"Naval Actions - good Fleet Size?" Topic

Anyone do Naval Actions for their ImagiNations? I have a couple of sets of rules, including Wooden Ships and Iron Men, though I haven't played any in a long while.

The cardstock ships from War Artisan have got me thinking of giving some Naval Actions a try.

I was just wondering what would be a good size of fleet to match your typical ImagiNation.

Should I just think of '74's as battalions, '90's as Guards/Elites, and so on, and give each nation the same number of ships compared to their land forces?

How did you work it out?

Howard

Should I just think of '74's as battalions, '90's as Guards/Elites, and so on, and give each nation the same number of ships compared to their land forces?

Most Age of Sail naval rules can only handle a small (less than 10) number of ships per side so let that be your guide.

I am working on a set of rules to do Trafalgar (27 and 33 ships respectively) and even then I am having to ruthlessly cut detail to make them playable.

Rod Langton's rules "Signal Close Action" can do fleets, I think, but then the "skill roll" is per squadron rather than per ship.

I know you have a lot of room, altfritz, but not only are those lovely cardstock ships rather large, but they keep moving. They only stop when all the masts are down and even then they drift. I'd say small squadrons to start with.

Wrong Fritz. Even so, one can build the fleets as not all ships will be on station at the same time!

My thinking is 1d3 90s, say 1d6+2 74s, 1d4 64s (they just seem rarer too me), 1d6 50s and maybe 2d6+6 36-gun frigates?

The Line of Battle rules are designed for fleet actions and hook into the Corps Command campaign system:

link

My thinking is 1d3 90s, say 1d6+2 74s, 1d4 64s (they just seem rarer too me), 1d6 50s and maybe 2d6+6 36-gun frigates?

That would give you a potential maximum of 39 ships (more than the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar!), a minimum of 13 and an average of 21.

Those are pretty big fleets for most Age of Sail rules where combat is worked out ship to ship and damage is recorded individually on a ship record card.

I suppose it depends how big an action you want and how much time you have to play it.

Have a look at the scenarios in WS&IM – most of them are quite small in ship numbers.

Yeah, I guess I was asking about two things at once:

1) How big should fleets be for the ImagiNations, hence the larger number of frigates – b/c they need to be doing blockade and patrol duties, scouting ahead of the fleets, etc.

2) How many ships make a good game.

We sometimes use the Soldier King map to run WES (War of the Estavian Succession) campaigns. Never done it with fleets however. I can't recall if the original map has a coast, but the one we use does.

My thinking is to give Argozia, Arcadia, Bravance and Hrvatska their own little fleets. Could even work in National Characteristics…Arcadia is sort of British, Bravance is France, Argozia is Prussian and Hrvatska is Austria/Russia. (Actually the units raised from Naevaron are Russian looking, but they tend to be recruited by the Hrvatsans.) We could give the Arcadians better crews, for example; the Bravancians better ships (faster); Argozia could be just plain jane, "default settings" as Prussian never had much of a navy, if they had any at all; Hrvatska could perhaps be better in boarding actions (or perhaps have more large ships with poor or mediocre officers and crews like the Spanish.)

"It is Warm Work Rules" will work great for ImagiNations.
Easy to play and able to handle large fleet actions. Streamlined without losing period flavor.

Dear Alte Fritz

I made my own rules for my Imagi-Nations which are called YO!-HO!-HO!

This is NOT a pirate game, but for actions between regular warships. The aim is fleet actions. The game is however different in that it is made for 'LARGE" ship models which are about a foot in length. I scratch built mine from wood, cardboard and basswood. I playtested them at the recent "WEEKEND" and they worked satisfactorily for a first time out.

The reason I use this size is I wanted to be able to use them in ship to shore actions with my land rules, and in the Mediterranean and Baltic with Galleys and the like.
There are rules for the high seas which are almost thesmae as rules for inshore and amphibious operations.

If you want a copy you know my e-mail, just send me your snail mail and I'll send you a copy.

Revently at the Weekend I had a battle between the Navy of Princess Trixie of Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein, versus the fleet of the Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy of Gorgonzola, each had three first raters and four second raters.

The ship does not use "ship sheets" where you mark down damage, so there's no pesky bookeeping The characteristics and capabilities of the ship are shown by "cards" which are placed on the ship representing crew, sail, guns, etc., and as you take hits you lose cards from the ship thus loosing capability. Makes record keeping a breeze, and virtually non-existanct/ This is the key if you are handling a lot of ships.

