The Macau Incident

Having successfully play tested the scenario I’m now reasonably happy it should provide a good gaming experience for both players.

The PDF is available below for anyone else wanting to give the scenario a try and feedback, I’ll continue to update the document with changes.

While written with Warlord Games Black Seas in mind it should be prove equally adaptable to other gaming systems.

The game was a scenario I’ve written for The Macau Incident (1799) which see’s a combined French and Spanish squadron engaged with a smaller British escort squadron. In reality neither side wanted to fight, the British being heavily outnumber and the Spanish not exactly up for it with the Allied Squadron eventually withdrawing into a nearby Archipelago.
The scenario twists reality slightly for the sake of gameplay and played out really well with plenty of ups and downs along the way with some great moments.

The allied squadrons aim is to move diagonally (long ways) across the table, to win 3 ships must escape (including a larger 3rd rate), meanwhile the British aim is the cause as much damage as possible to deter further attacks and must Sink, Capture or cause the surrender of 3 allied ships.

The game started off as expected with both forces closing in but devastating Spanish gunnery (and very lucky dice) soon crippled HMS Virginie, setting her on fire and with steering lost running aground.

After some long range gunnery exchanges favouring the British things got up close and personal as the Allied Squadron entered the archipelago. Sensing the oppotunity to cause chaos in the allied line HMS Arrogant attempted to grapple the lead Spanish ship Europa, but alas this failed resulting an a spectacular collision and the ship becoming entagled.

With the Allied line now stalling Montañés in a fine display of Spanish seamanship collied fullspeed into her sistership. With Europa and Arrogant now firmly entagled the crews began boarding actions with the veteran British crew swiftly causing the Europa to Strike her colours.

Fortunately the Santa María de la Cabeza and Preneuse managed to evade and soon became engaged in a gunnery duel with HMS Intrepid which successfully caused multiple fires on the allied ships but a sudden change in wind saw her in irons and facing two successive point blank rakes by the allied frigates.

Meanwhile the smaller allied ships began to escape having avoided the main battle with Santa Lucía making a successful getaway, the French corvette Brûle-Gueule was less fortunate being torn stem to stern by the now free Arrogant’s full broadside.

The game was now very much in the balance with the battles in the archipelago causing chaos and the two larger allied frigates now out of sight of the Arrogant but still afire. Having freed herself from the earlier collision the Montañés now began to engauge the becalmed Intrepid.

Both of the Allied frigates managed to escape while still ablaze, with three ships off the table the game now hung in the balance.

With Intrepid still beclamed but slowly coming around Montañés decided to pass her stern in a hope of escape and a few lucky raking shots. Having weather the storm Captain Hargood order the plucky British ship to board, grappling irons being thrown at the passing Spanish ship which had ventured just a bit too close.

What ensured was a tense boarding action, with the smaller British 3rd rate taking her larger Spanish adversary, superior British crews soon showed their worth however with another successful capture drawing the game to a conclusion.

All in all a cracking game, with 3 ships off the table for the Allies but non of their 3rd rates and 3 ships sunk or captured for the British we felt this was an effective draw. The allied forces crippled enough to not pose a challenge but equally enough of a force to continue harassment of the East India mechant convoys.

In reality the actually incident saw very little if any action, with both fleets forming line of battle before the Allied Squadron withdrew to the Archipelago (hence the direction of the scenario, being an allied “escape”). The Spanisih would retrun to Manila where the 3rd rates would litterally rot away a few years later while the French retruned to the Île-de-France.

Big shoutout to @NapoleonicWargaming (on youtube) a fellow club member for suggesting the Macau Incident a few weeks ago and also being a willing victim of the first test run.

With just a few hours to go it was time to think up some rapid foliage application.

Coating the foliage in PVA would have been ideal but there simply wasn’t time to dry.

Another option would be superglue but this would be rather permanent and make it harder to come back and spruce up the pieces in the future.

I settled on a fast drying latex glue, this dry’s reasonably quicky and stays tacky afterwards.

The next day with less than 12 hours until the planned game it was time to crack the paint brushes out.

The painting was broken down into 4 stages, a basecoat, two successively lighter dry brushes then a brown wash to tie things together.

Doing some quick research through google earth I was able to quickly identify the qualities of the terrain for the scenario in question. A light tan/brown coloured rock with darker foliage growing across them.

I’ll probably take some artistic license here, and rather than covering all the rocks with foliage I’ll concentrate it on the lower flatter areas.

Handily I had on hand a set of suitable colours for one of my other ongoing projects.

• Americana  DecoArt Tan Crafters Acrylic
• Americana  DecoArt Honey Brown
• Americana  DecoArt Bleached Sand
• Crafters Choice Taupe

With speed a key element for this project I decided to break out the good old trusty hot glue gun.

A few good blobs of hot glue seemed enough to create a reasonable bond, though a few slightly crumbly pieces I’d made with some left over plaster really struggled.

Next up was adding a good coat of filler, this added some quick texture to the bases and also hid any gaps between the rocks and the base.

I was rough and messy with this stage, the key being to create random rough surfaces.

For application I used wooden tongue depressor (lolly stick), the round end worked well but as a quick tip I cut the other end to 45 degrees for some finer control.

I then left these over night to dry.

In a fine display of planning that game I agreed to pop on three weeks ago has caught up with me and I found myself rapidly painting very small ships. With one day to go I realised I didn’t actually have any terrain, a key element of the scenario I had planned.

A quick raid of the hobby stash found be all the material I needed to get something on the table quickly. I settled on the following.

• A bunch of woodland scenic rock molds I’d cast years ago and never used.
• That tub of filler sat under my desk
• the trusty hot glue gun
• a random assortment of paints i had on my desk for another project
• some woodland scenics clump foliage

The game will be using Black Seas by Warlord Games and will see a what if scenario for The Macau Incident 1799 where a powerful combined Allied Squadron of French and Spanish met a small British Escort force.

FORCES

British Escort Squadron

Captain William Hargood

The British forces consisted of: 

• HMS Intrepid, 64 Gun Ship of the Line
• HMS Arrogant, 74 Gun Ship of the Line
• HMS Virginie, 38 Gun Frigate

Allied Squadron

Rear-Admiral Ignacio María de Álava

The Spanish forces consisted of:

• Europa, 74 Gun Ship of the Line
• Montañés, 74 Gun Ship of the Line
• Santa María de la Cabeza, 34 Gun Frigate
• Santa Lucía, 26 Gun Frigate  

The French forces consisted of:

• Preneuse, 40 Gun Frigate 
• Brûle-Gueule, 20 Gun Corvette