"The argument against "quick and bloody" naval rules" Topic

This is a continuation of the discussion started here, which I'm carrying to a new thread to avoid derailing the original discussion about playing surfaces.

I quite rudely asserted:

I am sick to death of "fast and bloody" rules. Our hobby is littered with games that speed up the rate of damage so much that the only "maneuver" in the game is the initial approach before things start dying, blowing up, sinking, or falling apart.

I want my naval games to play like the history books I read, maneuvering in and out of contact, looking for opportunities, working to maximuze my side's strengths and exploit the enemy's weaknesses. A game that allows no more maneuvering than "get close and blast away" throws all that away and replaces it with a die rolling contest. If I'm going to play a game based on luck and devoid of military simulation, I can have a much better time (and make more money) playing poker than Yahtzee.

To which SgtPrylo responded:

"…no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy." Horatio Nelson

Sounds like "get close and blast away" to me. At Trafalgar, the main maneuver was splitting the line, after which ships laid up next an opponent and fired away. At the Nile, the English lined up, dropped anchor, and fired broadsides until le Orient blew up, among other things. One could argue that "get close and blast away" rules ARE the most realistic.

Using Horatio Nelson's two greatest victories as typical examples of Age of Sail combat is myopia through a pinhole. I suspect this kind of ultra-narrow research is why so many Age of Sail rules are so over-the-top bloody. Personally I prefer not to play rules based on British naval triumphalism.

Even setting aside the fact that Nelson was a rare genius atypical of his era and service, Napoleonic naval rules that don't give the Royal navy a serious advantage in crew effectiveness are probably doing something wrong. One of the reasons I don't like Napoleonic era naval gaming much is because the Royal Navy's opponents had sunk to an ebb so low that Nelson's insane tactic of closing to within pistol shot of enemy ships of superior force actually worked, and in fact he had little doubt it would. If you examine Trafalgar, the greatest failings of the Allied fleet were that it wasn't in a proper line, the isolated parts of the Allied fleet failed to come back and support their friends, and the Allied crews were dreadfully inexperienced at sea. There are no good examples of a fair fight anywhere in the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson perceived all that, and even so he began Trafalgar with a ruse to increase his positional advantage so that his "get close and blast away" tactic could be an advantage. Nelson was like those annoying, smug tournament players we all know who constantly win because they know the rules well enough to take advantage of loopholes that nobody else knows. Call the tournament director if you want, Nelson will still win. He knew his business better than anybody alive.

Before corruption, idleness and dissipation had ruined all the Royal Navy's opponents, the naval tactics of the line developed for very good reasons. The great admirals of the Age of Sail knew when to let their captains off the leash and go toe-to-toe, but also knew when to hold them in the line and maneuver instead. Taking a British fleet of the AWI, WSS, 9YW, or any of the 17th C. Anglo-Dutch Wars into a pell-mell melee against an equal or superior opponent was just dicing with the Devil, and the admirals of the time knew it. The English themselves were the ones who developed the formal tactics of the line, exactly because the casualties were too high, victories too hard to achieve, and giant fleets of sail-powered ships too hard to control. The line was a very effective solution to a host of problems, so incredibly effective that naval professionals all over the world used it as a primary tactic until aircraft ruined naval warfare.

Prior to Nelson's maneuver at Trafalgar, battles consisted of two lines of ships passing each other in line, blazing away, and falling off without decisive result. Not very much of 'maneuver to exploit weaknesses there'.

That's an incorrect appraisal of the era, and an erroneous conclusion.

Indecisive results are a natural consequence of equal opponents failing to get or exploit an advantage. In general, two fleets of roughly equal numbers and roughly equal skill demonstrating roughly equal elan will have an inconclusive encounter. That explains most battles of the AWI, the era of Louis XIV, and the parts of the 18th C. when the Royal Navy was itself at low ebb. However, there are plenty of examples of decisive victories before Nelson's time, such as as the Glorious First of June, The Saintes, the Moonlight Battle, Quiberon Bay, La Hogue, Beachy Head, a host of battles waged by the Dutch, and on and on. In fact, some of the greatest victories by the Dutch were tactically inconclusive but strategic victories. Dismissing de Ruyter's performance in the Third Anglo-Dutch War with the comment "Not very much of 'maneuver to exploit weaknesses there'" is an egregious insult to the genius of de Ruyter, who won the war by forcing the Anglo-French fleet to accept inconclusive results despite a numerical advantage of 5:4 (and a strength disadvantage probably closer to 3:2), because of de Ruyter's brilliant maneuvering to fully exploit his own strengths and his enemies' weaknesses. De Ruyter nearly won his next war the same way, facing even greater odds against the French in the 1676 Sicilian campaign, but was tragically killed in the effort.

