This is a nice replay this game had quite a few tactical twists and turns in it. I believe we had 2200+ configuration points to work with this game. I opted for three 3rd Rates, a few “Rebellious” sleek frigates and a single “Bounty” naval cutter for scouting. VL chose six “Endeavor” heavy frigates and the “Rover” armed merchantman. In the beginning of the battle, we both opt to send our main fleets north of the islands. I also send a small flanking force of two skirmishers through the middle, to approach VL’s fleet from the south. While these flankers would have been a great surprise, VL had chosen Military Intelligence as one of his Captain Cards, allowing him to reveal the fog of war for a single turn and spot my flankers.

At first contact VL’s battle line has the advantage. With more ships and more firepower able to hit one of my ships, it won’t take too many turns before that ship will go down. Anticipating this, I peel my lead ship off to the left and bring up the rest of my line ships, providing cover for my wounded ship. It will take several turns, but this ship will rejoin the fight when it has turns complete around and can face its undamaged side to VL’s line. While this is happening, my skirmish ships have flanked VL’s main line.

My skirmishers accomplish two major tasks for my fleet. The first task is that they forced VL to divert some of his line ships to face the skirmishers, reducing the overall power of his battle line (less cannon available to focus on my line ships). Secondly, my skirmishers are behind his battle line; when he tries to pull out his wounded ship and seek cover, my skirmisher’s were there to finish the job. With the wind against him and no quick means to close on my line to turn it into a melee, VL doesn’t have many options left. Eventually, Roc pulls out the victory!

Note: this video was captured using the “quick replay” feature which speeds up the playback performing ship actions simultaneously. During normal game play, each ship moves and fires in a specific order, called “movement order”. This ordering is the number on the left of each ship on the game board