, black-painted 1mm nails as cannons, glued into a block of five wooden gun carriages with a vertical "flagpole" (another nail) with which it can be stuck onto the island (I'm using custom made islands and reefs, mostly from painted wood or polystyrene) and be turned (It is not a real fortification, so it should be able to change it's position rather easy). In this case the firing arc should be limited (maybe no "real" arc, but only the combat ruler, placed in front of the battery line, should determine the range.)

This is just a raw idea, not yet ready for a final ingame-version (and in no case a flawless concept!), so I hope for ideas from your side.

[garchilajr]

Hey Torrence! This is a very interesting idea. Could you post pictures of your cannons?

[7eat51]

How many turns would it take to offload and set up?

[David Manley]

In reality this would be a fairly slow process and outside the bounds of a typical game. That said, to make a fun scenario anything goes I suppose :)

[Torrence]

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that transporting cannons from a ship to an island is more a work of one or two days

For the scenario I would say bringing one broadsidebattery ashore takes two/four turns staying within the width of a combat ruler off the island (2 turns if the captain decides to not use any actions in those turns, 4 turns if he wants to use half of his available actions per turn (so at gamestart 4/2 = 2). This decides if all the crew or only half of them is working on bringing the guns ashore).


Pictures of the prototype:


wood and nails used (please, if anyone knows a better way to build them, let me know!)


battery:




With improvised flag (By the way: What flag would be used on such a battery? The national colours or the Navy Ensign?)

[Comte de Brueys]

...a whit flag I guess.



Funny idea for a scenario and a nice self made battery.

I'm afraid that your enemy would anchor right behind your stranded ship and rake him the stern as long as the brave crew lost any ambitions to disembark cannons to the beach.



Maybe you start the scenario with a ship that already stranded two days ago. Some attackers try to finish it off - some defenders + the new costal battery try to avoid this.

[Union Jack]

Nice idea and love the scratch built battery.

[Naharaht]

An interesting idea worthy of further development.

[David Manley]

(please, if anyone knows a better way to build them, let me know!)

Rod Langton has a battery like this in his scenics range which is very nice.

Oh, and yes to the flag - commonly flown from permanent batteries so I would imagine the crew of an impromptu battery would also fly their flag if they were able.

[garchilajr]

Thank you for the pictures!

[Bligh]

Like the idea in concept. In theory you could have the ship beached to repair the hull with all guns swayed out to defend it during repairs.
That should provide a double broadside. If you could get them up onto an elevated piece of land, or cliff they might even be more difficult to hit from a ship at sea level.
Rob.

[Naharaht]

For people like me who are not too good at making things, here is a 4 gun battery counter.

[David Manley]

Like the idea in concept. In theory you could have the ship beached to repair the hull with all guns swayed out to defend it during repairs.

A relatively common occurrence for smaller ships at least

[Bligh]

For people like me who are not too good at making things, here is a 4 gun battery counter.

These are useful even for those of us who intend to model Dave.
A lot of games can pass between the intent to model and getting it finished.
Thanks for posting.
Rob.

[Union Jack]

Perhaps in SoG game terms:

1 task to make the guns ready.
1 Task to unload onto a boat/raft.
1 task to transport.
1 task to unload and set up.

For every crew point taken off the ship work from the right to left to find out the gun factor for the unloaded guns. The ship then fights with that many crew members removed from the left side of the ship management card. This ensures the relevant broadside factor is reduced accordingly.

[Torrence]

Thanks, Neil, for reminding me!

Completely forgot to include the crew it takes to use a land battery in my calculations.

I'll try to gather my fellow players for some testing matches in the next weeks to find out what aspect would be too weak/strong and find the final rules (and I'll have to build some more batteries; currently only four of them are finished).

[Bligh]

It will be very interesting to discover what your trialing comes up with Richard.
Rob.

[Torrence]

Sorry, so far no further testing...

In the last months we had only 4 rounds of SoG due to lack of time and stressful studying (and a new player in each of them...). Now we're moving on to using own scenarios, so maybe there will be a "Stranded ship" or "Too-many-reefs-in-a-foggy-night-with-drunken-lookout" in the future. If so, I'll take pictures and let you know in a short AAR.

Greetings,
Richard

[Union Jack]

Seeing your idea in action would be good, as they say a picture paints a thousand words.