Nelson's greatest victories were achieved precisely because he understood his own advantages and his enemies' weaknesses, and exploited them. He didn't simply "go straight at 'em" every chance he got, he constantly demonstrated his genius for timing and appraisal of enemy weaknesses, even as a subordinate officer. Before him were many admirals who did the same: Hood, Hawke, Tordenskjold, Rooke, Tourville, Duquesne, De Ruyter, de With, Tromp, and on and on. Every one of them used well-timed maneuvers to keep or gain advantages, and won battles as a result.

I highly recommend A.T. Mahan's Influence of Seapower Upon History, 1660-1783 as an introduction to the shifting history of formal Age of Sail naval tactics. I also really like Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century: The Art of Sailing Warfare and, to a lesser extent, Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail: The Evolution of Fighting Tactics, 1650-1815. All are fun to read, if you like reading about the big battles of the age and the personalities who fought them.

- Ix

SgtPrylo also said:

'Fast and bloody' doesn't mean there is no maneuver, by the way. Maybe it just means that the miles and miles of rules minutiae aren't present to get in the way of playing a fun game.

I maintain that "fast" is good, "bloody" is not. The era was not "bloody" in every shot, the rules shouldn't be either.

I don't like miles of minutiae either. I definitely prefer light mechanics, fast play, and lots of action.

- Ix

To elaborate a bit:

'Fast and bloody' doesn't mean there is no maneuver, by the way.

I find it usually does.

"Fast and bloody" almost invariably implies the game is fast because it's bloody. That's where I lose interest. If the only way the designer could think of to make the game conclude in a reasonable amount of time was to step up the pace of damage, I don't want to play. What really happens in games like that is a few turns of approach are followed by a few turns of rolling dice and furiously recording damage results. The player decision cycle is reduced to "look stuff up on charts". It's especially frustrating when other time-heavy mechanics are left needlessly in place – plot every move, record the load of each gun, record the effect of every hit, roll for fire, roll for morale, roll for… agh!

I want damage to accrue at an historical pace, so I can replicate on the table the battles I read about, where a ship or fleet proceeded through multiple maneuvers, phases, command decisions, etc. and along the way the commander(s) got to make decisions that affected the outcome. I want to be able to look at my command and say "this isn't working" and try something else. With sailing ships, I want to be able to do several fleet level maneuvers in a game – form line, turn in succession, reform into bow-and-quarter line, come about, reform line, engage the enemy for a bit, break off, reform line on the opposite tack, re-engage the enemy from a new position, etc. It's fun to put a fleet through evolutions, and it's really fun when the enemy fleet is outwitted and caught wrong-footed.

Maybe it just means that the miles and miles of rules minutiae aren't present to get in the way of playing a fun game.

That's what "simple" means.

"Fast" can either mean "the game moves along at a good pace" or "the game is over quickly" (or both). I like the former meaning, but I only like the latter meaning if the former is also true. I was always a fan of DBA because it played fast, was over soon, but during the game I was heavily involved in a lot of critical decisions. I'd love to find an AoS naval game like that. I've so far failed to create one.

To me, the right way to achieve fast play is with light, streamlined mechanics that take very little time but create a big, entertaining player decision cycle.

I don't like games described as "fast and bloody", because the "bloody" part always means the game stops when the shooting starts.

On a related topic – simple games can also be slow. It isn't very complicated to make a die roll and then modify it by looking up modifiers on multiple charts, but if you have to do that a zillion times every turn, the game really drags. WS&IM is actually not a very complex game, but the endless record keeping, die rolling, chart running, writing down every step just drags the game out.

- Ix

Ix,

Your views on the subject coincide almost exactly with mine. However, I believe you have overlooked the fact that a large proportion of naval wargamers (I would venture a guess that it is a significant majority) have little or no interest in recreating the actual tactics and grand tactics of the period.

