"Pre-Dreadnought Fleet Action Rules" Topic

Looking for fast playing (i.e. little book-keeping/looking up voluminous tables/dicing for each gun) rules for fleet actions in 1/6000.

I am trying to eventually get my Hallmark Russo-Japanese ships organised but have been put off by lack of rules.

any suggestions would be welcolmed.

Alan

Perhaps Junior General? link

Quickfire, and they are free:

wtj.com/games/quickfire

Phil Barker's "Damned Battleships Again", though I've not seen a copy around for a while. I think you can still find copies of Colin Standish's "De Bellis Navalis" online. Guildford Wargamers also produce "Dark Days of the Admiralty"

link

If you can find then there us Navies in Transition.

Everyone seems to hate Yahoo groups but the DBSA group has the rules. One of the most interesting sets if you want some detail and a fair playability. I use them for more complex games though they are pretty simple and De Bellis Navalis for a good beer and pretzels set.

DBSA Yahoo can be found at link

There's a "fast play" RJW game from A&A Game Engineering called Tsushima: link

- Ix

I like DBSA. I have used it a few times and liked how it played and felt.

I've looked at using the GWAS tactical system as a miniatures game before, and I think it's a bit more work than just removing the hexes. That hex grid replaces or obviates all kinds of miniature-type rules (allowed formations, station-keeping distances, chances for collision, shallows and shores, turning radii, angles of fire, etc.). Once you get done writing those, it might turn out to be more work than just using commercial rules. That's what I decided for WWI, and I have used GQ2 as the tactical system for GWAS-based mini-campaigns several times. It was easier to translate GQ2 stats into GWAS strategic characteristics (operational radius, strategic speed, etc.) than vice versa.

Having said all that – if you like to tinker with rules, adding house rules to make the GWAS tactical system work with miniatures on a gridless surface could be a rewarding project.

I've actually never played Tsushima, so I have no opinion of it's feel, but it looks like a reasonably fast-paced game with an appropriate amount of period flavor for it's design purpose (fast play, easy to learn, big battles).

I've played Quickfire a few times and didn't like it much, but I know several people who do like it. It's free to acquire and pretty easy to learn and set up, so it's worth a try.

- Ix

Some gaming buddies and I have had good fun using the Avalanche Press rules for WW2 and WW1 converted to minis, so RJW should work well too! We use a chart for guns and torpedoes that converts multiple d6 rolls into a simple percentage roll with 2d10's. AH Bismarck turn gauges and movement sticks are used for maneuvering. No hexes needed. Fast and fun. We just ran a game featuring the WW1 Scharnhorst and Gneisenau with a light cruiser vs Inflexible and Invincible with a light cruiser. The Germans had a bonus for gunnery and that and some lucky rolls led to a marginal victory!

The old Avalon Hill game Jutland has been used with 1/6000 ships. The rules are free at Boardgame Geek.

Many thanks for all the helpful suggestions.

Alan

Battleship Captain is basically Jutland on steroids, with the goal of not keeping any paperwork. It's solid, but in the end we just reworked Jutland by increasing the gunnery factors and hit boxes and it gives a solid game.

The OP did ask about PRE-Dreadnought rules, not WW1 – which are an entirely different kettle of fish.

Predreadnaughts fought in WWI, and although maybe the kettle is different, many of the fish are the same. The gunnery systems had changed in the intervening period, it is not so much a change that a few modifiers to the firing table can't handle it.

I'd disagree with that.

Before about 1904 tactical thinking was quite different to that which evolved over the next few years and the rapid improvement of fire control, gun laying techniques and rangefinding increased operational ranges dramatically.

Add in the much increased threat from torpedoes and you have battle lines much further apart than would have been the accepted norm in the 1890's.

Admirals thought differently about how battle should be fought before 1906. Look at Makarov's book and see a major influence on tactical thinking expound on ramming and short range gunnery – very distinct from WW1 tactical thinking.

The fact that pre-dreads fought in some battle in WW1 (and did very poorly in them) doesn't mean they were any less outdated than a wooden sailing battleship would have been in 1850 yet there were still a fair few around.

GildasFacit,

What rule set would you recommend to the original poster?

Of those I have seen so far – none.

My problem is that I want a fleet action and it has to be relatively simple if I'm going to get those in my local group to play. Personally I don't mind a bit of complexity but they won't do that for navals, it has to be fairly basic and quick.

Currently I find the fleet rules are just toned down WW1 (or even WW2) and have the wrong 'flavour' for me and the complicated ones won't wash.

I've been working on a (heavily) modified version of DBSA where each ship has its own stats and on-table markers are used to replace record keeping on paper. So far version 4 is in the offing and I need to re-work stats of about 60 odd vessels to fit the newest version.

