Emergency Miniature Work - 15mm USMC Super Cobra
First test run of "Letters of Marque"
In preparation for today’s live stream, @gladesrunner and I undertook the first test run of the Letters of Marque system last night. We hit just a few questions, but referred to the rules and resolved them. I think things are much smoother now and we’re ready for a great stream.
The game ran 90 minutes and 14 turns, but that was in the course of both of us learning the system.
The scenario was a small one, 8 points.
I played the British with a frigate (6 points) and a pinnace (2 points).
Jenn played the Pirates with two barques at 4 points each.
Okay, you start with your stern within two hexes of the map edge. My King's ships (or perhaps Queen Anne, given the period), start at the top. Jenn's villainous pirates cower from the might and justice of Empire in the south. We both have set full sails (faster, but more vulnerable). The wind starts off in a random d6 direction, and for now it is southerly. Bad news for me, the pirates have the wind at their backs. Movement will be much easier for them at least for now. To mitigate this, I have set up on the far east of the table, so I can tack into the wind with alternating oblique angles. I feel the game does a good job at approximating "real" sailing dynamics while not bogging the system with too much detail.
By the end of Turn 2, we're getting closer. The range template is shown for reference. Still too far away. Note one of Jenn's pirates, has taken down full sail. Now only at half sail, her sails are less vulnerable. I have no choice but to leave mine up, tacking back and forth into the wind to try and close the distance. 
First fire! With her first salvo, Jenn's pirate ship "Revenge" clips the mast clean off the little pinnace HMS Swift. She only HAS one mast, so she's literally crippled for the rest of the game. That was fast. The Royal Navy frigate HMS Inflexible cuts behind Revenge "Darkstar Style" and broadsides into her stern. I knock out one sail and some guns.
Here are the ships sheets for Jenn's two pirate barques. You can see where I've clipped the mainmast off the first one, and knocked out her aft guns with a salvo through the aft castle.
Here are my frigate and pinnace. WIth that single "6" result, Jenn has shorn off the pinnace's one and only mast. I might tweak the design of these sheets later, making the text bigger and easier to read.
Turn 5, and things are getting serious. The pinnace HMS Swift is sinking, in this game it remains on the table a certain amount of time for navigational and LOS purposes.
By the end of Turn 10, Inflexible FINALLY manages to sink pirate ship "Revenge." At the time of her sinking she had lost ALL guns, her fo'c'sle is basically a splintered wreck .... make that a BURNING splintered wreck now that I've set a fire in that section. Critical hits (successive hits on ships areas that have already taken "critical damage") have led to hull breaches, finally flooding the lower decks and sending this plague of the Caribbean to the bottom. 
The end of Turn 14. Okay, my HMS Inflexible and the remaining pirate barque Jasmine have been trading blows for a while. I'm bigger than she is, but I've now lost two of the three gun batteries, and my aft mast (reducing speed by one). The Jasmine's lost one of her two gun batteries, and her foremast and aft mast, leaving with a speed of 2. So we're equal in guns, but U can outsail her slightly. I was just starting of thinking about a boarding, but a shot from Jasmine scored a crit and inflicted crew casualties on my Frigate. Without a numerical edge in crew, I decide not to board (defenders against boarders have a lot of advantages). So decide to break off the engagement and take the win (having sunk a 4-point barque in exchange for a 2-point pinnace). I maneuver to get the wind on my starboard quarter and get off the northern edge of the table.
LoM is a great little game as evident by todays stream – I won’t give any spoilers
Bwah hah hah! @rasmus – I would post a link to the video here but damn, YouTube is STILL PROCESSING my edits … so as soon as we have a finished version of the video up, I will post a link in this project thread.