From Agema
PDF – Sale Price $10.17 USD
Napoleonic naval wargame rules, covering the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812.
Includes sections on: Starting weather conditions for various seas for wind, fog, etc., Unique sailing rules system, Signalling, Leeward drift, Veering and tacking, Boxhauling and in irons, Running sail and sail shiver, Running foul, Heaving-to, Grounding, Pooping, Wind shadow, Cannon overboard, Towing, Jury rigging and rudders, Hull shapes, Gunnery, Small arms fire, Friendly fire, Swivel guns, Fire aloft, in the hull, Flooding, Heated shot, Bomb ketch shore bombardment, Boarding attempts, Striking colors, Secured prizes, Ships boats, Cutting out operations, Raising and dropping anchor, Turnings on springs & warping, Linking cables, Girt, Fireships… Plus discussions about rates of fire, damage, carelessness, the light room, thick smoke, gunnery, carronades, obusier de vaisseau, waterlogging, suction pumps including Coles-Bentinck chain pumps, danger to magazines from fire, tactics, doubling the line, falling out of line, en fluyte, crank and swift ships, East Indiamen and American big frigates.
The tabletop games is played with model ships, or counters, with several model scales directly accounted for in how the rules are set out, making the game easy to play no matter what scale ships are being used. There's lots of dice rolling for broadsides, and we've done intensive research to get results to match historic impact: so pistol shot initial broadsides raking the stern of a ship with carronades is going to be horrendously effective, cannon fire at random-shot range (long range in modern parlance) not so much. Wind direction is tied to tabletop game sides, making working out the direction a ship is facing easy to establish, which is necessary since the sailing rules show how to veer, boxhaul, tack, etc. The number of ships in the battle can increase once you've mastered how the system works, but it's best to start with a few ships to master the basics. To summarize, it's quite a unique system in parts, developed over years of original research in some cases using firsthand sources, such as Falconer's Maritime Dictionary (which is an 18th Century gem!), and involved visits to HMS Trincomalee, HMS Victory, membership of the Navy Records Society, etc., coupled with what you'd expect: tabletop games, using tape measures and model ships, rolling dice, that sort of thing.