"Non-Hex-based Naval Miniatures Rules" Topic

Hello folks. There have been a number of posts before about different rule sets, and I hope I am not duplicating too much any previous discussions, but I wanted to ask people about their favorite rules for naval miniatures that are not based on hexagonal spaces.

I'm actually coming in to this hobby a little backwards, as a lover of model ships who found himself pursuing smaller and smaller kits, and have gotten hooked on the idea of naval wargaming after I found myself in possession of a small fleet.

My only experience with Napoleonic naval rules was with a recent game of "A to Z", the set played at the local club. It was great to finally be gaming in the genre, but the rules themselves were rather simplistic and did not have much of a feel of accuracy to them. Though it's possible the guy running the game did not have a very perfect grasp on the rules themselves. I'm looking to learn some more detailed rules on my own with the hopes of being able to teach folks at the club and hopefully get them hooked.

I'm working on learning "Flying Colors" and its subset "Serpent of the Seas" but I have mixed feelings about hexagons. It just feels a little weird only being able to move in 6 directions, and the complications of having to make sure ships do not share a big roomy hexagon are a distraction in my opinion. As I say, I'll definitely learn and play it, and it may be that hexes simplify things enough to make the genre easier to get in to.

But I was wondering what were people's favorite rules that do not use hex spacing. Or, do people have a good system for playing things like Flying Colors or other hex based games without the spaces and movement limitations? I don't just mean doing away with the grid and using a hexagonal facing indicator, which doesn't go so far toward solving the problem. I don't know the Flying Colors rules well enough yet to have figured out how much would have to be changed if one were to employ movement ratings in inches or cm, and change to a turning arc rather than hex facings. But maybe someone else has?

Thanks for your suggestions – James White

James,

You might take a look at Kiss Me Hardy from the TooFatLardies – great system, very little accounting and no hexes. Try it and see – if you don't like them you've only spent seven quid.

link

Is there any further info on these rules, some reviews or a brief description of the mechanisms ? The info I can find on the site is pretty sparse.

Check out this discussion and the linked review:

TMP link

link

Try "It is Warm Work" available at Wargames Vault. Fun and easy to play. Just $5.00 USD

Let me put in a word (or several) for "Heart of Oak", a very detailed single ship action set of rules (though if everyone knows them hands down it's easy to run divisions or squadrons). It's my favorite rules set for Age of Sail.

Plays on a blank surface, uses a 16 point compass for direction of movement, movement is based on sail setting (one of six settings) and angle to the wind, movement is also preplotted and has the appearance of being simultaneous, firing is not – the side with initiative fires first. Fair amount of record keeping, though with mutual agreement it can be cut down to an easy minimum.

We play 1:1200 scale, which if I recall correctly, James, is what many of your beautiful models are from posts here on this forum. You could, with a lot of math and number crunching change ranges and movement rates, thereby changing scales, but that's a lot of work.

Not to everyone's taste, for sure, with all the detail and fiddley angles and such (btw, there's no pre-measurement for judging the arc of fire or the range – nice imho) and there are some folks here who complain the author got the hull factors and broadside factors wrong, but it works well for us here. Not that we here in the desert southwest would recognize and ocean unless it slapped us in the face ;-)

Second for Heart of Oak.

Thanks for the recommendations guys. I'm taking a look at Kiss Me Hardy now – I've heard from some guys at the club that the last time someone tried to get a more detailed Napoleonic naval game going it fell rather flat, with too much referring back to rule books and number crunching, and it never caught on. I don't know what they were trying to play, but I like that everyone seems to feel that KMH balances detail and period flavor with ease of play.

But if I can get people more interested in the genre, I'd certainly be happy to try even more detailed rule sets. I like that from what people are Saying Heart of Oak has enough detail to make even single ship actions interesting and complex. But I think I need to ease people into it until they've developed a bit more enthusiasm for the period.

Thanks again guys – James

James,
I would agree with both recommendations. I used Heart of Oak from about 1980 up until I found Kiss Me Hardy. HoO is excellent for small engagements, while KMH is better for larger actions. As far as hull and broadside factors for HoO, there are several variants out there. I did one for KMH that made the ships less generic. It is in the Christmas 2011 Special from TFL.
BWW

I have a set I have written for my 1/600th scale ships.