For naval gamers like yourself (and myself, as well) the game serves as a tool to help explore and understand history. For most others, like SgtPrylo, the game serves as a medium for staging an action/adventure story of relatively brief duration, in which a passing (even if inaccurate or incomplete) resemblance to history is sufficient. In that case, "fast and bloody" fills the bill quite nicely.

Two quite different purposes, requiring two quite different styles of game.

I'm glad I'm not alone in challenging Nelson's alleged brilliance. He was an inspiring figure, and the right man to lead a greatly stronger force (I know the allied ships were tougher, but with monkeys crewing them this meant little), but against a fair match he'd have created a world where they were speaking French in London and Moscow by now.
I must add I find his smug priggishness a pain in the posterior too.

Re the "Fair Match" comment – Would you say the same thing about, say, Jervis at Cape St Vincent?

Don't sell Nelson short. However smug and priggish he might have been personally, he was an aggressive, intelligent and intuitive tactical commander with an acute sense for the shortcomings of his opponents. I highly doubt whether he would have acted so aggressively against better quality opposition.

B

Well, Sobieski, Nelson was brilliant enough to understand what a superb weapon he had in the fleet that the Royal Navy had provided for him, as well as understanding the limitations of his opponents well enough to know what he could get away with.

"know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." -Sun Tzu

And his victories were brilliant enough to have captivated the minds of most naval wargamers, who, when you say Age of Fighting Sail, only think of the double envelopment at The Nile and breaking the line at Trafalgar. The entire 200 years of the evolution of sailing tactics leading up to Nelson is (unfortunately) eclipsed by him, in the popular imagination.

"…no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy…."

So if both captains do that, we'll have a win-win situation, shall we? Interesting.

The implications of WA's comments are that, apart from the 7YW and Napoleonic periods, truly decisive victories of the Nelsonic sort were almost unheard of. For example, in the case of the Coromandel campaign, not a single ship was taken by either side in the series of squadron battles between Suffren and Hughes. Victory under such conditions was arguably determined on the basis of the number of ships so damaged as to be unable to safely keep the sea after the battle. When translated to the gaming table, engagements of this sort seem unappealing or unsatisfying to gamers over-exposed to the popular Napoleonic naval mindset.

B

Whilst getting in close and blasting away probably is THE historical tactic for ships of the line during the Napoleonic era that isn't the case for the smaller vessels, the frigates, brigs an sloops etc. I much prefer the games the smaller ships offer as the element of manoeuvre remains key if you are to over-power a well matched adversary. A ship that fits that description might have a less able crew but be a larger vessel with heavier guns etc…

Well, I for one am sick and tired of rolling on a so-called "critical hit table", going through 5 different charts and having the anchor cable severed.
Give me "quick and bloody" any day.

I agree the endless paperwork gyrations are an unwelcome but persistent feature of "Napoleonic naval" games. It seems WS&IM and its many imitators have been so successful that naval gaming just doesn't "feel right" to many gamers unless it's a major accounting exercise.

I disagree that "quick and bloody" is a reasonable antidote. I think "quick and streamlined" is probably a better goal.

- Ix

It sounds like I am glad I have never played "Fast and Bloody".

When we started naval wargaming back in the late 70s there were no rules or models, so we wrote your own and scratch built your ships.

We have now settled on a heverly amended version of the board game "Wooden Ships and Iron Men".

In our version your ship get heavily penalised in the morale tests for being in a pell-mell melee and/or being out of formation.

The problem with (if you're facing them) is that the Royal Navy at the start of the 1800s are at the top of their game well lead, highly motivated and skilled crews and good quality Ships and equipment.

The quality of the(RN) captains and crews pushes them through the our penalties in the early 1800s.

It is possible to beat them (RN) by outmaneuvering them, it is not easy,

A lot of the fun of the fighting under sail game is maneuvering your fleets and squadrons about.

We tend to have the most fun not playing Napoleonics.

As mentioned by Blutarski Suffren and Hughes makes a cracking series games and a great little campaign.

Just a guess but perhaps one problem is in many rules the 10th shot is just as effective as the 1st. Change that and maybe players will have to maneuver

Certainly maneuvering is a vital part of any Age of Sail game but there has to be a balance between being an admiral and a sailing master. I prefer games with 20+ ships per side and to conclude such a game in four hours or less, abstractions have to be accepted.

