Home Forums Air and Sea Naval Simple rules for 18th century Naval

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  • #47169

    Hi,

    For an impulse buy I purchased some cardboard galleons\frigates from ebay (Pirates Constructible Strategy Game) and am looking for some simple rules to try them out. It was the ships only in the auction so I thought I would see if anyone knows of some simpler rules a complete novice can try.

    Any tips ?

    Cheers

    #47176
    Avatar photoMcKinstry
    Participant

    Follow the Admiral’s Wake by Brian DeWitt. Basically a homebrew big battle, on hexes naval AOS game. Brian sells it for $5 on a CD at HMGS cons but I believe you can reach him by looking around on gaming forums. He is a member of the big Potomac Wargamers group in the MD/DC/Northern VA area.

    We’ve played the Battle of the Chesapeake, Nile, Camperdown and (maybe?) Glorious First and in every case, reached a conclusion in under 4 hours.

    Trafalgar by GW Historical was fairly good and simple. Copies are available on eBay but try and find a link to the David Manley edits/suggestions/errata to really tweak it nicely.

     

    The tree of Life is self pruning.

    #47212
    Avatar photoNorthern Monkey
    Participant

    the rules for Spanish main can still be had at BGG, they are simple enough, but with additional crew, equipment, events etc can be quite in depth:

    https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/48062/pirate-code-faqerrata

    as for more wargamery rules I personally really like GW’s Trafalgar (although most die hard naval gamers don’t like it) as it is relatively simple but still gives the feel of naval gaming and plays quick enough to actually finish  a game unlike some other naval rules in which you spend the whole game coming about etc

    My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

    #47215
    Avatar photoJohn D Salt
    Participant

    A couple of years ago at COW, Mike Elliott ran a very successful Trafalgar in two hours, using the rules from the Junior General’s page:

    http://www.juniorgeneral.org/naval/trafalgar.html

    Probably you’d want something more sophisticated for a few-on-few engagement, in which case I recommend either Tom Mouat’s “Scuppers Were Awash with Blood” whenever he gets round to publishing the new version of the rules in The Nugget or elsewhere, or rip off the sailing rules at least from SPI’s old “Fighting Sail” boardgame.

    All the best,

    John.

    #47221

    Thanks for the tips !

    #47235
    Avatar photoNic Wright
    Participant

    For relatively fast play rules with minimal record keeping and handling ‘fleets’ of 1-8 ships per player, you might like to have a look at Galleys & Galleons from Ganesha Games. I’ll register my interest here as the author, but they are a fine set of rules. 

    Hard copy or pdf direct from Ganesha – http://www.ganeshagames.net/index.php?cPath=1_25

    Hard copy from Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Galleys-Galleons-tabletop-wargame-Discovery/dp/1530791553?ie=UTF8&keywords=galleys%20%26%20galleons&qid=1465325242&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

    Pdf from Wargamevault – http://www.wargamevault.com/product/154156/Galleys-and-Galleons?term=galleys%26galleons&test_epoch=0

     

    http://irregularwars.blogspot.co.uk/

    #47245
    Avatar photoNorm S
    Participant

    Fighting sail by Osprey may be worth investigating, they look pretty straight forward.

    #47248
    Avatar photoCount Belisarius
    Participant

    For a few ships aside I’ve used Blood Bilge and Iron Balls and they are quite fun.

    #47273
    Avatar photoKaptain Kobold
    Participant

    I’ve heard good things about Galleys and Galleons, and it sounds like they will extend into the 18th Century with little difficulty. My simple rules of choice are Form Line of Battle which, whilst designed for reasonable sized actions, work surprisingly well for small actions too.

    #47277
    Avatar photoDM
    Participant

    I would naturally recommend Form Line of Battle 🙂

    For fun games I worked up a set based on GW’s old “Man o War” set – the NWS ran a game at Colours using them 20-odd years ago, I resurrected and developed the idea some years later, taking the game to a number of shows as a fast play participation game (using the Peter Pig 1/450 pirate ship range). If anyone would like a copy just let me have an email address to send the files to.

    #47444
    Avatar photoDon Glewwe
    Participant

    I highly recommend  http://www.warartisan.com/

    No other comment/recommendation can supplant that link.

    #47763

    Thanks everyone. Some great tips and lots of things for me to follow up on.

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