"How's Blood and Plunder sail?" Topic

Lots of skirmish games out there, including fun ones.

Very few games I know have boats really sail, or approximate it well enough that it doesn't feel like motorboat racing or Star Wars.

Anyone actually played a naval battle with this game?

We have and I am not sure what to think…
It is almost like the scale shifts

I think if the game was set up as two ships sailing and fighting and leave out the pirate skirmish scale of the main game, it might be a bit nearer sailing

Just my thoughts
C

We've used the ship rules from Blood & Plunder, and were not entirely happy with the way they worked. There's an odd interaction between ships activating and the crew activating which can get very clunky. The sailing rules are also not very realistic. Land rules are great, although there are fiddly bits (keeping track of actions).

I'd suggest waiting for Oak & Iron! ;D

Oak and Iron is just a set of naval rules, and isn't skirmish – you can't combine land and seas

There are other sailing vessel rules out there to consider.

Sailpower, and another set for the War of 1812, IIRC, which is pretty decent too (offered on a website that sells 15mm vessels and figs for that – "Broadside", or "Broadsides", perhaps?).

Sailpower has rules for tracking crews too, and allocating them to guns or sails. You can ignore that like I've done, if you prefer a simpler game.

I think Sailpower has rules for boarding actions too – simpler than many wargames out there for this sort of thing (streamlined).

The OP was asking for skirmish rules which allow for land and sea action, not just a naval game.
I've been looking for years for a set of Pirate rules that allow land actions and sea actions and amphibious stuff all with the same set of rules. Tried Legends of the High Seas (terrible ship rules) and also Blood & Plunder, which has quite good land rules but clunky sailing rules. The games where we have tried to combine land and sea have not worked well; there just seems to be too much to keep track of and the sailing rules are not good.
Maybe I'll have to write my own

They are working on an integration of the two rules.

Blood and Plunder works perfect for sailing and boarding action. About time to have good rules and I do not understand what the problem can be. Should check out the very god examples on YOUTUBE.

I agree with Belgian Ray – ship battles with Blood & Plunder are huge fun (I have played dozens of games now) and the rules represent the interaction of units of crew with the sailing pretty well.

I wouldn't say they were clunky, they just do take a bit of perseverance to get used to. Ships move 3 times per turn, which happens as units activate. Yes it probably would be easier for all ship movement to take place separately from the crew units, but the way it works it feels like a continuous motion of the ships, with the crew performing actions that can affect that movement (or go off and do something different like shoot their muskets or reload the cannons).

You probably need to get used to the turn sequence by playing a couple of land battles, but once you do get used to it, it works really well (and it's really not that complicated honestly).

As to the sailing – it's a game not a simulation – so there are some compromises; ships can't sail directly into the wind, but can sail up to 45 degrees into it (not strictly correct I know – but it keeps things simple and fluid), or no penalties for sailing with the wind directly astern as opposed to quartering. These compromises all make sense in the interests of speed and simplicity of the game, and personally (although I take both my sailing and my history pretty seriously) I think they work.

Over all though, I would say they are pretty good representation and deliver the right "feel". Each ship type has its own sailing characteristics (sail settings/top speed/windward penalties/turning allowance/draft and special rules) which makes ships feel very different in how they handle.

There are rules for;
Different wind conditions
Fouling
Running aground
Grappling
Special manoeuvres (box hauling, tacking, wearing)
Etc

It's pretty comprehensive – but the mechanics are quite simple once you have got used to the turn sequence. The payback on that is that the men and the ships feel integrated, rather than its two separate things going on.

It's not for fleet battles (although you can do bigger games with 2-3 ships a side pretty well), but if it's skirmish/pirate/privateer level action you are after, you should try them…