Phil Dunn's Sea Battle Games (Naval Wargaming 1650-1945): First Look

Woohoo! I have had some 1:4800 Napoleonic ships from Tumbling Dice for ages but haven't ever got the to the table before. I got them painted up quite quickly but I didn't have a suitable rules set around - and I couldn't recall any sets in old magazines that were suitable except for the Andy Callan rules based around signalling - but they needed a hex grid and some flags, hardly insuperable, but since I don't have them handy helped to ensure that they just never got to the front of the queue.

Anyway, the Polemarch has been talking sea battles, wargaming classic and the naval wargaming classics so it came back into my mental view. I got a copy of  Phil Dunn's Sea Battle Games and in true land of counterpane style, grabbed a blue blanket and had at it...

I used two more or less equal forces:

The French Fleet: Terrible (1st Rate), Neptune, Saturne, Diadem (2nd Rates)

The British Fleet: Queen Charlotte (1st Rate), London, St. George, Atlas (2nd Rates)

The scenario is pretty simple: the two fleets are converging on each other and simulataneously sight each other.

The Battle:

The British ships approach from the left, the French from the right

The British Fleet

The French Fleet: Neptune in the van

Both fleets try and manoeuvre to gain the advantage - some trifling damage is done to the Diadem

The British manage to get a firepower advantage, two-against-one

The Diadem slows as it is pounded by the British fire; the other French ships cannot get into position to retaliate

The Diadem is in serious trouble

The Diadem strikes its colours as it has no way of fighting, no chance of escape and no hope of rescue...

Game Notes:

This was played with the 'Quick' rules rather than the 'Detailed' rules.  I managed to get into it pretty quickly: there was some (very light) maths and (a bit less light) recording keeping to do and the formatting of the Kindle version wasn't the best, but it was basically all fine, pretty intuitive, with all pretty straightforward mechanics, as old-fashioned rules tend to be. It does calculate stuff by gun weight and number of crew but it all works out.  All the things you might think off-hand should be in there (weather, wind, sailing, gunnery, damage, boarding, striking) are in there. The original uses damage boxes but the logic behind it is 20% chunks, so it is easy to convert to a Hit Point system reminisicent of a role-playing game.

The British (and Americans) are given advantages in gunnery and sailing so their victory in the test battle wasn't that surprising - the French and Spaniards are going to have to work hard to get wins in this game! But regardless, it felt appropriately 'Napoleonic' and 'Naval', so at least it was a start.