"Naval Wargame Rules" Topic

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying some 1/6000 scale WWII ships. What set of rules would you recommend?

I want something fast and fun. I'm a bit wary of SeeKrieg 5 as the outlay seems rather high.

General Quarters is a good, solid, though fairly simple game. If you want more in depth portrayal then the Admiralty Trilogy games by Clash of Arms – more on the order of SeeKriegk but different…if that makes any sense.

General Quarters is good and fairly light (especially the 1st and 2nd editions).

Battlestations, Battlestations is also very light and allows for fairly large fleets.

Victory At Sea is a great light system, though there are as many who don't like it as love it since it's more of a beer and pretzels game than true simulation.

I'm not sure if Naval Thunder has a WWII set, I thought that was in the works. Also a good light system.

Battlestations, Battlestations Great for large fleet battles.

There are several free sets of rules out there that I'd recommend. "War At Sea 1939-45" works well with 1/6000 scale. If you cannot find them on the net, contact me and I'll be glad to help you out with a copy.

Dan

Apoligize for not putting a link to the rules.

PDF link

There are additional files available if you look at the freewargamesrules website under the rules.

Dan

Naval Thunder does indeed have a WW2 ruleset, and based on your comments it sounds like it is just the thing you're looking for.

Fast, exciting, and fun are our guiding principles. You'll see them mentioned a few different places in our media. At the same time, our rules come with dozens of "plug and play" options, so you can customize the rules to the level of detail and pace of play *YOU* want.

Naval Thunder: Battleship Row is the ww2 core ruleset and was released earlier this month. It costs only $14.95 USD and thus doesn't require the huge up-front outlay of some other systems.

You can find all the Naval Thunder products here:
link

If you look on the products page of our website, there is a link to an overview of the mechanics:
navalthunder.com

I've lost count of the number of customers who have emailed me saying that Naval Thunder is the ruleset they've been waiting years for. Best of all, we are an active company offering ongoing support for our products. The first expansion for NT: Battleship Row with additional navies and a ton of scenarios will be out this fall. After that more pre-dreadnought and WWI action are on deck.

Check out Naval Thunder, you won't be disappointed.

"Victory At Sea is a great light system, though there are as many who don't like it as love it since it's more of a beer and pretzels game than true simulation."

To be honest, none of the sets mentioned could be described as "true simulations" (although I agree, VAS is more removed from simulation territory than something like eekrieg or CaS).

Personally I enjoy GQ, although for pure surface actions I tend to go for the old Skytrex rules from years ago with some local mods.

Another vote for GQ 3.

Don't get me wrong, I love Victory at Sea, there's just a lot of haters out there.

Glad to hear Naval Thunder has a set of WWII rules. It's a good game.

"Don't get me wrong, I love Victory at Sea, there's just a lot of haters out there."

Yes, there are. It upset quiet a few members of the naval wargaming "establishment" when it came out. AoD seems to have been better received :)

SeeKrieg 4 is available as a free download from the website.

While a GQ3 fan myself, from what I've seen of the light to mid-range complexity systems, you can't really go wrong with GQ 1&2 or GQ3, Battle Stations Battle Stations, or Victory at Sea. I'm hoping someone offers a Naval Thunder at Fall In to check that out.

General Quarters III is an surprisingly easy game to play, and is very well researched with many of the elements of much more complicated systems built in. For example, it has more armor ratings and range bands than Command at Sea! Though at first the rules look daunting, that is because they include complete sub, air, campaign, and optional rules, as well as a wealth of data on most of the ships in the navies of the major WWII combatants. To play surface battles, you only need the first chapter.

Have a look at the ODGW web site, odgw.com, for info and the numerous support materials for the game, which to date, include a highly successful game on the Solomons Campaign, called, oddly enough, The Solomons Campaign.

Cheers,
gregoryk

Great, thanks everybody

What's "AoD", please?

Where does the GHQ Micronauts rules rank in all of this? Those are the only rules I own though I have never played them. They claim to be a middle ground. Seekrieg 5 looks exciting but good god I can afford an entire fleet for the cost of those rules.

Battleship Captain (Minden Games).

Well I've bought and read through GQ3 and am finding GHQ Micronauts much easier to read and understand. I've not played either game yet but GHQ seems to be a perfect balance between realism and abstraction allowing for larger battles. I still need to pick up Seekrieg 5 because, you know, f$#k me that's why. Lol I think reading that is going to be a headache but I read an AAR using those rules that really made me feel as if I was there participating in the action.

Aaaaaaaaand I've just bought Seekrieg 5. ALL of it. Just waiting for the minor navies and ships that never were cds to come out.

This was a good discussion to find, as I'm about to (finally) start into naval minis. I bought GQ: FAI for WW I a couple of years ago and had previously picked up VaS. From what I've read/seen, I'll be picking up Naval Thunder for WW II as it seems to be a touch lighter than GQ 3. Maybe both…then Seekrieg someday…madness.

Now to paint some of the Panzerschiffe minis that are sitting on my table…

I read through the Seekrieg book and then played a quick game by myself of South Dakota vs Roma. While the rules are confusing at first, once I got the sequence of things down it actually went pretty quickly. Roma was pretty much cripled before she even got into visual spotting range (SD was pounding her using search and fire control radar). I really like it.