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Post by lincolnlog on Jun 24, 2015 6:27:13 GMT -5
I ordered a copy of Fighting Sail and read through the rules about a dozen times. There are some neat mechanics (I like the fleet morale rules), and there are some clunky issues. This set is supposed to be a fleet level game. The amount of dicing, counter dicing seems to work against that principle.
I'm hoping to play my first game next week. So I can provide commentary as a player and not simply from having read and digested the rules.
Anyone have any experience with this rule set?
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Post by warchariot on Jun 24, 2015 7:34:15 GMT -5
No, but I would like to hear what you think. We play, when we play age of sail, a rules set called "Fire as She Bears" it has been out for some time now and plays on a hex board.
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Post by lincolnlog on Jun 30, 2015 12:05:05 GMT -5
Warchariot, We're playing Thursday. I can tell you my impressions after that game. I've played quite a bith of Sails of Glory over the past year and a half or so. SoG is not really great for large battles.
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Post by TheDreadnought on Jul 1, 2015 10:05:38 GMT -5
I've always been curious about age of sail games. I'll be curious to hear your impressions.
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Post by lincolnlog on Jul 6, 2015 9:19:34 GMT -5
I played Wooden Ships and Iron Men when I was younger (early 80's). I bought into the Sails of Glory Kick Starter a couple of years ago. I like Sails of Glory, but the system wasn't designed for large battles. I was hoping Fighting Sails might allow for large battles.
Its a rather quirky system. There is a lot of dicing. It's very Games Workshop in how it plays. You dice for movement, you dice for repair, you dice to shoot, the defender dices to save from shooting. It is a fairly inexpensive rule set, so if cost is a concern, this may be a good set for you.
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Post by TheDreadnought on Jul 6, 2015 10:06:16 GMT -5
Ugh. . . saving throws. No thanks.
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Post by warchariot on Jul 6, 2015 18:10:14 GMT -5
Dice to move, dice to shoot...what? Sounds a little to GW to me.
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Post by lincolnlog on Jul 7, 2015 7:45:53 GMT -5
Larry,
In the rules forward, the author states his first experience in Age of Sail was GW Trafalgar. He designs for WoTC, enough said. I'm sure James Dunnigan is still boiling over what WoTC put the Avalon Hill logo on.
There is a few fairly lively discussions on this game over on the TMP. People are split about 50/50 I think. But there are a lot of people that like this kind of gaming.
Bob
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Post by warchariot on Jul 9, 2015 8:21:52 GMT -5
Larry, In the rules forward, the author states his first experience in Age of Sail was GW Trafalgar. He designs for WoTC, enough said. I'm sure James Dunnigan is still boiling over what WoTC put the Avalon Hill logo on. There is a few fairly lively discussions on this game over on the TMP. People are split about 50/50 I think. But there are a lot of people that like this kind of gaming. Bob I guess so, otherwise they wouldn't be selling many. What about SoG? You said it was small actions more like FaSB. We play/played WoW/WoG on and off, but hope CY6! comes out with a WWI verison of their rules. We have been playing the player mods for WWI from the CY6! Yahoo group and will be playing at least one of these at Historicon next week. Good sailing!
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Post by lincolnlog on Jul 9, 2015 15:30:16 GMT -5
I like Sails of Glory, the price point is rather high and it doesn't handle very large battles well. A player can generally handle more that 2-4 ships. The chits get a bit fiddly. We solved that issue but putting together grease pencil laminated ship logs, and can now play completely chit-less.
Check out Blue Max, its very similar to Check Your 6, but is a WWI game.
