"Fletcher Pratt rules" Topic

So, Awesome Wife has ordered the Fletcher Pratt rules using Lulu's FLASH30 sale for me! I have never played these rules but have heard both positive and negative opinions.

What does the TMP Naval brain trust think?

I used to own them, though I never played them. They always looked interesting – and still do. I like the mechanism of the players having to estimate the range, though in a real ship, they would have had aids to range estimation whereas in the game, you don't unless you play on a tile floor or a wood plank floor, in which cases, you can use the width of the tile of plank to aid in estimation.

Speaking personally I think they're super!

Nice and easy to learn, the ranging is really good fun, honestly Warlock, I think you'll enjoy them!

Are they perfect… well no actually. While surface action is fun, I suspect the AA rules are tricky, and the submarine rules worse still. Having said that, I've never tried these, so this is only a gut feeling. However, ship on ship is what wargaming should be like IMHO.

ENJOY! :O)

Thanks!

Fletcher Pratt was the first miniature game I played, back in the late 1960s. Always fun as Cuchulainn indicates. For me, one of the big attraction is a game that does not depend on dice or Randomiz results, just the skill in judging range. This makes it a change of pace from other games.

Rick

Its the range estimation that kills FP for me. Fine for pre-dreadnought but in any period where ships were equipped with any half decent range finding equipment or better they give a very unsatisfactory experience. I must say some of my least enjoyable naval wargaming experiences have been in games using FP rules.

Agreed.

I only played them a few times, but I like the Fletcher Pratt rules.

My first wargame back in high school was with Fletcher Pratt in a buddy's basement with 8 other guys. Great fun those days.

I really like the range estimation part of the rules. IMO, The players have more to do than just moving their ships and throwing some dice to see if they hit. On the other hand I am not a fan of percentage-based damage reducing speed and number of guns firing. So I use a different ruleset like Fire on the Water to determine actual damage when hits occur.

For those of us no longer able to kneel on concrete floors for long periods of time, I ran a couple of games a few years back on a appropriately covered ping-pong table via email. Sending pictures to the players. I used various length pipe cleaners to show movement distance wakes and golf tees for shell splashes & hits. Pictures were sent from an aerial viewpoint (I stood on a chair) showing firing results and then end of movement for the next turn's firing. Surprisingly the players did not feel it was too easy to estimate the ranges to target, so salvo ladders were used a lot (one said he tried measuring off of the PC screen to get some idea of ranges to fire at). In any case all said they had a lot of fun with the game.

The range questimation aspect is a deal breaker for me as well.

I'm just curious lads, those of you who don't like FP, what rules do you normally use?

Range estimation (or, better, Dances' "questimation") is an absolute deal breaker. Frankly, it has no business in any modern game design. The only reason I'd play FP is for the nostalgia.

Current preferred rules are GQ3.3 (and the WWI variant, FAI).

GQ

General Quarters 3.3

GQ, all versions depending on who i am playing against

Besides FP, I frequently play GQ 3.3, Fire on the Waters, (my 2 favorites) Seekrieg V, and CaS IV.
I won't turn my nose up if someone wants to play GQ 1-2, A&A, SeaPower 3 or Victory at Sea, tho they aren't my preferences.

I've played a fair bit of FP, it doesn't really work post 1942 when gunnery radar became increasingly significant.

It is however fun to play (although as mentioned above, things like AA are a bit creaky) and seems to work OK for multi-player games. We played once game outside on grass with the ships based on bits wood, which looked rather good.

The range estimation isn't actually a problem as players figure out fairly quickly how to adjust the ranges based on observed fall of shot and target speed/direction. Playing on a squared floor helps too:) That bit is quite good fun.

As for the rest of the mechanisms, well they work as well as any set of rules with tiny move increments, masses of ineffective shooting which is really hard work to umpire and no concept of formations or command & control.

Generally the players seem to enjoy it, even though I think it is a dreadful simulation of naval combat and I find umpiring the games very hard work. My poor back and knees. Still, one for the team and all that.

Been using FP since the 70s. Have made many mods to the rules to better simulate movement, gunnery, and torpedoes. Don't bother with air or subs.

You get a lot more hits if you play on a floor with 1 foot square floor tiles.