"David Manley's You may Fire When Ready Gridley" Topic

I have looked at several rules sets such as Naval Thunder, Jack Greene's miniature (not boardgame) Togo, Seekrieg, & Dawn of the Battleship by Admiral's Trilogy.

For WW2 I play General Quarters III. Manley's rules seem to be the closest to GQ & look to be designed for both large & small battles. The Fighting Fleets supplement has tons of ship ratings.
Does anyone use this set of rules? Anyon have an opinion on them?

I have looked at several rules sets such as Naval Thunder, Jack Greene's miniature (not boardgame) Togo, Seekrieg, & Dawn of the Battleship by Admiral's Trilogy.

For WW2 I play General Quarters III. Manley's rules seem to be the closest to GQ & look to be designed for both large & small battles. The Fighting Fleets supplement has tons of ship ratings.
Does anyone use this set of rules? Anyon have an opinion on them?

I have looked at several rules sets such as Naval Thunder, Jack Greene's miniature (not boardgame) Togo, Seekrieg, & Dawn of the Battleship by Admiral's Trilogy.

For WW2 I play General Quarters III. Manley's rules seem to be the closest to GQ & look to be designed for both large & small battles. The Fighting Fleets supplement has tons of ship ratings.
Does anyone use this set of rules? Anyon have an opinion on them?

I have a couple of Manleys rule sets from early to mid era ironclads and he is an excellent game designer. I would have no problem trying these. He strikes a nice balance between playability and historical aspects, provides clear writing and detailed info, and he is accessible online, a member here and the Facebook naval wargaming page, if you have questions.

My group uses these rules as our "go to" rules for pre-dreadnought actions. We enjoy them. They are easy for non-naval players to pick up and have enough detail to keep naval players interested.

I also like the Dawn of the Battleship rules, but have had less success getting people to try them.

You can see photos and a description of a recent Fire When Ready game we played on my blog: link

They are really made for battleship and armored cruiser actions. Smaller protected and unprotected cruisers tend to die quickly. My group did some local modification to beef up cruiser actions. Here is a link to a PDF file with the modifications.
link

Dave

I know that Manley is a naval architect so he does know his stuff. I have a bunch of his rules for all eras.
The ruleset I left out is Perfidious Albion which seems somewhat similar.

JPK

I play with Daveshoe, and am a fan of these rules. I find them relatively easy to play. They have use a great combination of cumulative damage and critical hits which seems to represent the period well.

I often feel that naval games tend toward painful realism or are general enough to lack historical "feel." David's rules do a good job of walking that line in between.

I think that the damage system is in FWRG superior to the one in GQ III. If you hit a turret in GQIII multiple times then you are wasting your shots. In FWRG you do some above water damage to eventually turn it into a useless hulk.
I read that the Russians suffered no penetrating hits in the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese war. Of course their ships were still heavily damaged & Manley's rules allows this outcome.