At the November PW meeting, Bob and Cleo Liebl presented a ship-o'-the-line game, using their collection of 3-inch-long sailing ships. I commanded a ship in the French/Spanish force... there were four of us facing three British ships which were escorting a merchantman laden with treasure. A TO Z RULES, THE AGE OF FIGHTING SAIL (call 'em AZ for short), were used... a set of naval warfare rules by Andy Zartoles. For well over a decade, Andy Zartoles focused on his A TO Z ancients rules, presenting games at every convention to demonstrate the procedures. I've reported on his efforts, and while the rules never took off, he was able to sell quite a few copies. About two years ago, I noted that Andy had come out with his AZ sailing ship rules... I never had a chance to try them. The first thing I noted in our PW scenario, was that there was not a 'hull box' to be seen. Instead, there was a 'hull number'... and a 'sail number', and a gunnery number... in fact, two 'gunnery numbers'... one for port guns, and one for starboard. Each time a ship was hit, cross out several numbers, and if a ship lost either all its gunnery numbers, or hull numbers or sail numbers, it was out of the battle. The sequence consisted of: (a) First, writing orders. (b) Then Bob shouting at the top of his lungs: "HAS EVERYONE FINISHED WRITING ORDERS?" (c) Then Bob again: "WHO'S STILL WRITING ORDERS?" (d) Then movement. Ships moved in three increments per turn, each of around 3 inches, depending upon the wind direction. (e) Then Bob shouting at the top of his lungs: "WHO WANTS TO FIRE?" Ships could fire at the end of each increment of movement. (f) Then we went through the firing procedures. (g) Then Bob shouting at the top of his lungs: "IS THERE ANYONE ELSE WHO WANTS TO FIRE?" (h) Then Bob shouting at the top of his lungs: "WHO WANTS TO BOARD THE ENEMY?" (i) Then the resolution of the boarding party melees. (j) Then an 'administrative phase', during which ships that had fires aboard tried to put out the fires. Looking at the firing routines, it appeared that saving your 'first fire' volley was a necessity. For example, my ship started out with 40 points (40 guns?) for each of the port and starboard batteries. (a) The first time my batteries fired, I divided the points by 2, giving me a total of 20 6-sided dice to toss. I believe that a toss of 4 or 5 or 6 caused a hit, depending upon the range. (b) For subsequent volleys, I divided my points by 5, hence my dice were reduced to 40/5, giving me 8 6-sided dice, greatly diminishing the impact of my broadside. I used a divisor of 5 because my crew was defined as 'green'... British crews were 'crack', hence used a divisor of 3... their broadsides never seemed to diminish. (c) As the battle progressed, the gun battery points went down, and this, coupled with the effect of the divisor, greatly reduced the on-target hits (d) After the number of hits were determined, one die was thrown for each hit, and depending upon the toss, points would be taken off the gun numbers, the hull numbers or the sail numbers. In essence, this was a dice tossing game. First, lots of dice thrown to determine the number of hits, and second, more dice thrown to determine where the hit actually occurred. And of course, some more dice associated with the 'is-there-a-fire?', and 'put-out-the-fire' routines. Our Franco-Spanish squadron made some grand-tactical plans... we would first sail this way and then sail that way, and then turn and sail this way, and that way, and so on. Despite these plans, after about five turns, when the firing started, it was every man for himself. Complete chaos on the ocean. Ships facing all points of the compass. Jim Butters commanded the British merchantman, a very slow moving craft. For some reason, the Brits ran all their larger ships-o'-the-line well ahead of the merchantman, leaving her unprotected except for a tiny sloop. Jim performed admirably (a small pun), but even though we Franco-Spanish were all 'green', and the Brits were all 'crack', there were too many Franco-Spanish around. At battle's end, I noted that three of our four ships in the Franco-Spanish fleet had taken heavy losses, while my own ship really hadn't suffered much, the result of my having been assigned the rear-guard position. For example, my points were: Points Starting Points Ending Points Stbd Gun Points 40 34 Port Gun Points 40 34 Hull Points 50 38 Sail Points 27 24 In contrast, there were several ships that had continually been in the thick of the fight, and had lost interest in the battle, due to the loss of points. Don't ask why, but in my opinion, the point system is much easier to 'swallow' than the hull boxes which predominate in most ship games. Back to PW Review November 1998 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com