Boating Weather

With the coming of spring and especially the nice warmer weather in our neck of the woods my family has returned to boating. We did a lot of boating last year, and then never went back to it. But it inspired us to include a lot more large water ways in our great big home made wall map that keeps track of our giant never-ending game.

There’s nothing like feeling the cool wind off the water, I think, as I set out for a nice day-trip to invade those islands I’ve always coveted. It’s not greed- those island are a valuable outpost and in the wrong hands it endangers everything I’ve built so far. I need them for security reasons.
I tried to negotiate with my eldest son- offering to buy them from him for 200 points, which admittedly, is only a small amount- but it’s better than risking an invasion, don’t you think?

But children will be children, stubbornly hanging on to areas they should cede to their elders.

My oldest son is 12 now, almost a teenager, and he is constantly challenging the authority and wisdom of the status quo. I was only a little surprised when he met my invasion force mid-lake with a flotilla of defenders.

We use upside-down hex tiles for boats- it sort of happened spontaneously and seemed the easiest thing to do.
They are destructible of course, but at our house it’s the top-down rule. (You must target the top most item- if it’s a full boat you must first destroy a figure before you can target the boat hex beneath. Once you do puncture the boat, that hex floods, and then each turn the boat fills with water, hex by hex, at a rate determined by the 6d. When it’s completely full, it sinks. We have some thin blue foam cut into hexes that we use for water)


Boats

1 hex 10 pts
2 hex 20 pts
7 hex 50 pts
24 hex 100 pts
8 D, 5 M, 6d sinking

We also have a few deep-water figures- for example that heady new-comer the Fen Hydra can swim well enough and doesn’t need a boat. We have different rules for deep water and shallow water. The Marr need boats in deep water and we try to stick with blue tiles to represent the depths. We have acquired our first lexan mat, which is nice. We also have several home-made hand drawn ones.

Back to the battle. His defensive ships contained only ranged units, which continued to try and sink my incoming army. In our big game it’s not always the particular figures that matter- it’s the point value. I had bought the cheapest things- tried to spread the points out as much as I could knowing that I’d lose some but hoping to get across with as much as possible. I had some ranged figures and some melee and was able to chase off his ships by applying pressure from a distance while threatening boarding. Two of my 7 hex ships went down, and several figures drowned before they could be rescued.

Swimming in deep water – shake the 20d
11+ take your normal turn
10- drowning 1 wound, stunned (no attacking from the water)

His ships pulled back and retreated with little loss- meaning he kept most of his points and then could transfer them to defending his outpost. He was heavily out-numbered because my invading force was huge and he’d just hoped to cause as much loss as possible before we landed. His possession of the outpost was really just a feint- something to occupy me while he plotted and moved elsewhere.

My son had built some fortifications at the outpost- in our big game a castle “cylinder” only costs ten points- and he had restricted my future movement on land with castle walls and added towers on the shore to harass me.




Preparing to land

We switched maps so I could do the landing and he sent out melee troops and a few little boats to delay my landing while his ranged units snipered from his castle tower heights. His little boats only slowed me down a little and instead of sinking them I just killed their occupants and used them myself. I landed on the shore and he withdrew all forces behind fortifications. I attacked the door, which fell after two turns. He left a few remaining figures to run around the ramparts and distract me while the bulk of his remaining forces retreated off the board.

The outpost was mine. Re-enforcements were already on the way. His retreating force was too small to retake the outpost, but I’d start after next turn just the same.

This is the game I excel in- I’ll lose many battles but by managing my resources effectively and making strategic choices for outposts and invasion points I win in the long run, even when they team against me. It’s funny I think, to use the experience of budgeting a small income for a growing family in war scenarios. That’s something they don’t know much about yet. Sometimes, Dad wins.