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Post by warchariot on Jul 10, 2015 17:33:00 GMT -5
We have tried Blue Max, CY6! was based on it, but it tracks hits and some other things we didn't like as well. We have talked about trying to put CY6! and Blue Max together, but so little time,
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Post by Curundil on Aug 18, 2015 16:57:01 GMT -5
We tried Fighting Sail over the last few weeks at our local club, both with people completely new to naval wargaming and people who have already played other eras and/or rules sets. The result was that all unanimously liked the game pretty much, though the same might not be true for other metas. None of us played the GW Trafalgar thingy before, and most of us aren't too fond of other GW-like dice bucket games (though we occasionally enjoy SAGA for beer&pretzel games). True, there is a serious amount of dicing involved, but managing anything from a single frigate up to a fleet containing a dozen or more ships-of-the-line is rather straightfoward and not overly time-consuming. All our games, including a larger fleet action with four admirals (two per side), played to a satisfying conclusion in roughly two hours or less (frigate duels usually taking half an hour). Usually you can roughly predict the outcome before dicing, and in larger games, a streak of luck when dicing for movement rarely influences the outcome of the game or even turn in an unlikely fashion. Fighting sail is no game for tracking stuff and making captains' decisions. You don't pick a sail setting, you don't pick different types of shot, and you don't track damage. You take mostly the decisions relevant for the admiral, and to me that's okay. If you replace cannon and damage tokens with simple pieces of cotton "smoke" placed next to a fired broadside or stuck between two masts, you can play the game without any token clutter except anchor tokens, which I feel is nice. No bookkeeping (except counting down fleet morale, which I usually do with a twenty- or thirty-sided die in an average game) otherwise, and even your fleet list fits onto a piece of scrap paper (and you don't need it at all if you know your three or four relevant stat lines and find a way to indicate a captain character's presence on the ship's model). The result is a game that plays fast and clutterless while looking good and working well with ships in 1:1200 up to 1:900 scale. For larger ships, players should probably adjust the movement and shooting ranges accordingly (with 1/600 ships we increased movement from 2 to 3 inches per step and shooting ranges from 6/12/18 to 10/20/30 inches, though doubling to 4 and to 12/24/36 might also work if you have a really, really large gaming area). Some snapshots from our very first smallish games are here on a local store's board. They give a good impression how the game looks like using paper ships from Jeffrey Knudsen's blog (war-artisan). highlander-games.de/smf/index.php?PHPSESSID=bte0u4hhkmsi64r89uting3c82s6tere&topic=123.0Personally, I really like the game and don't feel like the amount of dicing was an annoying flaw. Currently, I'm building two larger fleets and would like to recreate the "Battle of the Saintes" (with three dozen ships of the line per side) in 1/900 using Fighting Sail, as a participation game in late fall this year, on a 120 x 360 cm table (48 inches wide by 144 inches long). I expect such a large battle to last a whole afternoon, but surely not much longer. We'll see how this works.
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Post by Curundil on Oct 19, 2015 2:22:19 GMT -5
Please allow me to add another guest reply/question here. With the new optional list tweaking rules for Fighting Sail in Wargames Illustrated 336, we're currently trying to create stat lines for Ottoman ships of the era. So far, we have been using the Dutch fleet list with a different set of admirals and captains for the Turks. But how would you say did they perform historically? If you compare Ottoman ships to, say, British and Russian ships and crews, what were the differences, and what was roughly on par? Were Ottoman ships or crews better or worse at manoeuvring/sailing, were they better or less disciplined, and how did their gunnery excel or fail if compared to the British and the Russians? Were their sips sturdy and tough, or did they take crippling damage more often than their opponents?
The only thing that seems to be evident is that in direct boarding actions Russian crews of the era more often captured Ottoman ships than the other way around, so the "boarding" stat should probably be one point lower, but what about sailing, discipline, gunnery and hull? Which captain or admiral types should a Fighting Sail Ottoman list include? I'd say a "Coastal Veteran" admiral and a "Navigator" and "Disciplinarian" captain are fine, bot what other types would fit the historical performance of the fleet and its commanders to fill the remaining slots? Should they have general access to bomb vessels, which appear in many orders of battle of the time?
I'd be very intersted in your opinion.
