Pirate game!

Steve Spence has some very nice pirate figures and ships, and so it was felt right to give them an outing. The game was a treasure hunt. On the island were hostile opponents, and Steve commanded one ship of raiders, seen the far side of this photograph approaching the island, and and Lloyd another, seen in the foreground. The enemy had cannons, a ship docked for repairs, and various cabins etc. There was also a small town on the corner of the table (not shown).

A boy was recruited to bury the treasure. This consisted of a large number of small squares of paper, most of which were blank, to be placed under terrain features of the map. A few of these little pieces of paper had numbers on them, indicating their treasure value. The boy hid the papers while Steve and Lloyd looked the other way.

Steve's ship sailed between two islands, and exchanged gunnery fire with those gunners on the island who had woken up to the danger. A number of his pirates jumped overboard to swim to the central island, where booty was expected to be. We were using the Lord of the Rings system pirate rules, which are very harsh with swimmers, and a few drowned before reaching the island, and those that waded ashore found themselves out-numbered, and a short while later, defeated.

Meanwhile Lloyd's hearties landed and did battle with some of the islanders, and managed to find some booty. Steve's instincts then became competitive along a different line, and rather than contenting himself with a race to find the most booty (Lloyd's original plan), he decided that it would be much better to fight Lloyd's forces as well. Unfortunately for him, he had already taken some damage from the guns on the islands, and Lloyd twigged his hostile intentions early enough to leave enough men on his ship to defend her. The result was that Steve's ship became a wreck.

I would continue this write-up with more details, but the blogging software is proving to be astonishingly difficult to use. Lloyd's seadogs made away with a fair bit of booty, and suffered very light losses.

Figures: Steve Spence, ships: Steve Spence (and ex-Graeme Atkinson), scenery: Lloyd and club.