More Age of Sail Rules

In my ongoing quest to come up with a set of fleet-level rules for the Anglo-Dutch wars I've been trying out various rulesets for ideas. There are so many available for the Age of Sail that I'm narrowing down the choices to those which match at least one of two criteria: either specifically covering the 17th Century, or specifically designed to be for large fleet actions.

Form Line of Battle

 https://www.wargamevault.com/product/57247/Form-Line-of-Battle?term=form+line+of

I used to have a hard copy of these yonks ago, but never got round to playing them. I have no idea where they ended up, so I bought a pdf on Wargame Vault. I set up a small battle with a single 4th rate and two 5th rates on each side, with the Dutch ships covering a small convoy of 6 fluyts. No photos I'm afraid, but some random thoughts:

I had more fun than I thought I would with these rules. I came to the Dutch Wars looking to fight the epic battles in the Channel and North Sea, not piddly little skirmishes, but the more I read about the period the more I'm tempted by smaller actions. Barry Hilton's amazing work has been a source of inspiration in this department.

FLoB is fairly quick, at least for smallish actions, though I couldn't help feeling certain aspects of the gunnery procedure could have been more streamlined. At the very least it could do with a decent quick play sheet with all the charts in one place.

I like the movement system - ships get a number of dice to roll depending on their point of sailing, and they can choose to move either the total sum of the dice in cm, or pick just one die and move that distance. It's neat and effective and gives just the right amount of uncertainty and chaos. My only minor gripe is that it makes ships that are beating less controllable than those sailing downwind, which is sort of the opposite of what you'd expect. I'll be house ruling this somehow.

FLoB gets top marks for getting the angle off the wind right for close hauled ships. There's even a separate movement gauge for the pre-1700 era, and it only allows an angle of 80º off the wind. Beating to windward is painfully, and realistically, slow. Round of applause!

The national characteristics for the Dutch Wars seem a bit off to me. The English get beefed up Broadside Ratings to account for their heavier guns, and get a corresponding heavier penalty for firing to leeward. All fair enough. They also get a small bonus to movement for their rounded sterns. The Dutch are said to be more stockily built and get a bonus to Hull Rating.

I'm fairly new to this period, so perhaps I've got this wrong, but from what I've read I get the impression that this is all a bit topsy turvy. The Dutch ships were known to be more lightly built than their English equivalents, but be quicker and handier. This, combined with the lighter armament, prompted the Dutch to attempt to bring about a close range melee, where they would try to disable the enemy's rigging and then grapple and board.


I'll be house ruling all this, giving the Dutch a speed bonus but reducing their hull rating, and get a bonus on boarding actions. The English might be slightly more weatherly (for the rounded sterns), and might also get a bit of a bonus at med/long ranges, in addition to the normal broadside rating bonus.

Quibbles aside, FLoB is a really nice set of mid-complexity rules for squadron-level actions. I liked it enough that I've decided to design new ship charts condensed down to playing card size. Here's the work-in-progress:

General at Sea

I had high hopes for these. On the face of it this should be the answer to my prayers - a fleet level set of rules specific to the 17th Century. Ships are based in multiples of 4, but strangely there doesn't seem to be any scaling down of the numbers. I was rather hoping it'd be 1 model representing say 3-4 ships, but looking at the scenarios it seems to be pretty much 1 to 1. To be fair it does suggest that at 1/1200 scale you can use a single model as a base, so what I'd probably do is have two 1/2400 models per base.

There are lots of things to like - the command system is simple and effective. Each admiral and squadron commander has a number of command dice. Admirals may allocate dice to their subordinates before rolling. The total rolled on the dice gives the number of action points that are needed to manoeuvre. It's a bit abstract perhaps, but it works nicely to demonstrate the effect of an admiral trying to divide his attention between his various squadrons.

The combat is suitably abstract too. Each base has a Combat Value, you add some DRMs and roll on a chart for the outcome. Rather than tracking damage on individual ships, a stand can go through various states - disrupted, damaged and scattered.

The big let down is the movement system. Not only does General-at-Sea commit the cardinal sin in allowing its stands to beat at 45º off the wind (grrrrr....), but it actually insists on it. Yes, all movement is constrained to 8 directions. Not only is it wrong, it looks weird too. I hate it.

Battle of Kentish Knock, using one model per base. Oh, the humanity.

I was determined to try it out anyway so I used one model per base (didn't have enough ships), and set up the Kentish Knock scenario. I played enough to know that the whole 45º thing was definitely a deal breaker for me, and then set about seeing if I could modify them with a different movement system.

I came up with a modified scenario using 2 models per base for Kentish Knock, based on the map in Hainsworth & Churches:

It looks way better with a realistic angle, but I immediately ran into trouble making the other game mechanics work. It turns out writing wargame rules is hard - who knew?

The main take away from this for me is the idea of using multiple ships on bases. I think I feel better about sticking 2 ships on a base and saying that's a division of 6-8 ships, than having single ships and saying each one is actually 3-4 ships. There's also the advantage of having fewer units to move and fire, with the disadvantage of losing a certain amount of flexibility and detail.

Another practical advantage is that with the longer base length, it's much easier to measure the angle against the wind precisely. They'd work with hexes too, each base occupying 2 hexes.

I dunno, I'll think about it. I'm taking a break from it while I catch up on the huge mountain of reading I have to do.