All at Sea – Camperdown Warm-Up Game for NWS Weekend Yeovilton

[carojon]

With a playing of the complete Battle of Camperdown to look forward to at the end of the month at the Naval Wargames Society Meeting at Yeovilton FAA Museum, we gathered around the table this week to refamiliarise ourselves with Far Distant Ships, the rules for our planned game.

These rules have been written with fleet actions in mind by David Manley but for smaller scale models and we have enjoyed the games they create with a focus on putting the player on the quarterdeck as an admiral rather than a captain.

If you would like to know more, then just follow the link to JJ’s

https://jjwargames.blogspot.com/2024/09/all-at-sea-battle-of-camperdown-warm-up.html

JJ

http://jjwargames.blogspot.co.uk

[willz]

Looking forward to seeing the game in the flesh JJ, I am hosting a game over both days.  Are you stopping overnight.

[Konstantinos Travlos]

This is going to be awesome!

[carojon]

Hi Willz,

No, I will only be up on the Saturday as I’m off on my holiday on the Sunday, so I’m aiming to have a good game before a few weeks of R&R.

http://jjwargames.blogspot.co.uk

[carojon]

Hi KT,

Thank you, and having worked on this little project for 18 months, I can’t wait to have the whole thing out on the table together, and an AAR to follow.

Cheers

JJ

http://jjwargames.blogspot.co.uk

[Andrew Beasley]

Was intrigued to read the signalling rules (C&C is decidedly lacking in my games) and noted the table mentioned ‘repeating ship’ and wondered how this worked (rules wise not in practise).

I see these is a distance mod but wonder if there a line of sight or visibility section in the rule to cope with smoke from fire or guns at all? Or do I have things mixed up and missing something obvious?

Hope you enjoyed Colours – never visited the show and it’s been too many years since I’ve watched the horses walk around the course (well the ones I select normally walk…)

Looking forward to watching the next batch get built and painted 🙂

[carojon]

Hi Andrew,

The basic concept around the signalling is that a group of ships under a commander operate in a formation under his orders they have received via a signal, that is visibility, line of sight (LOS) dependant (fog, night) via normally flags, lights or guns, with words transmitted reduced to just four in the worst case scenario.

As explained in the post those formations follow the last set of orders received and individual captains can take independent action if those orders bring them into close range of the enemy and a direct threat to their vessel from another cause such as shoals or land.

In fact they wont enter close range unless ordered to do so, turning away to medium range to fight otherwise (covered by my General Orders tweak)

Repeaters (frigates and other small ships) increase the range of signals from a commander to his nearest vessel and in some cases, such as French line of battle ships, they to may also act in this role.

We don’t take smoke of battle into the minutiae of this calculation assuming at some point in a ten minute phase of play the possibility of a signal being observed, provided LOS is available, will occur.

LOS is defined as range dependent, and not broken by land or intervening enemy ships.

Additionally to be able to signal you must have sufficient command points not being used for repairing damaged vessels, a problem that only increases with the intensity of the fighting, and thus the heat of battle produces a natural limit on the ability to signal because of other pressing demands on command points.

All in all I have found this to be a very seamless method of introducing C&C into our tabletop big battle games and giving a better simulation of the role of admiral/commodore to that of ship’s captain.

Regarding Colours, I had a very enjoyable day with friends, courtesy of the Newbury and Reading Wargames Society, and will post some pictures of a few games I found particularly attractive together with some thoughts on some great conversations had with folks at the show later today, time permitting.

As regards the next models, there are several others not shown in this post, in the shipyard ahead of my new arrivals, set to add to my War of 1812 collection which I’m hoping to get into the riggers yard at the end of the week, with Clotted Lard to look forward to next weekend, and the NWS after that, so its all go at the moment.

Thanks for your interest and comment.

JJ

http://jjwargames.blogspot.co.uk

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