The Happy Return

On Saturday, we played Close Action , specifically "The Happy Return" from the Monsoon Seas scenario book. This situation pits three French ships vs three British ones, with the Brits being slightly higher quality but less powerful. Mark Campbell, the game designer, took command of the French side, with two inexperienced captains; on the British side, my teammate took the best British ship and I took the other two.
The game started off with a bang, the enemy's first broadside taking down my flagship's mast due to a lucky long range hit. A couple of turns later we returned the favor with a waterline hit on a French ship which forced part of her crew to man the pumps rather than the guns. One of my ships failed three moral checks in a row, an unlikely occurrence which cut her firepower in half. Then one of the French ships caught fire. The game ended with one of my ships hors de combat, fouled with the burning French ship and unable to move. My second ship was crippled and trying to crawl away, with the two remaining French hobbling along in hot pursuit. The third Brit was in comparatively good shape but had gotten separated from the action and couldn't rejoin fast enough to effect a rescue.
The small scenarios are more demanding, in my opinion, than the ones with more ships. Close Action is a game of teamwork (despite limited communication). If you have twenty ships and one of them wanders off to do his own thing, the team is not as strong as it could be but it will probably survive. If you have three ships and one gets separated, you're probably doomed unless your opponent makes a mistake or you get lucky. That's what happened to us.
A fun scenario and a good time. Mark is a great opponent and marvelously knowledgeable about the Age of Sail, and Close Action is a clean, well designed game that I'm always eager to play.