I won't even dwell on later periods but shell by shell resolution with hit locations and armor penetration at the captains' day room level is, at least for me, tedious.

Abstraction in the name of playability does not have to be the mortal enemy of plausibility.

I would argue that "fast" and "bloody" are two distinct elements and that one does not automatically imply the other. True, there are rules that combine both aspects (Sails of Glory and Warhammer Trafalgar to name but two). but then there are others such as Form Line of Battle wherein the game mechanics are "fast" (in that resolution of a turn is accomplished quickly) but the rate of damage accumulation is generally more prolonged so that the requirement to manoeuvre effectively is maintained (that said, a failure to manoeuvre effectively whilst your opponent is doing so may well put to in a position where their fire is highly effective and yours is not, in which case – quite rightly – your demise will occur in pretty short order)

It would appear that I am in a minority. I prefer one ship per player, low number of ships in the fight. So maneuver is where the action is with me.

This to me is the rub:

there has to be a balance between being an admiral and a sailing master

So many of the decisions are, from the history books, about judging the wind, tide and timing of things.

A core issue here then, is many gamers simply are not qualified to command. There are so many nuances that you have to abstract them away. Or at least that's true for me. I have a nice Age fo Sail fleet, but because my reading on the subject is pretty much just Hornblower and Aubrey, I still qualify as "landlubber."

So when I play it's more of a "three drink minimum, make stuff go boom" kind of night….

It would appear that I am in a minority. I prefer one ship per player, low number of ships in the fight. So maneuver is where the action is with me.

Then you may still like Heart of Oak, an oldie but a goodie, one of the best sailing wargames out there still:

link

i like the one on one and two on two battles myself. i guess that way you can play a more in depth detailed rule set and the game still moves quick enough.

for me personally i think i would lose interest with just two lines of 15 ships just blasting away at each other. it seems like the resolution of ever turn would take forever. measuring movements and firing and rolling for damage and applying damage and whatnot. going through all the phases of a turn for like 30 ships seems tedious to me

When you are trying to recreate a naval battle like Trafalgar where there were more than 60 ships present, you HAVE to be fast, if not bloody as well.

To say nothing of battles like Jutland and Midway …

It would appear that I am in a minority. I prefer one ship per player, low number of ships in the fight. So maneuver is where the action is with me.

Au contraire, monsieur, it seems to me most wargamers share your preference. I can't seem to find a game run any other way without traveling at least 2000 miles East. When I try to talk up other people about large fleet battles, I get comments like "But that would take forever to play!", as if it's not even conceivable that an AoS game could be anything other than a massive accounting exercise. <sigh>

I think you may be in a minority in this thread because I filtered out many small-battle adherents with the title.

I have no "preference" for fleet vs. small actions, per se, I enjoy both levels of play. It's just that there's no shortage of small actions to play in, and I would like to play more big fleet actions. Most of the time when I arrive at the table of a "fleet" game, I find out each side has 4-6 ships. To me, that's a "squadron" game, not a "fleet" game. Meh.

So far I'm the only person in my region that I have ever seen running a fleet action with 2 dozen (or so) ships per side, flag signals, room for fleet-scale maneuvers, and rules that cover things like turning/tacking/wearing in succession, turning/tacking/wearing all together, etc.

- Ix

When you are trying to recreate a naval battle like Trafalgar where there were more than 60 ships present, you HAVE to be fast, if not bloody as well.

Such a game does have to be fast, but again, not bloody.

As both Mr. Manley and I have pointed out, "fast" and "bloody" are mutually exclusive concepts. "Fast" means the rules play fast; "bloody" means the damage accrues fast. The two are not automatically linked.

"Fast" can be achieved by simply streamlining or abstracting mechanics. This can usually be done without losing much simulation value (or any, if done creatively).

"Bloody" might just be a description of a period (like ACW, WWI, Zulu wars, etc.), but when it's used to describe a period with a notably measured pace of damage accrual like the AoS, it's automatically a distortion and a reduction of simulation value. I can't support that. I think that ending the game sooner by killing everybody faster makes the game less fun, not more fun.

