Bellerophon1993 | 18 Jan 2021 11:18 a.m. PST |
What rules would you recommend for huge fleet actions in the Napoleonic/French Revolutionary period? We're talking 20-30 ships a side. Most rules I've seen are designed for squadrons at most, and bog down with more than a handful of ships. |
cmdr kevin | 18 Jan 2021 11:32 a.m. PST |
Grand Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail by A and A Game Engineering available on Wargames Vault |
HMS Exeter | 18 Jan 2021 11:33 a.m. PST |
Its simplistic, but you could do worse than Wooden Ships and Iron Men. |
Todd636 | 18 Jan 2021 11:35 a.m. PST |
Iv'e seen Trafalger played using Fire as She Bears rules played at conventions. You know, back when they had conventions. Rules available at Wargame Vault, |
Big Red | 18 Jan 2021 12:10 p.m. PST |
Flying Colors from GMT. It's designed with fleet actions in mind. |
Rudysnelson | 18 Jan 2021 12:13 p.m. PST |
Wooden Ships and Iron Men started out as a miniature set of rules published by Juggernaut. They were called Ship of the Line. It used a square grid system. |
John Leahy | 18 Jan 2021 12:29 p.m. PST |
It's Warm Work from Wargame Vault. Designed for BIG actions. Thanks. John |
Bashytubits | 18 Jan 2021 1:51 p.m. PST |
I second It's Warm Work from Wargames Vault. |
David Manley | 18 Jan 2021 1:58 p.m. PST |
My new fleet action rules, "Far Distant Ships", should be completed in a month or so. Emphasis is on big actions and managing command and control issues – at least if you use the full rules. They will appear on Wargame Vault when they are done. |
War Artisan | 18 Jan 2021 2:33 p.m. PST |
At the 2018 convention of the Seven Years War Association, I ran the Battle of the Virginia Capes using "Admirals: A Game of Fleet Actions in the Golden Age of Fighting Sail". 50+ ships, fought to a conclusion in about 3 hours.
More pictures of that game here: link Rules on this page at my website: warartisan.com/rules |
McKinstry | 18 Jan 2021 4:52 p.m. PST |
I've had great times using "Follow The Admiral's Wake" by Brian DeWitt. |
Dennis | 18 Jan 2021 5:23 p.m. PST |
Jeff's (the Warartisan) stuff is always worth a look. For me an important part of writing wargame rules or designing scenarios is determining which aspects of the real life event to model and which of the myriad decisions inherent in the event to present to the players in the game. Jeff has a variety of sailing ship rules which are designed to model different command levels and different aspects of warfare in the sailing ship era. Those rules use uncommon mechanisms to model command for larger battles (in one set of rules) or ship handling and resource management (men assigned to various tasks like ship handling vs. gun reloading or firing) in rules geared for a lower level of command. In Away Boarders, for example, he has a very interesting mechanism for modeling the effect of wind direction on sailing-once learned they are easy to apply, but if you make a mistake in combat they are deadly. Those rules also force the ship commander to allocate ship crew to different tasks, but once engaged there are never enough crew to do everything. That forces the player to balance the relative importance of one task against others-or break off combat to reload or effect repairs before resuming the fight. For large battles though, as Jeff says, Admirals would be the best choice of his rules for what you want to model. If any of the foregoing interests you, and inasmuch as his ship rules are free downloads (the last time I checked anyway), they are definitely worth a look. |
Prince Alberts Revenge | 18 Jan 2021 7:34 p.m. PST |
I will second my fellow Terp, McKinstry. Form on the Admiral's Wake by Brian DeWitt is fantastic set for large fleet actions. We have played 20-30 ships per side in about 3-4 hours at conventions. The rules are simple but nuanced. There is a deck of cards with universal actions (e.g. all reaching ships move) or just for one type of ship/crew type (all fast ships mover/turn or all elite crews reload) or one nationality (French Admiral card). Each ship has a certain amount of dice depending on decks and additional dice are added for other variables (carronades, first broadside, etc), lastly there are ship templates and scenarios provided. The rules themselves are just a few pages. |
dantheman | 19 Jan 2021 7:04 a.m. PST |
David Manley: Far Distant Ships", should be completed in a month or so. Hmmm…or so makes me think ‘at some future date'…yet to be determined. I have used ‘General at Sea'. Meant for 17th century but works well enough for the full period. Has the best command and control mechanism so far. It comes at the price of abstraction on ship to ship detail. Hard to find decent Command and Control rules. Everyone focuses on ship to ship details. |
Dexter Ward | 19 Jan 2021 9:06 a.m. PST |
Osprey 'Fighting Sail' is good for this sort of thing; no off-table book-keeping. Just make sure you use the author's errata. |
Cmde Perry | 19 Jan 2021 9:22 a.m. PST |
. Another vote for "Fire As She Bears" Perry |
David Manley | 19 Jan 2021 2:54 p.m. PST |
@Dantheman – the rules have been finished for a while now, I just need to drum up the motivation to finish the formatting :) |
138SquadronRAF | 19 Jan 2021 7:17 p.m. PST |
War Arisan's "Admirals" two people can fight the battle of Virginia Capes in slightly better than real time. |