ONe point, the game is VERY VERY heavily pitched toward sailing. So if you have a ship which is a better sailer than the other guy you have a huge advantage.

For miniatures David Manley's Line of Battle is excellent.
For a big action try GMT's boardgame Flying Colors. It is excellent.

JPK

How about some photos of those ships Oschmidt? It sounds like your construction methods are similar to my 15mm jobs.
This is one of mine built from foamboard, heavy card and dowel. It still needs work doing on sails and rigging.

re. the total number of ships in each fleet, remember the outlay in timber, iron and other supplies for even a single ship of the line is HUGE, so you're probably better off counting one for ten or fifteen battalions. Special circumstances of each imagi-nation may influence that ratio of course, such as (historical) Britain as an island nation maintaining a larger fleet and a smaller army.

You'll also have to man both your ships and your shipyards, cannon foundries and so on, in addition to your land armies, so demographics may play a role in addition to economic constraints (there's a reason why Prussia did indeed hardly ever have much of a navy).

To Mal Sabreur

Very impressive. How large are they? Mine are about a foot long from tip of bowsprit to tip of jib. They are made for a 28-30mm table top size and move on hexes that are a foot wide between parallels. I don't get into crews or guns, because the system doesn't really need them, though I'm accumulating a few for decoration and aesthetics. Right now I just used the ships hulls witth stubb masts. I'd upload pictures but I can't figure out how to do it.

Dear Musketier

All of thise are blissfully irrelevant in my game. In the campaign system I use you only have armies and brigades. The two are not normally interchangeable. These are strategic units. A army has about 2.5 the fighting strength of a brigade, and the system limits the table top actions to two units of any type, only one of which can be an army, which means one brigade, two brigades, one army, and one army and a brigade ar the maximum that can be on a side. Armies are not divisible into brigades nor are brigades combinable to armies. This is quite unrealistic but it makes the campaigns managable in the extreme.

On Fleets, something of the same idea is used. If you want a flreet action each side is dealt 60 cards from a 200 card deck. These cards have "quantites"of a ship. It can have fighting crew, sailing crew, carronades, long 9 lbders, and so forth, in addition to individual events and abilities. In any fleet game you can have up to 10 ships. You can distribute the cards as you wish among the ships, but you cannot put more than 10 cards on any one ship. If you do not put at least one sail crew card on a ship it must be a floating battery or a hulk at anchor.

Note. There are normally no guns counted on a ship, nor masts. The "sailing crew" cards have one to three sailors on it, and the total of these cards is the movement factor of the ship. The card represents a combination of crew- rigging- and expertize. When all your sailing crew cards are goine you're dead in the water. Fighting crew represents crew-guns-expertise. Read many times how guns weren't really destroyed in combat, but their crews were decimated. So the real factor is how many men/experience you have to crew the guns. Once you have no fighting crew you can't fire.

So the whole thing starts off with players being able to design their fleets on the spot. If a ship has say 15 points of sail crew and three of fighting crew you can envision it as a frigate. Ships with less than 5 cards of any type are "small ships" and can enter coastal operations.
There are mortars and rockets for shore bombardment to make rocket ships and bomb catches as well and fire ships can be fitted out.

The two navies I have so far are that of Princess Trixie of Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein and The Grand Duchy of the Grand Duke of Gorgonzola, each with 10 ships of the line. Three of each are more 1st rater shells, and the res 2nd rater. Making smaller models for frigates galleys and zebecs.

Economic systems are a waste of time for Imagi-Nations and more trouble than their worth.

OSchmidt, the cutter has a 7inch long hull and is the smallest of the ships I have so far. The others are a waterlined Aurora or Smer(?) brig "Black Falcon", an old Village Green brig, a large cutter with a 9" hull plus the Revell "Beagle" and "Endeavour" that I am water-lining. I also have a number of ships boats crewed by Peter Pig figures. Most of these are Amati boats that I've water-lined. The next project will be a frigate.
The idea is to use them in a sort of combined ops game based on Hornblower, Lewrie and Aubrey so my navies will be relatively small though I'd love to build a liner!

To upload photos, put them onto photobucket or flickr first then copy the link for each photo into your post. I use photbucket in which it is the "direct" link you need.