To use your example above, if actually trying to recreate Trafalgar on the table, it should take about 1.5 (scale) hours of frequent close-range (pistol range?) bombardment by multiple SOLs, including a few raking shots and a 100-gun 3-decker parked alongside for about an hour, to reduce the crew of a 74 like Redoubtable to the point of surrendering. A ship as big as Santissima Trinidad should take about twice as long (as far as I can tell, that's how long it actually took).

- Ix

I think that ending the game sooner by killing everybody faster makes the game less fun, not more fun.

Agreed. I believe a happy medium can be achieved between simulation and accountancy.

Such a game does have to be fast, but again, not bloody.

Indeed, my emphasis was on the "fast" rather than the "bloody".

To use your example above, if actually trying to recreate Trafalgar on the table, it should take about 1.5 (scale) hours

Again, I agree, in fact that is what I am aiming at – to complete the whole batle in about 2 hours of play.

I was looking at the problem the other way round. With 60 ships on the table and say it takes a minute to adjudicate fire and movement for each ship, then it would take an hour to complete just one move! This is of course far too slow. It must be possible to adjudicate each ship in a matter of seconds …

for me personally i think i would lose interest with just two lines of 15 ships just blasting away at each other. it seems like the resolution of ever turn would take forever. measuring movements and firing and rolling for damage and applying damage and whatnot. going through all the phases of a turn for like 30 ships seems tedious to me

It sounds like you're thinking in the narrow box of standard AoS mechanics, which tend to be paperwork intensive and needlessly multi-stepped (roll to hit, roll for damage, roll again for critical hits, roll to test severity of critical hit, roll to fight fires, roll again for morale, repeat for five more ships, collapse from weariness, get up and roll some more dice…). That sounds boring to me too, and isn't at all what I'm suggesting.

Most AoS games are reduced to "two lines of ships just blasting away at each other" because the games are so intent on minute details of gunnery and sail settings that there isn't sufficient play time for fleet-scale maneuvers. When the game has so many mechanics that a player can only manage 2-3 ships, a real "fleet" size game is out of the question anyway.

When I set out to write fleet level AoS rules, I eventually worked out a way to resolve shooting with a single die roll per ship, while still including details like shooting "high" or "low", advantages for closer range and bow rake and stern rake,, differentiating carronades from carronade-less broadsides, accounting for damage previously received, providing mechanisms for the occasional rare damage results ("special" damage like setting a ship ablaze, blowing it up, extra hits, losing a mast, sudden morale issue, etc.). All in one roll, no loss of detail, no rosters. It can be done, it just takes abstract and elegant mechanics.

Similar treatment of core mechanics like boarding actions and movement can reduce turn length to roughly 10-15 minutes of pure movement or maybe 20 minutes if there's a lot of shooting and grappling and boarding. With so many more turns per game, suddenly it's about fleets maneuvering for position, a complicated dance of shifting formations and large scale movements as two admirals seek to engage on advantageous terms and simultaneously wrestle to keep their subordinate players reined in. There are no "two lines of ships just blasting away at each other" unless both admirals go straight at each other (which usually means at least one is foolishly ignoring his victory conditions). If at least one admiral outwitted the other or got lucky, there will likely be a few engagements, as one achieves uneven fight with more of one line against less of another, followed by more fleet movements as the disadvantaged admiral tries to get out of his predicament or turn the tables, and so on until somebody breaks off or time gets called.

- Ix

To use your example above, if actually trying to recreate Trafalgar on the table, it should take about 1.5 (scale) hours

Again, I agree, in fact that is what I am aiming at – to complete the whole batle in about 2 hours of play.

That isn't quite what I meant. When I say 1.5 scale hours, I mean 1.5 hours simulated scale time, not 1.5 actual hours of play time. The time scales might coincide if that's what the rules author (or players) want, but usually there's a time ratio – each turn represents more or less time than actual play time.

Playing Trafalgar in 2 hours would be quite a trick. If you achieve that and still have a satisfying AoS game, I want to play!

With 60 ships on the table and say it takes a minute to adjudicate fire and movement for each ship, then it would take an hour to complete just one move!

Unless a turn represents an hour (or more?) of scale time… in which case the ships better be moving pretty far and shooting at a lot of targets.

Realistically, it's unlikely there will be 60 ships firing on any turn. Fleet battles usually see 1/3-1/2 of the ships on the table able to actually fire in the engagement zone(s), sometimes peaking at 2/3-3/4 before some ships slink off, some strike, some get too battered to shoot anymore, etc.