Central California Wargamers
link

There in the "Files" section of titled, "NAPOLEONIC NAVAL WARFARE 2.0"

There very basic and simple.
No book keeping.
There good for single ship actions all the way up to fighting the battle of Trafalgar.

Or let me know and I can Email them to you.

When Wooden Ships and Iron Men was first designed as 'Ship of the Line', they used square map grids.

Beat to Quarters 4.0.1 rules are free, and while made for hex-based combat, can easily be converted to hexless.

I just modified the turning abilities a bit to permit that, and changed the rules to permit 8 points of sailing, e.g. 45 degree angle turns. Works quite well, and since the 45 degree angles are pretty broad, are fairly easy to eyeball on a square, or rectangular tabletop.

You just need to interpolate the various top speeds of the vessels at different wind angles a bit.

Of course, since no vessels can sail directly into the wind, you still only get about seven possible general choices for travel, on the tabletop. The closest any vessel can sail into the wind is 45 degree off of it, to either side.

Smaller, fore and aft rigged vessels (sloops) can sail faster at this angle, than square rigged vessels.

Heart of Oak is a great sailing game but IMHO falls flat on actual combat. In hex based I've always enjoyed Wooden Ships and Iron Men and its family, I got WSIM in 1976 (my copy is an official Bicentennial wargame). Late I got Ship of the Line, the game evolved into WSIM, as noted WSIM is hex based while SOL is based on squares. Then I got Close Action which is hex based and sort of WSIM on steroids. Its a great game but you really want oen person for every 1 or 2 ships. I don't really find the hex system that confining although foe a while some friends and I converted it to a 12 point facing system which we lifted from an old SPI game called Air War.

Didn't this question come up before? Two options I know are Form Line Of Battle which is similar to Beat To Quarters above but without hexes, and Admiralty which is free from War Times Journal website.

I'd go for KMH however, I've always liked the precision of hex based gaming and find they can speed up play.

Every game is an abstraction in some shape or form, hexes being just one of them. What I like about them for age of sail gaming is the ships attitude to the wind is very easy to work with.

For me the issue in fleet actions is Command and Control – I'm less bothered about the intricacies of how close to the wind I can sail, etc I suppose one way of interpreting the fact that other ships can't enter the hexes is the fact that ships would usually endeavor to avoid collision and keep a respectful distance.

Thanks everyone for all the thoughtful responses!

Timmo, I certainly agree that every game is going to involve a great deal of abstraction, and I guess it is really a question of what particular abstractions are agreeable or otherwise to particular gamers. And if the command and control aspect is one that you prize especially, then the intricacies of maneuver you can afford to abstract further than you otherwise might.

But I am especially interested in small scale engagements, and its the intricacies of maneuver that I really want to be able to relish in the gaming.

Being so new to age of sail naval gaming as I am, I've actually been a little surprised by the importance that some rules place on command and control. I can definitely understand that in large fleet engagements having a coordinated plan of attack, and maintaining functional groups of ships would be an advantage, but going so far as penalizing the actions of ships too far away from comrades really surprised me. Am I mistaken in thinking that Flying Colors penalizes an 'out of command' ship's ability to fire on near by enemies? An isolated ship is not quite the same phenomenon as a soldier separated from his squad – any ship was capable of sustained independent cruising, whether or not their current mission took that form.

I would rather see the actual flow of a game punish ships cut off from friends – perhaps by being more likely to be surrounded by enemies or something like that – rather than seeing them receive penalties to small level tactical possibilities or dice throws. But maybe one would say that, once the decision has been made to emphasize the overall importance of the issues of command and control, some level of abstraction should be built in to the rules to make sure players will not ignore them. Maybe the only way to bring those C&C considerations in at a high level of importance is in a fairly abstract way?
- James

James

Interesting points. I don't own Flying Colors but have had a brief read through of the rule book so I'm not able to comment with any authority on exact points of the rules. However, I know enough about it to not be surprised that ships further away are penalised and I tend to agree that seems a bit unfair for want of a better word. Especially so when considered in light of Nelson's own plan for Traflagar where he wanted a chaotic battle – he certainly trusted his ships to fight whatever the circumstance.

