Trafalgar Day

Wargame admirals habitually fight very sanguinary naval battles. It's not uncommon to find one surviving battered hulk pounding away at an equally wrecked opponent in a bid for final victory.

In contrast, if there's any characteristic that seems to define a real life admiral, it's his circumspection. Sensitive to the smallest disadvantage, the real admiral, who unlike his game counterpart, could face a dip in the drink and invariably controls a significant investment of national treasure, will endeavor to avoid that disadvantage at almost any cost. The end result is that the naval battles of history are often remarkably tentative, indecisive and bloodless. The French admiral Suffren and British admiral Hughes fought four squadron-sized naval battles in 1782-1783 without either side losing a ship in action. It goes without saying that a wargame campaign recreating that campaign will not have the same result.

But every so often there was a truly decisive naval battle. And when they occurred they illustrate the stakes of a naval battle, the potential cost and help explain why real admirals feared allowing their opponent any advantage at all. Battles such as Tsushima, Surigao Strait, Manila, Santiago, the Nile and Narvik demonstrate the danger of being caught with your pants down at sea.

Trafalgar, fought on this date 205 years ago, was one of the most decisive battles of history. While the Napoleonic Wars would continue for 10 more years, they went on with England essentially invulnerable to French direct attack. England would be the pre-eminent naval power for the next century, only facing a serious challenge after 1905.

The two sides were fairly evenly matched in numbers. Nelson's British fleet had 27 ships of the line, the combined Franco-Spanish fleet had 33. Neither side was under any illusions, however, that the two sides were evenly matched in combat power. Both sides recognized that the British had a clear advantage on a ship-to-ship level. So long as the Allied fleet maintained an unbroken formation it might lose a battle, but wouldn't lose too many ships. This had been demonstrated as recently as Calder's Action on July 22, 1805, which involved many of the same ships that would fight at Trafalgar. Calder's 15 British ships of the line defeated the 20-strong Franco-Spanish fleet, but did not destroy it. Just 2 Spanish ships were lost.

Nelson's genius was employing a plan that allowed the British fleet to break up the Allied formation and the courage to take the risk involved in doing so. He took the risk after making the calculation that the ill-trained Allied ships wouldn't be able to take advantage of his vulnerable approach. Events proved him right and the British were able to concentrate all their force on about 2/3 of the Allied fleet. The British destroyed 18 of the 33 ships in the Allied fleet and a subsequent action on Nov. 2 eliminated 4 more. The surviving Allied ships were blockaded and never again able to mount a dangerous coordinated campaign.

Compared to most fleet actions, then, wargaming Trafalgar is more likely than usual to result in a battle resembling its historical antecedent. Nelson was willing to risk his life, the lives of his men and a substantial part of England's wealth in search of decisive victory. In the end he did lose his own life, but British losses otherwise were relatively light, less than 10 percent of the men engaged and no ships. As much as admirals admire Nelson's example and may wish to emulate him, the fate of his opponent Villeneuve is never far from their minds. He also eventually paid for his loss with his life, with the added penalty of disgrace and the knowledge that he had cost two nations their navies.

Among the games depicting Trafalgar are Flying Colors, Wooden Ships & Iron Men and 1805 Sea of Glory

Breaking new ground with 1805: Sea of Glory

When you think about it, there's not a lot of fresh ground to trod in wargaming.

Just about every war anybody heard of -- and many that no one heard of -- has been done. Every level of command from private to field marshal is covered. Every era from the neolithic to interstellar is depicted.

So 1805: Sea of Glory is quite a remarkable design achievement. I won't say that strategic warfare in the age of sail is entirely untouched, but I think 1805: Sea of Glory is the first real serious wargame to attempt the topic. I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays in practice, but if it works as well as it appears it may this may open up a whole new genre of wargames. Evidently the next campaign that will be covered in 1798, but one can easily imagine games covering Suffren in the Indian Ocean and operations off the American Coast from the Revolution.

And one rich area for exploration would be the Anglo-Dutch Wars, which have been barely covered at all, largely because they don't have a lot of tactical interest and tactical games were the only age of sail games until now.

Ask And Ye Shall Receive

Even as I typed the words in my pervious post grousing about having to wait for my pre-orders there was a Priority Mail box sitting on my table at home from GMT Games with my copy of 1805: Sea of Glory. As promised, here's my out-of-the box impressions.

First off the box is the standard GMT Bookcase size, the exact same size as Flying Colors with very similar colors, too. They will look nice next to each other. No complaints there.

Inside the box there's a pretty standard GMT-style rule book. This is already online at their site, so there were no surprises there. The game does appear to be a little more complex than I was expecting. It's definitely a full-fledged hard-core wargame that takes account of a myriad of factors and definitely not a euro-style wargame.

I had mixed feelings about the map. It's very nice looking, almost worth framing, but it's paper, so I was a little disappointed on that score, having gotten used to the cardstock maps in many GMT games. Being a paper map I do have some concerns about durability. Definitely worth playing under glass. It appears functional but I reserve judgement on that until I play it.

There are two counter sheets and indeed, while it will be perceived as being a block game, the vast majority of playing pieces are cardboard counters. And the majority of those are ships and admirals, with various game markers and chits for sundry purposes. All are attractively done, although not out of the ordinary for GMT.

The key component of the game are the fleet blocks. This was a little puzzling, however. It appears that a late decision was made to go with bigger blocks, because the rule book shows the small blocks we have seen used for infantry units in the Commands & Colors: Ancients series, and the stickers are sized for that size of block -- but the game came with the larger blocks that have been used for cavalry units in C&C:A. This poses a small problem because the larger block really don't quite fit in the hexes on the playing board, which may create some confusion about the location of the block and also make it hard to have multiple blocks in the same spot. I can only surmise that the larger blocks were substituted for ease of handling. The blocks with stickers affixed (I'm lousy at doing that, BTW) are shown at right. From top to bottom are a French "Fog of War" (dummy) block, a British frigate, A Spanish fleet, a British fleet and a French fleet. The numbers and letters on the blocks refer to the fleet's destination -- in other words there is a form of plotted movement, but rather painlessly handled.

The game also contains a couple of fleet and port displays, which is where the composition of the fleets is tracked. The ship counters, with a handful of exceptions, don 't appear on the map.

There are also two different player charts with various table needed for play. In an apparent error the box says there are four charts, but posting on Boardgame Geek indicate everyone is getting just two so I assume the box is in error.

Finally there are five dice and the usual allotment of small plastic baggies that GMT thoughtfully provides.

I'll save any remarks about game play for later once I have had a chance to play it, but overall it looks pretty good out of the box.