I really like the "Imagi-Nations" idea. It sounds like it would be good for campaign games. I'll have to see what I can come up with. Many years ago I came up with set of semi-imaginary maps for Central Europe (all major cities, rivers etc. were in the pretty much the right places but contours/forests etc. weren't necessarily correct) which would do nicely. This was before the ready availability of info on the internet/computers so they were all hand drawn.

OSchmidt – glad it works at the level of abstraction you chose. I'm the last person to turn a game into an accounting exercise, but understood the OP's question to be about plausible ratios of ships to land forces, hence my reference to the sinews of (naval) war.

Mal Sabreur, that's an impressive model! As for an imagi-nation campaign, since you put so much effort into that map in the dark and distant past, by all means use it man! In a sense one might even call it a rediscovered item of historical cartography. Your excuse could be that you're just following the current fashion in the hobby…

I would have thought that the size of a country's navy would depend on its' own size as well as its' location. Britain, whilst a comparatively small country, had a large navy due to its' island status, France and Spain, both Large countries, had relatively small navies as they were less important (except for convoying treasure ships etc.) Britain invested a major part of its' income on the navy -enough for it to be the largest industrial organisation in Britain.
Unless your Imagi-nation is going to be as large as Britain or France, the navy should really be pretty small. What IS the "normal" size for an imagi-nation? Something like Bavaria? One of the Saxon Duchies? I'd think for a small "Duchy of Grand Fenwick" or "Ruritania" state that 1 ship of the line, a couple of frigates, say 4 brigs/corvettes plus cutters and a number of gunboats for harbour defence would be fine.
In my own campaign games, rather than allowing players to continually build up their forces towards a maximum, I've always started them off with their forces at full strength then allowed replacement of losses throughout the campaign -but never 100% replacement. The best that a particular unit can do is replace 90% of casualties/losses, with far lower replacement rates coming into play dependant upon situation. Along with campaign objectives, this helps keep forces a reasonable size. It also gets players really thinking about conserving troops instead of chucking them away in hopeless assaults and glorious (but senseless) actions.

Who says an "Imagi-Nation" has to be small.

My first Imagi-Nation The Princessipate of Saxe-Burlap und Schleswig-Beerstein, is the size of Germany. In fact, it IS Germany in the 18th century excluding Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, and some of the Hesse's and other states. It's made up of all the little free-cities, duchies, Imperial Free Knighthoods, and so forth united by a Tontine. It has a first rate navy. One of the other powers is a Prussia-clone called Bad Zu-Wurst. Then there's Austria, which is Austria. I blend real and imaginary with complete disregard for such niceties. Then there's the main naval opposition for Saxe Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein, which is The Grand Ducy of the Grand Duke of Gorgonzola, which has the real life countries of Venice, Sicilly, Naples, Greece, Rhodes, Crete, the Aegean Island, enclaves in the Holy Land, Tunis, Sardinia, Corsica etc., Ruled by the Grand Duke who is quite mad and goes around collecting crowns like the Mad Hatter (like the mad Hatter, he's played by Jerry Colona). He styles himself not only the Grand Dukeof Gorgonzola, Doge of Vencie and Genoa, King of Sicilly, King of Jerusalem, the Lion of Judah, The Shofet of Carthage, Emperor of Rome, the King of the Minoans, Pharoh of Egypt and Emperor of Atlantis. Magister Militum of the World, and Ruler of Mars, to which he has been on an expedition (well he thinks he has).

Just because it is an Imagi-Nation doesn't mean it has to be tiny.

Then there's the Russian style imagi-nation I have, called Gulagia-- It's capital is on an Island on a large lake. It's called-- yup! You guessed it! Gullagin's Island. -0- (A three hour exile!) It's about three times the Size of all of Russia, only muddier, colder, and more miserable.

Then there's the Empire of Ikea, the sort of Turkish Empire which I have to make a fleet for too!

I just have this mental picture of them as being like the minor German states for some reason, but why shouldn't they be huge? I have my own role-play world so there's no bound to imagination. I even have a "modern" skirmish game set there in "The 'Gnome" with scenarios like "Full Mental Blackout and "Black Orc Down." (though that one was more to do with the Golf War.) The idea of that game was to wean some of the club's young players off GW stuff.
The Ikean navy could be a treat -all xebecs and galleys. Hmmmmm…
What scale are your ships? I have plans for the San Salvador in card from San Diego maritime museum,s website (I think) and the USS Constitution ("Fly Model 120") in 100 scale, both of which would waterline for use as templates.

