(l-r CSS Gov. Moore, CSS A.D.Vance, CSS Virginia, CSS Arkansas, CSS Tulsaloosa, CSS Manassas, Commodore class ferryboat)***edit 20/11/08 See next blog for the results of the first playtest***
After buying some of Peter Pig's rather nice 1:600 scale Ironclads, the next logical step was find some rules to use them with. As most of the games I play are limited to a few hours on a Monday evening at Wargames club, I decided that they need to be a simple quick play set. I'm not overly keen on particularly technical rules sets, rather those which are easy to grasp and give the right feel of the period. My mind went back to when I used to play Games Workshop's fantasy naval wargame Man O' War when I was younger. I remember taking it along to club nights when I was about 16 and a good time was usually had by all. The Dwarf ships were all Ironclads, so I thought that if I could find the Rulebook I could adapt it for ACW naval wargaming.
After a fruitless search in the loft for my rulebook, I turned to the internet. The game is out of print, so getting a new copy of the rulebook would involve costly transactions on eBay, but I managed to find various resourses on the internet to reconstruct a varient of the rules.
The rules are based on each ship having it's own playsheet template, much like other naval rule sets, and on these templates is everything you need to know about the ship. This means that once the basics of the rules are learnt, there is minimal refering to the rules, which I have condensed down to two sides of A4, shown below (click for bigger versions):
Hopefully there aren't too many holes in the rules, but playtesting should iron them out.Below are examples of ship templates for CSS Virginia and USS Monitor:
Any suggestions of feedback is welcome, especially if you have a chance to playtest the rules.
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4 comments:
I noticed you don't have any 'terrain' in your rules. Fine for coastal actions, but even the Monitor V. Virginia action had some concerns about shallows, and the western actions I should like to do had river currents, snags, unknown sand bars. Damned impossible on two pages, of course. Maybe a two page advanced rule sheet?
Edit:
Ok, you DO mention shallows. About all one can expect in two pages. Come to think, damn impressive at that. Well done!
You mention that the dice shows which area on the ship template is hit. Please explain how that works...
Thanks
looking at your ship template sheets I see that hit location is obvious on the Monitor's sheet. The Virginia is a bit different - do you call a high or a low shot before you roll the die? Can you get a below the waterline hit using other weapons besides a ram bow or just plain old ramming the enemy?
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