Black Seas: Master & Commander Starter Set

Master and Commander is the Warlord Games’ starter set for playing their Black Seas rules for naval battles in the age of sail 1770-1830 using highly-detailed miniatures. It is a companion to their Black Powder rules for land warfare of the same period ranging from the American War of Independence to the Napoleonic Wars.

Avast Behind!

You get a big boxful of stuff for your money!

Six plastic sprues to make 3 Frigates and 6 Brigs, a full-colour, glossy 96-page, A4 rule and background information book, 6 sheets of ship detailing parts, 12 ship cards, 9 ship “wake” markers, 3 boards of terrain pieces, rulers and tokens plus the all-important wind rose and compass, 11 dice – 8D10, 2D6 and 1D3, 3 colours of cotton wool – white, red and black and a reel of cotton (which is superfluous unless you are insane, but more of that later!).

Write About My Rite Of Passage As A Ship Wright, Right?

The 9 ship models are incredibly detailed for their small size. At 1/700th scale the Frigates have 3inch long hulls and the brigs just under 2inches (sorry metric fans as metres weren’t used until 1795 and only by the French this system uses inches throughout!) You can see every tiny cannon in the broadside and even their gun carriages on the main deck.

Miniature lifeboats, stern lanterns, anchors and ratlines. The models are clean from flash and fit together snugly. After painting the details, assembly is straightforward if somewhat delicate. The double-sided, A5 instruction sheet just about covers it in half-a-dozen, wordless pictures (think IKEA flat-pack guide). The sails are added from pre-printed and punched thin cards which you need to curve before glueing in place.

Losing My Thread

And then there’s the rigging. With each ship you get 4 or 6 sets of pre-printed acetate, ratlines to put on. These are fair enough if a bit fiddly. Then you are presented with a tiny spool of thread with which you can fully rig each model with up to 31 fixing points! I spent a relatively enjoyable week of odd hours painting and constructing my fleet I did not add the rigging.

Getting The Wind Up

So how does Black Seas play? It’s all about the wind. In the Age of Sail, those with the wind at their backs had a great advantage over the rest. You go faster with the wind to your side or better still behind you and you can’t sail directly into the wind at all.

Scenarios start with the wind direction set on the elegant wind rose with a 1 in 6 chance it might change in any round. The closest ship to the wind has the “Weather Gage” and activates first. It sets its sails to light, battle or full and moves 1, 2 or 3 times accordingly and can turn and/or fire at the end of each move.

To shoot you roll a number of D10s as printed on your ship card, aiming for a 5 or less after applying modifiers. Damage then accrues and is marked off by sliders. An unmodified 1 is a critical hit which can quickly turn very nasty particularly if it starts a fire. Finally, if close enough, you can attempt to grapple and board another ship. These actions are repeated for each ship in Weather Gage order to complete the round.

Scenes We’d Like To Sea

There are 13 pre-set scenarios provided in Master & Commander. The first 6 can be played just using these ships on the 4 foot x 3 foot playmat provided and it’s easy enough to rescale some of the others. They do encourage you to get more ships from their extensive range and why not? Who wouldn’t want to command a scale HMS Victory? (Though maybe not rig it!).

Indeed No. 13 is the Battle of Trafalgar involving over 70 ships in an unlikely scenario that would cost hundreds to put together ending when 36 ships are lost. Still, this could be an aspiration for a club event.

Fast And Furious

Scenarios tend to start slow jockeying for an upwind position. Long range fire tends to be fairly ineffectual. Then as you sweep into close quarters it all gets pretty heated and ships can be quickly lost. Grappling and boarding tend to be very bloody affairs.

The two factors you must constantly watch are the wind and your speed. Dramatic manoeuvres are tricky at best and a miscalculation can leave you facing a headwind with drastic consequences. That’s before a sudden wind change can throw your plans into disarray. All the fighting ships in Master & Commander have a speed of 5 Knots meaning they must move a full 5 inches in each movement phase.

Full sails will therefore take you nearly halfway across the board in one activation. You can only speed up or slow down by one level per round. You move before you can turn. If you leave your ship less than one move from another or worse still a terrain feature, you’re in trouble.

Rules Are Rules

The rules are both straightforward and highly detailed. The core rules are easily digested with lots of illustrations both figuratively and literally. There are then a few pages of additional rules to cover specifics. This sets you off on the basic scenarios to get your sea legs. Finally, a further 7 pages of advanced rules that you pick and choose to give greater depth.

Terrain In Spain

The 4 foot by 3 foot play mat is double-sided with darker, northern waters on one side and a brighter, Caribbean Spanish Main on the other. This is reflected in the harbour, fort, reefs and the four land segments. The latter can be used at the edges of the sea or go together to form an island. This in turn can have the fort and gun emplacement on it. All this can lead to all sorts of Pirate and Treasure Island fun or storming ports and forts.

Sail The World

Master & Commander leads you into the full Black Seas system and you can additionally buy and build all sorts of ships from the English, French, Spanish and US fleets of the time plus terrain packs and accessories.

The rule book is the full rules and a lot more, an entertaining read in its own right. Over 50 pages detail the battles, the ships and the commanders of the period all lavishly illustrated. With the sections on the four different nations, you also get national characteristics rules that can be added. Apparently, the British can fire faster whereas the Spanish have more guns.

Buried Treasure

Overall, this is one of the best starter sets I have come across. You get a whole heap of goodies for your money and the production values are first rate. Whether you sail off into the full world of Black Seas and even link into Black Powder campaigns is up to you but you won’t find a better value introduction to warfare in the Age of Sail than Master & Commander.