Dear Mal Sabreur

The ships are about a foot long from tip of jib to tip bowsprit to the tip of the aft lantern. They are only stylized models not fully detailed, little more than carved planks with cardboard sides. They are about four inches high to the railings of the deck, and have masts about 8" high. The whole point of them is to suggest the ship, not be a detailed marker. They are scratch built but easy to do.

My first ships were like that but I wasn't happy with them. I think I must be a bit OCD when it comes to models. I'm not a great modeller but I like to do the best I can and seeing well painted figures on wooden blocks just grated on me! I'm exactly the same with scenery. Perhaps I should have been a railway modeller!!
Which figures do you use for your Imaginations? I'm getting really intrigued.

Dear Mal Sabreur

Well, I can't figure out how to send you photos, but if you send me your e-mail to sighrd@eclipse.net I can attach them to that and you can see the ship. They SOUND perfectly horrid, but they don't look too bad for basically concept models to prove out the game design.

I by the way AM a model railroader and AM just as OCD when it comes down to it looking good. I think I mentioned it here, no- now that I think of it I didn't- but I make my forests as actual hexagon "boxes" with a lid so you can hide troops in a forest and move them secretly and the enemy never knows what's in them. Sometimes the gamers forget they've hidden units in forests too! We had one game where a guy hid about half his army in the forests hexes (it was in a rough country) and at the end of the game he was crying that the enemy outnumbered him so badly. I said to him, "But Phil!" What about these and I flipped open the tops of the ten or twelve wood hexes he had put all his figures in. He was astounded he had forgotten doign that.

Anyway, I had to tell you that because these "hexagonal Boxes" (they are about a foot across ont he paralel sides of the hex) have a flange around the edge of about 1". On this I support the similar "top flange (which holds up the lid, with bits of lichen, small sawn twigs reperesenting tree trunks, bracken, and on the outer walls of the hexagon paint mottled colors, little scenes of hamlets and even decopage photographs of real woods, pictures of quaint little cottages in the woods etc. Well on this flange on a new group of hexes I am on three of the faces painting figures and little dioramas of nursery tales, rhymes, gables and so forth. I have Little Red Riding hood, the big bad worlf, and the woodsman on one, Snow white and the 7 Dwarves on another. Another has a small corner of rail fencing, with a black sheep in the enclosure, an a noble lady and a nobleman on the next face, and leaning against the fence three large sacks. ("Ba-Ba black Sheep have you any wool…."

I'm having the greatest charge I ever had in gaming from doing this and it's a real scavenger hunt to find miniatures and scrathbuild the strucutres for this.

I also have a gazeebo on one, with a couple "Enflagrante delicto" and on the next face a maid running to tell them that on the next face the woman's husband and his hired hands are coming to interrupt the couple's idyllic tryst.

I also make little dioramas on the stands of my troops.

But anyway, the miniatures I use are a wild eclectic melange of whatever suits me. Most ot them are 30mm (actually 32mm) Surens and Staddens from the 1960's (though they are still being sold), but I also use a lot of other 28mm from Perry, Front Rank, Eureka, and old Greenwood and Ball S.A.E's etc. I don't do 15mm or smaller, after all, how could one POSSIBLY tell if it was Little Red Riding Hood, or how well endowed the lady "enflagrante delicto" was (nor how old and wretchedly awful her pursuing husband was."

Have to find a gingerbread house for Hansel and Gretel, An Old shoe house for the woman who had so many kids (going to put them crawling all over the hex.

And of course I hae a large construction with a miniature castle on the top of a high pinnacle with a beautiful girl letting down her golden hair, in another.

You see, I lard in a huge amount of humor and whimsy into my imaginations. It's really a burlesque of real life, with incompetent generals, lascivious countess' shrewd barbars and chambermaids, and loads of boffo buffa! Think of a comic opera on a comic opera. Thus for example, in Saxe-Burlap und Schleswig Beerstein Princess Trixie (nickname for Catherine) is a paraody of Austria, and Trixie of Maria Theresa, an 17 year old Valley girl who finds herself the head of a great empire. All she's interested in is fashion, shoes, boys, the latest music (think of Mozart as the Jon Bon Jovi of his day) and boys, and shopping and boy toys. So she marries the son of the greatest field Marshall of the realm (a peson who intermittently thinks he is the Duke of Marlborough) and whose son is a gorgeous hunk of a guy with about as little military ability as a bowl of potato salad. Well he wants to be a great general and so manages to get into every campaign, but in the rules he has a -2 penalty to any unit he is with and the other guy gets to place him wherever he wishes. Of course there's always a race to get other generals with a positive ability next to him to "advise" him.