- Ix

War Artisan said:

However, I believe you have overlooked the fact that a large proportion of naval wargamers (I would venture a guess that it is a significant majority) have little or no interest in recreating the actual tactics and grand tactics of the period.

Not overlooked, ignored. I've been slapped in the face with this fact more than once, and in fact this is one of the reasons I don't play AoS games much anymore. Most gamers expect "Napoleonic naval" games to have a lot of record keeping, overly deadly shooting, British supremecy, and a maximum of a half dozen turns or so of play. Since I don't enjoy playing Yahtzee with expensive miniatures occupying the die rolling area, I have nothing in common with any of those people, and never get to play with my ships. Boo hoo.

I used to run fleet battle games a few times a year, full of grand tactics and strategic goals and internal dissension, using a flag signaling system adapted from The Byng Touch. Apparently I bored everyone to death, because the last few times I offered games like that I had insufficient players to start. I started the project to remove the need for multiple players from the rules (so I could scale a whole fleet battle from 2-12 players), but discouragement attenuated my interest in that project and it's been sitting unedited for a few years.

Since I can talk freely here to my own ilk, there's no need to include the Yahtzee players in the discussion. I can talk sailing tactics and fleet maneuver mechanics and in here I have an interested audience.

- Ix

Really enjoying this thread.

I totally agree that there are few rule sets that I am aware of that successfully recreate squadron or fleet actions in the AOS.

More modern wargames on "terra firma" have moved away from complex casualty charts and tracking casualties in single figures (or worse – actual manpower) and concentrate instead on the gradual reduction of the unit or brigade's fighting capability. Such simplification allows the game to concentrate more on command and control aspects rather than bookkeeping, and in my view delivers no less as sophisticated a result.

And yet they are not simply "fast and bloody" rules, rather the simplified mechanics allow for a different style and (purely in my opinion) more representative game.

Perhaps it is time we had a rulest for the AOS that followed this lead?

I've played a set of rules called "Form on the Admirals Wake' that is non-commercial, a labor of love by one gamer, that IMHO, does do very well at fleet actions. We've played at the last two HMGS-E cons (the Nile with moving French and the Chesapeake)and both times the game concluded in 3+ hours, the weather gauge was crucial, manuever ruled who won, and the ships were pretty robust. It fits my bill for the combination of fun yet plausible behavior.

The author sells them on CD for $5. USD

More modern wargames on "terra firma" have moved away from complex casualty charts and tracking casualties in single figures (or worse – actual manpower) and concentrate instead on the gradual reduction of the unit or brigade's fighting capability. Such simplification allows the game to concentrate more on command and control aspects rather than bookkeeping, and in my view delivers no less as sophisticated a result.

And yet they are not simply "fast and bloody" rules, rather the simplified mechanics allow for a different style and (purely in my opinion) more representative game.

Perhaps it is time we had a rulest for the AOS that followed this lead?

Pr้cis้ment, mon ami! That's exactly what I've been seeking for years.

- Ix

I've played a set of rules called "Form on the Admirals Wake' that is non-commercial, a labor of love by one gamer, that IMHO, does do very well at fleet actions.

You mean Brian Dewitt's rules. He might have sent me an early version of those. I suppose I should get back in contact with him and see about snagging the most recent version. It's ironic that he wasn't much into my naval periods when he lived here, and now he's writing rules for them… <sigh>

Brian was ever a fountain of really neat home rules. Every period imaginable, and some nobody ever thought of (like: rules for his cool "Monopoly piece fleets", a set of cool 1930's vintage pewter toy ships – a BB, a CA, a DD, a sub, and a weird 1930s idea of what an aircraft carrier would look like – cast in an ambiguous scale approximating 1/1200ish). He always has great ideas for innovative mechanics, always simple and elegant, always evocative of the period. I'm sorry he moved back to VA.

- Ix

Yup. Those are Brian's rules and he has some pre-dred stuff that is pretty darn clever as well.

well i can say that having only really played with the admiralty rules i'm not qualified to say much about differences in rule sets.

but it definitely is a rule set that is paperwork intensive and has a lot of rolling for criticals and the like.

we are planning on trying other rules, but one at a time haha

i do like detail and i don't mind a slow pace really. i'm balanced. i don't want it to be so quick that it's not realistic. i just want it to keep my attention. i have no problems pulling an all nighter and playing a game for hours if its got my attention.

i'm open to suggestions if you guys want to recommend some different rules. although i do realize there have been other threads about that in the past.

