Homeschooling with Galleys & Galleons

This week we combined testing the solo/co-operative guidelines for Galleys & Galleons, with our homeschooling wargame. G&G has elements of addition, subtraction, probability, risk vs reward, and compass points, as well as the opportunity to blow up ships... There was also a useful learning point about social distancing.😷 

My son and I set out as loosely affiliated pirate sorts. I took the brig, Oberon (entering the area from the SW), while he captained the ghost ship, Bluebeard's Revenge (entering from the NE). The quarry were a flotilla of AI controlled Dutch East India Company merchant ships - the Nutmeg (merchant junk), Tea Chest (junk), and Pepper Corn (junk), accompanied by the cromster, Utrecht as a small warship escort. The Dutch ships ignored advise to follow social distancing and were set up close together in the NW of the area. Their exit point was the SE corner, between Fort Blaggard and Hangman's Rock.

As the Oberon sailed towards the centre of the area, hoping to intercept the Dutch, Fort Blaggard opened fire. The autonomous skipper of the Utrecht also decided that the Oberon looked like an easy mark and made straight towards her. After several exchanges of fire - in which the Utrecht got the worst of it - the Dutch captain cocked-up and had to roll on the All at Sea table, colliding with the Oberon and receiving further damage in the collision. The Oberon's crew grappled the Dutch vessel and the boarding action was settled with the cromster's surrender. Unscathed in the fight with the Utrecht, the Oberon had been damaged by the gunners on Fort Blaggard, but the first prize was mine!

Meanwhile, the Bluebeard's Revenge had managed to sail to the centre of the table and found herself in irons, right in front of the flotilla of junks. Never one for subtlety, her young skipper fired off a devastating full broadside at the Tea Chest causing significant hull damage which also then ignited her powder magazine. There were no vessels near enough to the blast to risk catching fire, but the wreck and debris from the Tea Chest now left a slip/trip hazard of the other junks just behind her.

As the sun began to set, the inevitable happened, the Nutmeg sailed straight across the wreckage and took some minor hull damage. As she changed her heading and opened fire on the approaching Oberon (causing me more hull damage!), the Peppercorn failed her activation roll and sailed straight into the stern of the Nutmeg causing both vessels to suffer further damage.

The badly damaged Nutmeg came about and sailed away from the mess of masts, spars and floating bodies, on to be hit with another of Bluebeard's Revenge's crippling broadsides. The Nutmeg was destroyed then and there. The Oberon risked the floating wreckage of the exploded junk to sail up to and grapple the last Dutch vessel, the junk Peppercorn. After a quick boarding action, the second prize was mine.

So all in all, a successful run. The Dutch convoy was most definitely stopped. The ghost ship dragged many more souls down to Davy Jones Locker, while the Oberon made off with two nice prizes. Well, one nice cromster and a badly damaged little junk. The AI guidelines seemed to work just fine. The Dutch ships did sail across wreckage and collide with each other, but I've done far worse than that myself! Yarrr! 💀