I also appreciate that in ship verses ship action you may well want to place the emphasis on manouvre.

I have to admit that I've long been a fan of WS&IM but found the order writing tedious when playing with more than about 4 – 6 per player and favour using some ideas I have for a modified set of activation cards based on those found in KMH instead of written orders. However, the most enjoyable games we played were small ship actions where I felt the order system handled the action well. of course as you write we all look for different levels of complexity and or realism in our games although I don't think those two characteristics are mutually exclusive.

Another set of rules you may like to consider are Rod Langton's Signal Close Action although I have no first hand knowledge of them.

All that written I've enjoyed every TooFatLardies game I played whatever the period so I do think you could do a lot worse than start with KMH. Of course if you wanted to convert a hex based game, say Flying Colours I don't think it would be that hard based on the size of your models and then imagining the size of hexes that would be needed to accommodate them. This could give you your basic straight ahead move distances, then with a little maths you could translate this onto a curved turning arc. I think I'm right is saying that FC doesn't have different turn ratings for different ships classes (I find this rule a bit odd!) but I'm not sure about Serpent of the seas. The difficultly or rather the awkwardness in game play to my hexagon mad mind is when it comes to working out the angle to the wind that the ship is at but with a template I'm sure it's easy enough.

I hope it goes well for you whatever you decide to do. I think I must also play a game of KMH…

Flying Colors has two command possibilities – Formation and Command Radius and each commander decides what they are going to use on each turn.

Command radius is more flexible – any ship in the radius can initiate combat regardless of orientation. Better the commander – bigger the radius.

Formation operates over an unlimited distance, provided all the ships have the same heading and no ship is more than a certain distance from its neighbours. Hence your van, centre and rear commanders can handle a line of 20 or 30 ships just as they did in real life, but your flexibility for manoeuvring that line is limited.

If you are out of command than you cannot move adjacent to an enemy ship or initiate firing unless you pass a command roll, and that is based on the quality of the overall commander. Again, ships under a good commander (high rating) are more likely to pass that roll and get stuck in – those of a less inspiring admiral will not "do their utmost". The hesitance of some ships to engage when the overall commander really needed it is a feature of many battles of the age.

It is abstract but it works – ships stay in line in games of Flying Colors.

I wrote an article on the FC/Serpents system for the last issue of GMT's C3i – to declare an interest I also provide historical research for the designer Mike Nagal and playtest.

Volume III is currently in preparation – Levant and the Baltic.

Best regards,

Mark Barker
The Inshore Squadron

Trafalgar and Nelson we're anomalies regarding Command and Control. Furthermore, he was fighting a demoralized and poorly trained fleet with a highly experienced one. In a different era and with another enemy he probably would not have been as successful.

It's like using Napoleon and Napoleonic Battles to define the entire Horse and Musket era. The line of battle was queen and station keeping the rule. Battle lines were rarely broken. Flying Colors makes a good attempt to model this in a streamlined fashion. Most rule sets don't.

Tunsdall's study on the topic is well worth reviewing if you want to understand fleet command in this era.

Thank you both for clarification and enlightenment! I guess it might be fair to write that Nelson was an anomaly.

Thank you Mark and Dan, well said! And thanks for the book recommendation Dan, I'll have to check that out. – James

David Manley must be the leading Naval wargamer. I have liked all of his rules. Form Line of Battle can be obtained at the Wargamers Vault. It is excellent.

John kelly

I have a hexless combo of WS&IM/HoO that works pretty good with 2-5 ships per player. Send a PM and I'll send you a copy of the rules.

Billsfan, that's very kind of you to offer. I sure wouldn't turn down a free set of rules, but I wonder if anything might be done to accommodate someone without PM ability? My email is whitejamest@gmail.com…
Thanks! James

FYI,

Fire as She Bears, 2nd Edition
Available as pdf from Wargames Vault
Uses octagonal movement tiles to give eight degrees of movement

link

Cheers!
Wilf