So far I'm the only person in my region that I have ever seen running a fleet action with 2 dozen (or so) ships per side, flag signals, room for fleet-scale maneuvers, and rules that cover things like turning/tacking/wearing in succession, turning/tacking/wearing all together, etc.

I resemble that remark! It's been a while, but I regularly ran large fleet actions and even campaigns using my Line of Battle rules from HR Games. Your rules, btw, were fun to play, I especially liked the flag system for command and control that you ported over. I think the test of decent rules is if the use of historical tactics makes a positive difference in the game or not.

Apparently I bored everyone to death, because the last few times I offered games like that I had insufficient players to start.

That was a few years ago when the local game club still met n Cupertino, and there was a short-lived interest in fleet actions. I ran convention games several years running, doing Trafalgar in 1/1200 scale, but the last one I did had only two players show up! I then made the rookie mistake of selling my 1/1200 collection intending to go down-scale to 1/2400…somehow that part of things didn't happen…

Okay, apparently there were two of us in the region. I never did get into a LoB game while I had the chance.

There might have been three of us. There's also this photo on the Yahoo group for the Central Coast Wargamers:

If I remember, those are all modified 1/700 plastic Victory models.

I ran convention games several years running, doing Trafalgar in 1/1200 scale, but the last one I did had only two players show up!

Yup. Between attenuated convention attendance and waning interest in the Age of Sail, it's hard to get enough players to do the AoS justice around here.

The last time I played Line Ahead was a few years back at the Saratoga meeting, to playtest a bunch of changes. It worked okay, but still needs work. One of the things it needs is more cool little markers, because bunches of tiny damage markers blowing around a table full of tiny ships and hitching rides on cotton balls of smoke didn't work out too well.

After that I tried to run a game at Kublacon, and had one player show up. That was the end.

- Ix

I fail to see that "fast" and "bloody" are mutually exclusive. Is someone firing without aiming when he posts?

Ahoy – With all this talk about AoS rules, I invite interested parties to take a try at mine. Any folks planning to attend the upcoming Havoc, Huzzah, NJCon and/or Historicon conventions are cordially invited to raise their broad pennants under my "Steer to Glory" rules and give them a try. I have been running convention games with these rules since 2005.

I will be running the following scenarios:

Battle of Sadras – largely a straight-up homage to the historical battle.

Saumarez in the Strait of Gibraltar – a what-if situation derived from the 1801 engagements between Saumarez, Linois (Fr) and Moreno (Sp).

I intend to add a third scenario for Historicon: Calder versus Villeneuve and Moreno off Ferrol – a scenario made rather more interesting by an assumption that the Allied fleet had had an opportunity to drill its crews to a better standard over the course its cruise to the West India and back and that Calder did not necessarily have "the pick of the litter" in his fleet.

I'll also have a couple of frigate scenarios in my pocket just in case.

Look forward to the opportunity of getting together with some of you over the game table!

B

Maybe if the rule don't fit you. Try different fleets that are better matched. I'm thinking of Russians and Swedes etc. This may help with a more balanced game (Less one sided). Let the R.N. fleets sit in the box for a game or two
Be safe
Rory

I fail to see that "fast" and "bloody" are mutually exclusive.

"Fast" means "with great speed" and "bloody" means "with lots of casualties" (in the context of combat). Those are two separate concepts, therefore mutually exclusive.

I (and others here) also apprehend "bloody" to imply "an accelerated rate of casualties/damage", because, well, that's what it usually means in a wargame design context.

Does that help?

- Ix

Care for a few English and logic lessons, Admiral? "Hot" and "cold" are separate concepts and mutually exclusive; "female" and "talented" are separate concepts and quite capable of holding hands while they stroll down the street.

With respect, Sobieski, are you arguing that 'fast' and 'bloody' are mutually inclusive … in the sense that one cannot be had without the other?

B

No, just that they don't rule each other out; a desperate rearguard action for lexis and logic.

"Fast" means "with great speed" and "bloody" means "with lots of casualties" (in the context of combat). Those are two separate concepts, therefore mutually exclusive.

