Revising the Revised Revision (Again)

After the ahem, embarrassment of the previous version ( I still cannot believe I missed something so obvious!) of the naval rules I have managed to make good recovery and have finished the next version. It has been a curious experience to say the least especially as I have seemed to have been able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in such a deceptively easy fashion! Still, the proof of the pudding and all that - the acid test of the play test - is the next stage.

The rules are based very heavily on the model used by the various Command and Colours based games (Memoir 44/Battle Cry etc) and were first mooted as being suitable for a naval game during a chance conversation with Bob Cordery around 18 months ago (good grief Bob, was it really that long ago?). At the time our versions of the rules eventually went in two directions and I managed to end up following a couple of blind alleys and as a result consigned my version to the archives. It is funny though, when trawling through my various half cooked sets there was a lot of usable ideas - they just never seemed to be in the right place or at the right time - and the 'Memoir of Battle at Sea' (Bob's title for his set which I unashamedly borrowed - if I never said so then, thanks Bob!) was without a doubt one of the better ones.

In a nutshell all I have done is to expand the number of ships covered by Bob's original version and to tweak both the weapon ranges and movement distances to fit in with my 12 x 8 Hexon set up which means 1" equals 1,000 yards and two Knots equal a hex. Ships have a number of damage or flotation points from 20 downwards with ships having ranges of these as applicable - mainly based on older or weaker ships having numbers from the lower end of the range for the type of ship and newer or stronger vessels from the top end . Main, secondary (even tertiary) and torpedoes each have a number of d6 to score a hit which will then decrease as the range increases. This was not without a couple of minor problems but these have been overcome in a simple fashion and I will explain further after the test. I have built in a simple special/critical hit system which adds to the feel but not to the complexity and, together with combat overall, is about as easy to process as it can be.

I am really excited about the potential of this seemingly hastily thrown together set of rules - mainly because it looks so 'right' and is in tune with my overall vision of how these should look. Today I shall tackle a couple of ship cards and I hope to be testing very soon (possibly tonight but more likely to be Wednesday) with the results etc being posted to the blog and assuming all being with the rules themselves making an appearance later. The rules themselves cover two sides of A4 with a page of 'how I got to the numbers' and a page of examples (which I have yet to draft but should not take long).

For the record I have been pleasantly surprised by both the quantity and the quality of the comments I have received during this long running endeavor and so I can only say a very big and sincere thank you to all that have followed and supported my efforts along what has been a seemingly endless journey. Your collective patience has been been much appreciated!