Earlier versions played relatively quickly and a newbie could handle a 5 or 6 vessel squadron within 10 minutes. Largest we played was 6 players on a 12x8 table with 40 odd ships in play. I'm now wishing I'd stuck with that version – it played well enough but didn't quite have the flavour I was looking for and I've been 'tweaking' them ever since.

I did rather like the look of the freebie on the WTJ site – but even that would put off my landlubber players.

….. I agree with QC re the implications of venturing too far toward the simplicity end of the spectrum. At some point you will end up playing checkers with ship models.

I am also cautious of rule sets that claim to model naval warfare over very extended periods, say 1880-1945. The differences in technology over that span of time are so huge, that any "simple" set of rules will inevitably be a fiction.

B

I dunno – there's a point where simplicity becomes generic. How much can a naval game be simplified and streamlined before it becomes a "naval games 3000 BC to AD 2014"?

I completely agree, and this is one of the reasons I have yet to find the "right" set of pre-dreadnought rules. What makes the period interesting is the extreme variation between ships, and the problems with trying to get a "fleet of samples" to operate effectively together.

My favorite pre-dreadnought game for period flavor is David Manley's "Fire When Ready". However, I don't consider those to be good "fleet action" rules. FWR has a lot of paperwork and chart-running, and the games move slowly if players have more than a few ships each. They're also not very casual rules – they really benefit from dedicated, interested players willing to learn and study.

I've never tried "Perfidious Albion", which uses the same ship stats but a very different roster system and different mechanics. PA might be faster in play. Can anyone else here comment?

I think if you want something that is very very simple, Avalanche Press has the easiest game to put on table […] you could play it on a table with hexes with no rules changes

That's not a bad idea, and I may have just thought of a nice looking way to do that. The 1/6000 pre-dreadnoughts are pretty small, so 4 of them (the stacking limit) in a line ahead would probably mostly fit on one of the GHQ 4" TerrainMaker hexes. You could buy just a few dozen of those, paint one side like shoreline, the other like sea surface, and have a geomorphic hex grid for GWAS miniatures gaming in an afternoon.

If you're as anal as I am, you could also make an extra set that have geomorphic shorelines for a nicer appearance. And maybe a few with rivers and hills for the inland terrain. And one with a port city for those shore bombardment or landing missions….

Hey, if you're using 1/6000 ships, you're in an even smaller scale than the counters in the AP game anyway

True! But the 1/6000 scale miniatures just don't stack as well. :-)

- Ix

Again, many thanks.

Has anyone experience of Coaling Stations:

link

Alan

I own Coaling Stations, but have never been interested in playing it. I totally forgot about it. I guess that says something about how much it impressed me…. :-(

It looks oversimplified to me, verging on bland. In addition, it uses a few mechanics I don't personally like:

• Order cards. You print out a bunch and place one by each squadron each turn.
  
• Movement by squadron. Coaling Stations seems to have the sequencing right to avoid the pitfalls of out-of-order movement in naval games, but I still prefer alternating Igo/Ugo for large fleet maneuvers.
  
• Saving throws. I consider this to be an unnecessary extra step in combat resolution in any system. I'd prefer a modifier, factor adjustment or calculation to an extra die roll.
  

Coaling Stations does look like it might be a fun game, but it's extremely light on the kinds of details that make the pre-dreadnought period interesting to me, it doesn't have any particularly innovative mechanics, and I don't see that it has any advantages in simulation value over free rules like Quickfire.

- Ix

I'd use DBSA, but with a couple of minor changes, like allowing the longer range gunnery and Scout Cruisers post 1903. Both featured in the RJ war..

Otherwise, the DBN rules someone mentioned above, or the RJ Naval rules, which are similar. I tried using a modified General Quarters set a couple of times, but pretty much all the battleships came out with almost the same factors for attack and defence – result, I think the generic rules do just as good a job, and give a much faster game.

True! But the 1/6000 scale miniatures just don't stack as well. :-)
- Ix

Hey, A hammer will sort that out in NO TIME!

I'm a little unclear on the technique here… do you paint the miniatures before hammering, or after hammering?

- Ix

Alan,
I've played Coaling Stations a few times – it's got its problems (mostly in terms of some unclear sections in the rules) but I quite like it nevertheless. I rather like the order system using cards. Here's a link to a R-J War game I reported on my blog: link

Also, here's a good report from the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts: link

Also, here's a link to another game played with Konstantinos Travlos's rules – FAST RULES FOR SMALL SHIPS AND BIG MINDS: link

His rules are available here: link

Cheers
(other) Alan