"New to the Period" Topic

Hi….I'm a fairly seasoned gamer in several periods….ancients, Napoleonics, WWI & II naval.
Looking at getting into ACW naval at (probably) 1/600.
I know opinions on rules are very subjective but have a few criteria:
1. The author needs to have thought about & applied the relationship between speed, time & distance, not just used arbitrary numbers
2. A ground scale as close as possible to the scale of the models (eg, the WWI rules Fleet Action Imminent use a ground scale of approx 1/9000, fairly close to the 1/6000 models I use (although I'm not sure at what ranges ACW battles were fought)
3. A playable game in a couple of hours with (maybe) 3-4 ships per player.
I appreciate the hives' input :-)

I'm a big fan of Dave Manley's work.

Sail & Steam Navies is played right about at ground scale, and the ships all have individual stats (including speeds). The big guns (e.g. giant Dahlgrens) take multiple turns to reload.

David Manley is a career naval architect, and has published a couple generations of games with proper speed/time/distance relationships:
Iron & Fire (old rivet-counter system)
Dahlgren & Columbiad (new more abstract system)
There are areas of these rules where he abstracted or changed the model for ease of play or enjoyment, but he tells you up front, so you could always house-rule it back to more painful reality.

The old Yaquinto game The Ironclads is still played here and there, and was a very direct simulationist interpretation of the period. It's a boardgame adapted to a hex grid, but I've only ever seen it played as a miniatures game without the hex grid.

Thanks both.
I know & like David's work- I've played his AoS, WWI & WWII fast-play systems.
I don't think I'm looking for fast play at the moment- that may come later if I enjoy the period & want to expand my fleets
A quick look at Sail & Steam shows they could fit the bill.

I've played a game of Age of Iron and liked it. No too heavy a set of rules. Fun, easy to into players to the period without a steep learning curve. Game uses cards to generate Cumulative damage and Critical damage. I'm gonna change that to a D30 table (D30= D6 plus D10, 1,2 the D10 roll, 3,4 add 10, 5,6 add 20). Ship Data is in campaign packs.

David Manley's older Iron & Fire rules are about as crunchy as Sail & Steam Navies. I don't think either of those games is too terribly slow, but neither is "fast play" either. They're both very chart-heavy wargames with some pretty good streamlining applied to keep things moving.

- Ix

Peter Pig's Hammerin Iron is fast play, buckets of dice, beer & pretzels fun. But definitely not a detailed simulation. PP do offer nice blocks of AVW troops in 1:600 if you want to include ground actions with your games.

Hoping to save you buying a rule set that is not what you are looking for.

I will second Sail & Steam as a suggestion.

I think just about every AVW vessel built or proposed is available somewhere in 1:600. It's a nice scale for gaming in.