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Post by warchariot on Oct 24, 2015 9:44:34 GMT -5
Thanks! I try the link but got a 404 error. We keep looking at this set, so I cam back to reread this post and found your answers, thanks again, very helpful
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Post by Curundil on Oct 25, 2015 11:03:01 GMT -5
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Post by warchariot on Oct 26, 2015 21:51:48 GMT -5
Thanks, nice ships, good looking game!
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Post by lincolnlog on Oct 28, 2015 7:29:35 GMT -5
Very lively discussions on this rule set over on TMP. I have played multiple games with this rule set. The rules allow for too many a-historical anomalies. Like a 64 gun 3rd rate taking out an undamaged 100 gun 1st rate with a single broadside. Frigates are too weak mechanically to operate as they should, alone. So, in the rules you must play frigates in squadrons. We played a game where we played frigates as single units and they couldn't damage each other.
The second you say to me make a saving throw, I cringe. I get by a bullet, but wait, I get to make a level 7 saving roll with my cloak of bullet proofedness. Hey, there are a lot of quick play AoS games out there, where the autor actually took the time to research how ships moved/maneuvered, and engaged in combat. The historical community has pretty much labled this set as a farce.
I you just like to roll dice, and care nothing about history, these may be the rules for you. As a matter of fact according to the author, is in actuallity the target audience. Sails of Glory is better. I have found that if marry the best of Sails of Glory to the best Fighting Sail they hybrid for a good fleet system quite well.
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Post by Curundil on Oct 28, 2015 18:21:22 GMT -5
I guess they're for two different types of games. Fleet battles with Sails of Glory result in a combersome slugfest, it's simply too detailed. On the other hand, Fighting Sail aims at larger engagements and is hopeless in small action with very few ships, for the very reasons you pointed out. I agree that saving throws are a mixed bag, but in FSFA, they simply represent hits that fail to result in crippling damage that reduces the ships immediate fighting capabilitiy, and it's up to the player to make up the reasons - maybe the crew braced for impact and suffered only a few losses, crewmen quickly replaced damaged rigging, or the round went clean through the hull or sails without causing too much damage aside from bits blewn off the railing. Or stuff was damaged alright, but didn't change the ship's performance during this battle. Saving throws are an abstraction, and Fighting Sail uses a lot of abstractions to get a quick and enjoyable game from an Admiral's perspective. This, it does well in my opinion. Sails of Glory, on the other hand, is a very elegant and enjoyable game from a captain's perspective. It's just something different.
E.g. I'm currently working on two fleets for Les Saintes, a battle that puts roughly three dozen ships per side against each other in a major fleet engagement, French against British. I want to play this as a participation game with the historical number of ships (almost seventy ships of the line) at our local club/store, and would like it to be played to a conclusion over the course of a single afternoon. Players are to assume the roles of Admirals, three per side (Admiral, Vice Admiral, Rear Admiral). With Fighting Sail, this can be done even with players that didn't know the rules set up to that point. With Sails of Glory it's simply impossible. With other rules sets, of which there are quite a few very good ones, I'd need either more time, more bookkeeping or extra token clutter. For most systems, I'd need to use a hex patterned board, which I try to avoid.
I enjoy reading the arguments and discussions over at TMP and other boards, but I fear most people are simply judging the rules set for something it's simply not meant to be. With frigates, well, they are more than capable of hurting each other up close. But to a ship of the line, they are no more than annoying gnats unless brigaded into squadrons. Which I don't feel is too inaccurate. They can hurt a larger ship in the hand of a good captain/admiral, but usually they should avoid these match-ups.
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tomster
Lieutenant
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! - Lt Forgy, USS New Orleans at Pearl Harbour
Posts: 37
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Post by tomster on Mar 11, 2016 8:45:51 GMT -5
Interesting read gents.
We often play Close Action which is sort of the son of WS&IM. Similar system but nicely implemented. Some people can be put off by the detail but it isn't to bad. Great to play multiplayer with 1-2 ships each.
Cheers
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