Memoir of Battle at Sea 2 - Where its at

Following on from the recent 'Raiders of the Lost Ark(ansas)' game I fought (twice) over the weekend I thought it would be a good idea to follow this up with my current thinking as to how the rules work. the biggest single change is the fact that ships have strength points for various different hit locations as follows:

• Hull represented by the Infantry icon
• Engines represented by the Cavalry icon
• Guns represented by the Artillery icon
• Crew represented by the Flag icon

The Crossed Sabres icon is still used for additional hits although only under Close Range Combat.

Combat consists of the Command and Colours 'number of dice rolled at a given range' system with the range of guns being split into close, medium and long. At each range bracket only certain parts of the target can be hit i.e. at long range only the hull can be hit, at medium this adds artillery and at close range everything else is included.

Movement ranges from 2 to 5 grid areas per turn depending on the ship type.

Damage is scored against the target ship by rolling multiples of the required icon and this is determined by the protection level the ship is assigned which is heavy, medium or light. The former two require multiples of 3 and 2 specific icons whilst the latter needs any two eligible icons for the given range.

Damage effects are currently a little woolly in respect of engines and crew but artillery works on the same basis as C and C Napoleonics although this may need a little refinement.

Activation of individual ships is a new concept for me and appears to work reasonably well. I have allowed for the effect of crew quality on this so that better crews have an easier chance of successfully activating as opposed to poor ones. I should point out that successfully activating a ship is the only way that it can fire in the activation phase as I wanted to keep the pure artillery phase at the start of the turn. Essentially a ship can always fire in the artillery phase but if it wants to fire at close range in the activation phase (combined with movement) then it must be successfully activated to do so. Should it fail then it may move only and so has effectively lost the ability to fire for the whole turn. The basic idea for this was courtesy of Kaptain Kobold (many thanks old chap!) and all I have done is to add the crew quality element.

In a nutshell then, the rules seem to work pretty well at the moment although I am conscious of some clarifications and general tidying up being needed. I need to factor in ramming in some fashion but the most pressing need is to address the damage effects situation. Once this has been tackled then they (the rules) will be set fair for further testing.