The merchant ship SS Kiel plowed through the Baltic, en route to her home port as part of Prussian convoy PC-63. Her captain nervously paced the bridge; though the transit had been mostly uneventful, the convoy escorts had peeled off about an hour ago to investigate a possible Britaninan submarine sighting. This made him feel especially vulnerable, as the merchant ships were essentially on their own for the time being. Suddenly, one of the other ships in the convoy exploded! Looking to the north, the captain suddenly spotted several low, sinister shapes. Through his telescope, those shapes resolved into a sight that made his blood run cold: Pirates! The wireless then crackled to life with the words no merchant captain that has been part of a convoy ever wants to hear: “Enemy attack! All vessels, scatter!” Convoy PC=63 had ceased to exist as an organized formation, and its component ships and their crews were now in a fight for their lives.

Major McNichol, one of our members, recently started kitbashing some models and making some custom rules for a DW pirate faction. Last weekend, he and I had an opportunity to take them out for a test-drive.

Scenario

Since pirates were involved, it seemed only natural to have some merchant ships in the mix! Essentially, the scenario involved the two of us setting up on opposite corners of the board. In the middle, a group of models representing a scattered convoy would progressively move towards the edge of the board. Each merchant ship had DR 3, CR 5, and 2 HP, but had no defensive or offensive stats beyond that. The goal of the Pirates was to raid the merchants, which could be accomplished by assaulting one in a boarding action and getting 3 or more successes. The defending forces had to stop the pirates.

Forces

The pirate forces consisted of two squadrons of pocket cruisers, and one squadron of super destroyers, as described in Major McNichol’s thread on the forums. For the Prussians, I had 2 squadrons of 3 frigates, one squadron of 3 corvettes, and an augmented cruisers squadron of 2 cruisers and 1 gunship. Total points for the game was about 430.

Setup

Here is how the game looked at the start: note the merchants in the middle and the diagonal deployment.

Turn 1

In turn 1, the pirates managed to raid two merchants. However, the Prussian corvettes made the pirates pay heavily for that success; they managed to sink one pocket cruiser, damage another, and board a third!

Turn 2

In turn 2, the Prussians continued to punish the pirates with their small ships, while the pirates found it difficult to get through the screen to capture more merchants.

Turn 3

This turn, the Prussian cruisers got into the fray, savaging the Super Destroyer squadron on the left flank. Meanwhile, the Prussian frigates in the center of the board managed to sink another pirate pocket cruiser.

Turn 4

This was the climactic turn. The Prussian frigates succeeded in destroying another pocket cruiser, but in so doing they detonated its powder magazines! The resulting explosion took two of the frigates with it. The surviving frigate successfully boarded the last pocket cruiser, ending the pirate attack.

After Action

This was a fun game! However, there were definitely some balance issues with both the pirate model rules and the scenario that became evident during the game. First of all, the scenario itself made it difficult for the pirates to accomplish their objective. In general, we concluded that the merchants need to be more concentrated in the middle of the board, and move more slowly towards the edges. As for the pirate models, it became clear that they were a bit over-costed for their abilities. We discussed a number of fixes for these issues, but I won’t steal Major McNicol’s thunder on that one! Stay tuned to this thread for the tweaked versions.

In the end, despite the balance issues and some admittedly hot rolling on my part, we both had an enjoyable game. Looking forward to the re-match!