No.
"Mutually exclusive" means if you have one then you can't have the other.
I see no reason why a set of rules could not be both "fast" and "bloody".

My bad, you're correct. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, simply separate.

I've been term that wrong using all years these….

I blame my teachers. I never liked those bastards anyway.

- Ix

I see no reason why a set of rules could not be both "fast" and "bloody".

Apparently bloody also means lots of exploding and sinking ships. I recall feedback from one convention game that the rules weren't "realistic" enough since the ships didn't explode and sink immediately when sunk. Since most ships engaged in AoS battles got battered, even captured, but rarely sunk outright during the battle my rules reflected that. Most of the time a ship would get battered and withdraw, or perhaps strike. And even if "sunk" the ship hulk remained in play often for most of the rest of the battle posing a navigation hazard…but mostly the ships didn't go BOOM! and I reckon that gamers want lots of BOOM!

I recall feedback from one convention game that the rules weren't "realistic" enough since the ships didn't explode and sink immediately when sunk.

I hope you laughed. That's quite a funny idea.

I sometimes got questions like "When do we shoot?" and "Why do we have to start so far apart?", but most participants were happy to do some fleet maneuvers before settling into the firefight.

- Ix

Your rules, btw, were fun to play, I especially liked the flag system for command and control that you ported over.

The flag signaling was fun, but had some problems:

• It only works with 3-4 players per side. Getting exactly 6-8 gamers around a table for the same game can be hard.
  
• The standing rule of "no discussing tactics or orders" is a pretty anti-social rule, and can be difficult to enforce.
  
• You have to know some naval terminology to even understand the signals. The resulting Q&A often gave away what the player intended.
  
• Giving the admiral his own squadron gave him too much control over the fleet, but giving him none made the admiral a boring sit-and-watch job.
  
• Gamers like to disobey orders, and since many transgressions were completely out of character for the period, I had to make a standing rule that players must attempt to obey the letter of an order.
  

Regarding that last rule, I had an alternative method of enforcement: at the end of the mini-campaign (hopefully 3 battles in a row), any player could charge any other player on his side with
a) disobeying the letter of an order, or
b) cowardice
…and we'd initiate a court martial. The accuser would lay out his case and gather supporting testimony by questioning other players (all of whom were "witnesses" to the battle, of course), then the defendant would do the same. The other players would act as jury and all vote guilty or innocent. If convicted by a majority, the guilty player lost his VP and therefore probably the game. Naturally everybody in these proceedings would have an ulterior motive (their own ranking in the VP hierarchy!), and since the "enemy" players in the jury could outvote the "friendly" players, there was no way it would be a fair trial, but as judge I would also overrule hearsay, stop bad lines of questioning and meaningless insults, rule on the fitness of evidence, etc. The one time I had players stick it out long enough to try this, the admiral was accused of cowardice ("not doing his utmost" or some such, ahem) and lost his case to a wickedly partisan jury looking for blood.

I have often thought it would be fun to play fleet battles with very tactical rules, 1-3 ships per player, and only a flag signaling system to communicate. However, it would take a lot of AoS gamers willing to play the same rules, and I've never seen that. The other problem is that large parts of a fleet in a big battle are unengaged, making it a boring watch-and-wait game for many players. A solution is to have a big melee where everyone can get engaged… but then there's no real reason for flag signals.

- Ix

Unfortunately, the closer a set of rules would be to my liking, the less likely I would be able to play it with another person.

I think we are hung up on the 'fast and bloody' definition. If we all agree on 'fast and streamlined' we would be on the same page.

For me most AOS rules bog down at the fleet level because the focus is on what is happening at the captains level. Loading of shot, repairing damage, allocating crew, etc. I want games where I make decisions as an admiral, the captain level must be abstracted to speed things along. However, most players I know play because of reading Hornblower or Aubrey.

When comparing to Napoleonic land rules, I like Shako and Age of Eagles. My friends like one or the other, not both. The former is equivalent to 'captain' level and the latter is a generals game. In Age of Sail. We have a lot of Shako, very little Age of Eagles.

I am with Yellow Admiral. Napoleonic naval is one sided, the greatest fleet of the age had the greatest Admiral of the age. SYW is similar. That is why I like AWI and Anglo Dutch naval. Both sides won some and lost some.