Trafalgar- A wargaming weekend continued

My last blog article told the story of our refight of Vittoria. The game had lasted well into the early afternoon and so rather than start another large battle, we decided that something less serious was required. Andy Callan, is working with Wofun, a company that specializes in laser cutting 28mm gaming figures into acrylic plastic. The Company uses artwork by Peter Dennis. If you have any Osprey books in your collection or have bought a Perry or Warlord boxed set, the chances are that you are familiar with Peter’s excellent work. The combination of Peter Dennis’s artwork and the simple design of the acrylic figures mean that using the Wofun kits, you can produce a table ready army in a matter of an hour or so.

Admiral Collingwood (well, Steve Wood) surveys the enemy fleet!

Andy’s role with Wofun is to produce simple rules to use with the figures and as a result, he often receives samples of the latest Wofun products. He had recently acquired the Trafalgar boxed set, which features every ship from all three fleets present at the Battle of Trafalgar. It took about an hour to assemble the 60+ ships and we were ready to refight the battle. Andy hasn’t actually produced the rules for this set yet but over the course of lunch, he knocked up a set of simple rules that would give us a nice straight forward game.

There’ plenty of room on the table! The ship in the background is ‘Africa’

Our host, Mark, has a luxurious wargaming set up, including a massive 17x 8 foot table that uses carpet tiles for the base scenery. It was a simple task to relay the table in Blue carpet tiles and hey presto, we were ready to go!

Admiral Mark signals his fleet! ‘Get stuck in boys, last man in, buys the drinks!’

We chose admirals by drawing lots. Unfortunately for Simon, he drew the French and Spanish fleets – he was in for a difficult battle. As regards movement, the French and Spanish ships were given limited scope for maneuvering. We decided that the fleets would stay in the same relative position other than closing with each other, so forward movement was not allowed to any great degree – we didn’t want the ships to disappear off of the table! The French and Spanish were also at a disadvantage with firing, requiring 6’s to hit at anything over medium range, allowing the British fleet to close. The British had the advantage with their first broadside and so were encouraged to wait to open fire.

The French and Spanish open up at long range.

I’ll let the pictures tell the story of the battle. With the odds stacked against Admiral Simon, the Spanish and French were always going to struggle. Simon made things even more difficult by achieving the world record for rolling dice without getting a single 6! At one point, we actually checked to make sure he had 6’s on his dice!

The two British Fleets bear down on the Enemy.

Close action! Nelson gets to grips with the enemy

Collingwood prefers a more stately approach!

So the two British fleets, under Collingwood (me) and Nelson ( Mark) closed on the enemy and when in close range, opened with a devastating Broad side. As the British cut the Spanish and French line, raking the ships as they went, close combat ensued but by then it was very much over with a large number of the enemy ships out of action or smoking hulks! As expected, the fleet led by Nelson was first to contact the Enemy and was rewarded by forcing the French flagship to strike his colours.