It's sort of a "The Barber of Seville" meets the History Channell.

The ruler of Ikea (so called because their chief export is furniture-- Ottoman's, Divan's, wet bars, is Sha Na-Na, the Nattering Nabob of Negativism. This morose monarch always is yammering on about the hopelessness of life, the pointlessness of existance, the inability of man to fight city hall, his ungrateful grandkids, his operations, his wives, and the inability to find clean wash-rooms at the caravanseries when he makes a progress through his kingdom. He thoroughly so depresses everyone around him that the women of the harem actually go looking for the Mutes with Bowstrings to be strangled by them.

On the other hand, the ruler of my "Russian Country" "Gulagia" is a perky little dumpling who bakes cookies, sews her own clothes, does crafting and the like. Think of Mary Poppins in the Kremlin.

The hex boxes for woods are a good idea. I've used a similar set-up but without the vignettes. My collection is ALL 15mm now due to lack of space except for a few 28mm figures from skirmish/role play games. I even have the figures for the Vietgnome game somewhere -mostly converted GW plastic 40k orcs and such.
I think you're right in putting plenty of humour into your world and games. too many of us put too much stress on the first word of the hobby's name rather than the second. When I run into old friends, the "do you remember when…" from them always involves something FUNNY that happened in a game, or when everyone had a real good laugh rather than a great victory/defeat and RPG events are relived with almost as much relish as actual deeds -like trying to get into Dun-Goddin' -home of the Old Gods, where Valhalla is the maximum security wing for the real nut-job heroes and villains and the favourite night spot is "The Alle Fathers' Clubbe" by claiming to be "temping" for Ari Buggrit the God of Kitsch or on a time share.

DEar Mal

Right you are Mal, I always preach that when we play a war game the emphasis is on the second word, and we are having a good time with our friends. Right you are too that people always remember the homorous but the brilliant maneuver passes out of memory quickly.

As an example I once had a unit of the Citadel Guards from the Old Der Kriegspielers line, and I painted them up in black and silver (very SS, very S&M) and they looked great! Big unit of 72 figures, most terrorizing. Well one of my friends came in and looked at them and the first thing he noticed was the winged helpets, which had these huge long wigns (fromt he side) but were much thicker than they should have been from the front. Well My friend looked at them and said "What's that on their helmet? Bunny ears?" Well that's what they were known as from then on and believe me the name stuck and they were absolute c**p in avery battle! They coldn't pass a morale check of make a hit. Nobody remembers the battles from those days, but the sure remember the "Bunny Ears."

By the way, I repainted and remounted the troops into a nother game and it didn't do a d**n bit of good.

By the way I do early WWII and use imagi-nations as well. I model the countries on real life ones so "Fahrvergnuggen" is the 7 3/4 reich (guess who) and their major opponents are the WWWF, Workers Winter Wonderland of Freeland. Imagine Fahrvergnuggen as the Three Stooges satire of Hitler in "I'll never Heil again… Nyuk,Nyuk,Nyuk..

Uploading photos to/from Photobucket
(A simple guide.)

Open up Photobucket.
Left click on the orange "upload " button.
Select the album you want to upload to in the "upload to" menu.
Left click on the "choose photos and videos" button
In the new window, select the file then individual photos. Hold down the Ctrl key +ENTER to upload multiple photos or SHIFT +ENTER to upload them all.
Once the photos are uploaded, go to "LIBRARY" then the album they have been uploaded to. You can add titles/descriptions here.

To upload photos to TMP, open the photo you want to add. Under "Links to share this photo,"
left click on the link beside "Direct". This will turn yellow and briefly display as "copied"
All you need do now is return to TMP and right click and "paste" to add the photo to your post.
Hopefully that should do it! Sorry if anyone takes offence at the idiot's guide nature. We had to break down our jobs like this for a "major Bavarian vehicle manufacturer" so that anyone could do them. It all helps in the de-skilling process.

Cheers

Mal