"Form on the Admiral's Wake rules review?" Topic

Is there a review of "Form on the Admiral's Wake" rules? Also would be interested in ordering information.

Thanks,

BR

I can write up a review and post it on my blog if you'd like. They come on a CD disk. Include the rules which are very short, specific ship templates, scenarios, cards, etc. the game uses hexes and is card driven. You draw a card, which specifies what side can do what (e.g. French may move or drift, all fast ships may move, all undamaged can reload, etc.), in between cards, ships can fire. You roll an amount of dice equal to your gun decks, a 3 decker rolls 3 dice. First fire, take, etc gives you additional dice. Hit on a number that is dependent on distance. You also roll a critical hit dice (D10 as i recall) if you roll equal or under to the number of hits you then roll for a critical hit chart. An example is I roll 3 dice and hitting on 4,5 or 6. I score 2 hits and roll a 1 on the critical hit die. I then roll the critical hit die again and consult the chart to see what happens (from small to nasty effects). Once you fire, you place two puff balls on the broadside that fired. You remove puff balls on reload cards. No puff balls, you can fire.

If you want to order, email me and I can provide you the author's email. They are very affordable. Lecoqfou at gmail dot com

Thank you PAR!

Critical hit die is a d12.

There are variations on how many dice are rolled to hit. I'll have to look back at the original version I have, but I don't recall it being restricted to the number of gun decks, because carronades add extra dice at range 2 or less. Myself, I've modded the rules slightly to take into account the number of guns on the ship, not just the number of decks.

One thing I've found about FoAW is that the guys who run it usually have made their own mods to the base set. For one thing, the ship cards that come with the base set are very limited. If you want the Victory or the Constitution, you won't find it. That said, the cards are built in PowerPoint, so it isn't hard to make the ship cards you want.

It plays fast, very fast. It's a great Con game because there is always action going on. It does a nice job of capturing how attitude toward the wind affects movement. The card-driven mechanism handles all of that. I've had plenty of guys start out believing they wouldn't like it, and leave the table having a good time. I was one of them myself. I've run this game going on 20+ times now, and I've never had a complaint – except the one guy who wouldn't move his Spanish SOLs, then complained he never got to shoot…

I wrote the original rules and Brian ran with it and made it a better game.

Basically, its all in the cards. Each card will direct ships to reload or move depending on its aspect to the wind or its current damage state or training. For example "All Undamaged British Ships must move if Reaching". The cards allow micro-decision through out the turn for all players. In addition, the cards simplify the game by limiting the knowledge of the situation for that instance. So, you only need to know you are reaching now and not what happens in the next instance. (At least for the rules, tactics require forethought)

Thanks

Tom Black

Gun decks are the base of how many dice you roll to fire, things such as carronades, rakes, first fire from either port or starboard can give you additional dice. So a 3 decker with carronades with a stern rake from 2 hexes away without having previously fired could have something like 8 dice or so hitting on 3+ or something like that. Very lethal. The game plays fast and is a game I've played numerous times and GM'd a few. Can't recommend it enough.

Available in the U.K. ??

Tom, are you going to H'con this year? I'd love to see you again…been forever. You did an awesome job creating these rules!

Rob, I've got a thread up about HCon. There's few of us going to be there.

Here is the 2017 thread regarding "Form on the Admiral's Wake"

B