Picking Rules-Napoleonic Naval Gaming

My plan was to post every 2 weeks but seeing as it's the Thanksgiving long weekend and I am trying to digest the two turkey dinners I've had so far this weekend I thought I would do an extra one.

I haven't got much gaming in and it looks like October is going to be a write off for gaming between Thanksgiving(family time), a wedding(more family time) and all the other things life throws at you.

A couple of weeks ago I finished Dragon Age Origins which I really enjoyed playing and is probably the first RPG video game I have actually completed, mind you I dialed the combat down to easy. I was more interested in the story and nothing gets me frustrated more than being stuck trying to get past a combat to continue following the story and it still doesn't compare to playing a real RPG. So now I am starting to play Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising a FPS/Squad command game. A steep learning curve and one shot can kill you so you have to be careful. I like it so far but the squad command takes some getting use to.

Now onto "real" gaming. As I haven't actually played anything this is mostly some stuff I have been working on. The French fleet is coming along. There was a color screw up on the hulls so I had to do a repaint-agh, but I am back on track now. I have three of the 74's painted so now on to the assembly and rigging and then onto the 100 gun which I will work on between rigging the 74's as rigging can be tedious.

I said in the last post that a friend and I are planning on using the Trafalgar rules from Warhammer Historical, so let me tell you how we have come to this rule set.

First let me state what I want any set of rules to accomplish for me and this has changed over years.
1. I must be able to finish a game in an afternoon. When I say this that means the game is actually finished as apposed to the players saying "well if we played this out(for another 2+ hours) I think this army would win".
2. The turn sequence and mechanics must be smooth, which helps with #1.
3. It has to be fun, fun wins over historical accuracy though I do want a level of accuracy which hopefully is written into the core mechanics as apposed to extra add on rules.
4. Finally I want to be able to use tactics of the period so I know it's my fault when things go wrong (or the few times I get it right).

So back to Napoleonic Naval wargaming. I started years ago with Wooden Ships and Iron Men by Avalon Hill. This is actually a board game but can be used with miniatures. This was/is a great game that me and a friend played the crap out of but it does show its age by the number of charts used during play and really a player can only run 2-3 ships.

I then bought Close Action by Clash of Arm Games another board game that can be converted to miniatures. Very detailed game in which a player can run 1-2 ships at most. I only played a couple of times. I enjoyed it but it was a little to slow moving for me and I want to be able to command more ships. The scenario book I am sure will get some more use though.

I picked up a copy of Signal Close Action by Langton Miniatures which I am sure is a good game if you can learn it from someone who already knows how to play. The rules are very detailed and I could not get the flow of the game from reading through the rules and I probably need more knowledge of the fighting era to make sense of some of it. These were a no go for me after reading them a few times and much head scratching.

So now onto Trafalgar which I am sure is not the most historically accurate but is easy to understand, can be played to a resolution in a reasonable time and so far is fun. I've only played 1 solo game so I will report in later after I have smashed the French!( I love talking up my armies before the reality of a game shatters my hopes for my latest army list)

I actually was going to talk about Malifaux which I have been playing quite a bit of but I think I have gone on long enough so perhaps another time.

 The three French 74's

Close up of one of the 74's




Good gaming,
Rob H