Pirate Fracas! 18th Century fun with Empire of the Dead rules. AAR

Over the weekend, Roly popped over for a bit of 18th century fun.

As much as I enjoy gaming with Roly, games are often few and far between... but hopefully that looks to be changing this year, with Roly finding a few more, semi regular available slots in his social diary...

And so for our opening game of the year, we decided to have some pirate fun together. We have enjoyed games of Legends of the High Seas in the past together, but a recent game with my son in this setting, had me thinking about trying the Empire of the Dead rules, as a contrasting game, to see how the rules would handle this period and setting...

But before we begin, its was time to talk, and grimace, like a pirate, Arrrr!

Arrrr, shatter the main brace and splice the poop deck, arrrr!

15 men on a .... OK stop that, its silly! [Pythonesque voice-over interrupting!] ;-)

And so we made a start.... we didn't go into any great elaborate faction set up...
We each took 8 models from our respective pirate collections. We used the Gentleman Faction from EotD as a 'template', making a 'Captain' from a President, a 'Mate' from a Vice-president, and a 'Quartermaster' from a Secretary, then each had 5 'Rogues', from the Membership....

For equipment, we just went with how each model was equipped.

One thing we had to decide on was our gunpowder weapons of the period. EotD has a Musket, so that was fine, and the rules for it are 'Move or Fire', to reflect its cumbersome use... There are also two pistol options in EotD - 'light' and 'heavy'... At first thought, I was inclined just to make them light pistols as they are older weapons than the Victorian period would normally use, but... I recalled a documentary on SKY, about dueling and it discussed these flintlock pistols. Turns out they had a pretty big caliber by modern standards and hits would cause terrible wounds. So with this in mind, we made our flintlock pistols, 'heavy'.

The second part of this rule; the in game mechanism - 'Move or Fire'; I have never really liked this... as I feel once the weapon is loaded, you should be able to move around as you need to and fire it. It's the reloading that is awkward and time consuming. So we decided to allow our models to move and fire their muskets and pistols, but would have to remain stationary to reload one, so they become 'Move or Re-load'.

This then made sense in that our models have pistols crammed into every belt loop possible. For example my Pirate captain was modeled with 4 pistols! So that means he could move and fire for 4 turns in a row, before having stop and re-load. This made sense to us, and we felt reflected the period well.

So with that determined, we picked a simple "Fracas" mission from the EotD book, and deployed on opposite board sides.

Scenario objective - reduce your opponents force to less than 25% starting strength.

On to the game...

Roly splits his crew into two groups of four... either side of the rear of the tavern, where the wenches are looking for custom...

Rolys Captain leads a group of 4 including his Mate. Whilst the Quartermaster leads the other three models...

For myself, my Mate, was accompanied by a big African rogue... and they headed up the centre from port side...

My Quartermaster, the 'Turk' leads 'Two-swords' up the left side of town...

... whilst and Captain leads three rogues up the right side of town...

My Captain leads his group forward, no one is in sight yet...

Rolys Captain leads his gang towards the town centre square...

My Mate advances and take up a firing position behind the well...

Rolys Quartermaster continues his approach round side of town...

Turk and Two-swords moves to head them off...

My musket armed rogue, sees a long range chance of a shot at Rolys Captain but misses...

... as does my Mate from behind the well, and misses too... drat!

Rolys Captain leads his gang boldly into the town square...

... the rest of his crew coming from the other side of town...

My Captain moves up to the cover of the edge of a cottage and discharges his first pistol, hitting and wounding Rolys Mate... whilst my rogue armed with a grenade moves up and lobs his weapon at the group...

We checked the rules for Grenades in EotD... but only found smoke bombs, Garlic grenades and Wolfsbane grenades... no 'standard' explosive grenades! Odd!? So we went back to the LotHS rules took the stats from there - 5" diameter template effect. If under centre of template its a Str5 hit, all others a strength 3 hit... Oh and roll a one to-hit and the grenade goes off in your hand! As it happened, I missed my throw...

Having seen the grenade bounce harmlessly away, and the pistols shot coming from the corner of the building, Rolys rogue steps forward and lowers his blunderbuss! Oh heck, I hadn't realised he had one of those!

Blunderbuss - Boom! 

Two automatic str5 hits! Luckily I only take one wound. Rolys rogue levels his musket at my Captain too but fails to wound. Close shave! However, just to make sure there are no more possible explosions, Rolys Captain and Mate charge my grenadier and cut him down!

The two opposing crews begin to square off, approaching either side of the towns square buildings...

Turk, drops into 'Watch&Shoot', in case anything comes into view (marked by red token)...

The action hots up in town centre, my Two-swords getting discombobulated from a pistol shot...

Rolys blunderbuss armed pirate, now without a loaded weapon, and facing my Captain still with 3 pistols, decides there's nothing for it and charges my Captain! My Captain loses the fight and goes down, but his sword thrust riposte kills the rogue!

Meanwhile on the other side of the cottage, and I am losing the fights as two more of my rogues go down... I can't stand up to Rolys Captain and Mate.

Turk shoots and drops the rogue wench in front of him as my Mate hits but only discombobulates Rolys rogue...

In the maintenance phase my Captain crawls into cover, as does my green shirted rogue, but my African recovers and stands back up charging Rolys Captain. My musket man comes in also, swinging the butt end of his musket two handed (improvised two handed weapon) at Rolys mate. This move was to stop them automatically dispatching my downed crew...

My Quartermaster turk and the Mate and Two-swords gang up on Rolys discombobulated rogue and cut him down, then use their free advance move to take cover behind the side of the town building from Rolys approaching Quartermaster...

Rolys captain slays my African...

Next turn my captain bleeds out, succumbing to his wounds... Greenshirt recovers to discombobulated but is then charged by Rolys Captain. The Mate and swinging musket man keep at each other... with the Mate going down and out to a hammer blow musket butt to the head...

Rolys Quartermaster and rogue round the corner and fire their pistols, but miss... now they're open to my return charge!... and both get cut down...

Roly is down to 2 guys now, to my 4 but my captain is gone. Rolys Captain crosses the fence in front of him, following the now retreating wild musket man, and shoots him dead with a pistol! My Mate charges Rolys Captain whilst my Turk and Two-swords, charge Rolys only other rogue, armed with a musket, who has come over to help...

 My Mate goes down as does Rolys rogue...

 Next turn, my Mate recovers partially and Rolys rogue is finished off...

With his last act... Rolys Captain charges and cuts down my discombobulated Mate...

And with that the game comes to a close... as Roly is now down to just his Captain, his whole crew cut down, so he's now less than 25%. On the same turn I am reduced to 2  remaining crew, my Quartermaster gaining a battlefield commission to Captain! So I am at 25%. We check the rules, and find that makes the game a Draw!

Well played Sir, well played...


The remaining protagonists shake hands, and head over to the tavern and seek some comfort from the wenches waiting there....

A thoroughly enjoyable game. Some appropriate Pirates of the Caribbean Ipod music to accompany our game, and spicy snacks from wifey-poos, and a 'sociable sherbet' to add to the evenings enjoyment!

Great stuff!

We both felt the game played very well and reflected the period and setting admirably...

Looking ahead, we also can see how the EotD rules will be able handle the addition of ghostly pirates at need too!

I did miss the Fame and Fortune points of LotHS, so we may try adding in these effects to our next outing.