"Rules Recomendation Request" Topic

As the topic title says really. More detail of what I am after is a set of rules for the smaller end of ships, so battles involving sloops, brigs, corvettes etc, Where a Frigate would be a powerful force. If they could go up to handling a battle between two small ship of the line squadrons would be good.

Am also after a set that is more 'fun' that simulation. Want a game that gives a good flavour of 18thC naval warfare rather than a game that is a detailed simulation of how such ships sailed.

Thanks for any useful comments.

You could give Form Line of Battle a try (well I would say that) – I've been using it for small ship actions atvthd Berkeley Vale club recently and the chaps certainly seem tocbr having fun :)

The ship stat sydtem is variable so you can scale smaller ships quite nicely agaibst larger frigates.

Heart of Oak can be used for ships of that era of any size and in any numbers.

Do you like hex based games or those without?

I think you'll find that most games can be scaled for smaller ships just fine, the trickier thing to do is have a game where small vessels and large ships of the line are on the table at the same time – which is bad news for the small vessels anyway.

Kiss Me Hardy from TFL is a fun and relatively simple system, and it is easy to modify stats for smaller vessels so they don't evaporate too fast.

Trafalgar, does all you ask, fun, not too hung up on realism and complicated sailing rules,and most of my games involve smaller ships, which it handles well, add in David Manley's excellent additional rules for more realism if desired

Heart of Oak works quite well for smaller ships. The rules suggest multiplying all the numbers of gun factors and hull factors for the small shios by 10 when fighting small actions only using small shios since the base stats in the appendix are scaled to those used for larger ships.

Chris

Kiss me hardy by the world famous 2fatlardies.
As usual well done and does the job.

House rule; either simply don't mix up ships of the line with smaller ones or halve the small guns effects on the SOL.

If you do like hex based – try Wooden Ships and Iron Men from Avalon Hill. Great game and not overly complicated.

I'll throw in my vote for Trafalgar too.

Thanks for comments so far. Had not even considered hex bases (or not). Have never done age of sail gaming so did not even know the question to ask.

So slightly different question. Rather than people say 'try these or you could try these', is there any site that compares / reviews the rules with a brief explanation of the mechanics? Or indeed would anyone be willing to take the time to put this information for differing sets here?

TIA

I have a private rule set "Hearts of Iron, Ships of Oak" which started out life as a merge of SOL and wooden ships/iron men. Send me PM and I can send you my rule set for consideration.