"Sail & Steam Navies wargame." Topic

Nice!

Full battle here
dinofbattle.blogspot.com.ar

Amicalement
Armand

Nice. Sail & Steam Navies are hands down my favorite rules for ACW naval wargaming.

Paul

We have just started using these had a couple of games and enjoyed by all.

I own Sale & Steam Navies and have read through them. I have yet to play a game with them. I almost always fall back on Age of Iron as I know the rules quite well. For those that know the rules, how are they in comparison? Also, have you attempted to run a multi-player convention style game with them?

B

I played Age of Iron once, but only the pre-dreadnought version, and I don't remember enough about it to compare/contrast with anything. I do remember I disliked it enough not to look for a copy to buy, so I'm not sure what my opinion is worth to you anyway.

I've played in Dave Brandon's games (the author of S&SN) at local conventions, and a local friend of mine occasionally runs a game. I liked the rules enough I got rid of most of my other ACW naval games (except Iron & Fire, which might do larger fleets better).

This blog by David Sullivan has a long review of S&SN which includes a good description of the game, and some good observations about things he considered broken.

A few notes of my own:

• At first it seems complicated, slow, and a bit clunky, but after several turns it starts to flow, and after a few games it actually flows pretty well. It is possible to play out a whole battle in just a few hours with only a couple experienced players in the game.
  
• It's a good game with 1-2 ships per player, or maybe 3-4 lightly armed and/or small ships commanded by an experienced player. The only good way to scale the game up to big battles is with lots of players.
  
• I think the optional rule for "delayed fire" really improves the game. I don't consider it optional. :-)
  
• The vast number of pre-configured, easily readable ship data cards is a major advantage to this game. I'm still hoping the author will do the same for the later ironclad period so I can play with my Houston's ironclads of the 1870s and 1880s. :-)
  

- Ix

Thanks YA, very helpful. After reading these the first time, I had doubts about using them for a large convention game. Looks like this may indeed be the case.

I've put on several convention games with S&SN and they work really well. The GM needs to know the rules well to guide the game but the mechanics work really well

link

What Bosco05 said.

S&SN has clear charts, superb rosters, and the basic mechanics are pretty easy to understand if explained. It works well as a convention game as long as the GM knows what he's doing and keeps the game moving.

- Ix

I like the rules as well. Who makes the fort in the pics?

Thoroughbred makes the fort- its a model of Arkansas Post.

link

OBW

Thanks I have been trying to find a pic of Toby's fort since he released it. I have over 40 of his ships.

Does SSN include the ability to rate ships not included?

I haven't played in awhile so I can't recall if there is a way to rate ships. That being said, I think you'd be hard pressed to come up with a ship that there isn't a stat sheet for. Many ships have two or more stat sheets to cover the different configurations they saw during the war.

Paul

Toby's fort is great.

We had a game using these rules yesterday. All-in-all a good, fun set with an amazing amount of ships stat sheets. Our one problem was that we found the one Union monitor on the table was impervious to all but any really lucky hull shots. Not one gun on any rebel ship could go anywhere near penetrating the monitors (single turret Nantucket)armour. The Nantucket carries one GR10 and one GR20 sized gun (100+ pdr guns) and woe betide any vessel getting hit by one of these things. Lesson learned. No monitors in future games.