Gentlemen
I am working on a 'pocket' travel frigate game, for my own amusement. I'll be using a tobacco tin and small miniatures with a hex cloth as a playing area. The idea will be to have a few 'stock' scenarios based on historical frigate battles between Britain, France and the USA.
I won't be using standard D6 (I'll be using 'Crown & Anchor' dice to give a suitable period nautical flavour) – doubles for hull damage, trebles for mast damage (this is very much a simplistic fun game to pull out in the cafe or pub). But I need a mechanism for who moves first/second.
In the first instance this will be the player holding the 'weather gage' [sic] which seems to bestow a historical advantage, but what if both players' ships are level so that neither holds this?
My answer would be, usually, to roll for it, but without D6 there are no values to assign. I could go black/red on one die (as C&A dice have equal numbers of both), but I thought it better to go with something more in keeping with the period.
And now the thorny question: which navies should hold the advantage in this situation?
Obviously, as a second generation Englishman (all grandparents being from the Celtic nations) I would like to place the Royal Navy at the top of the tree, but I am painfully aware of the prowess of our colonial cousins and also that French frigate captains were a lot better than their ship-of-the-line counterparts.
So, trying to avoid national stereotypes, what order gets the advantage? I suspect USN and RN before the French, but your historically informed and considered thoughts would be appreciated.
And please – I'm really not trying to restart the War of 1812!
Nick
