House rule preview

Never content with leaving well enough alone, I have been working on more realistic movement rules that are simple enough to not slow the game down. What is the slowest part of the game in SOG? Thumbing through an E deck, looking for the maneuver you want. Here is a sneak peak of what I am working on.
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The idea is based on the three "winds" in SOG. I defined these as light breeze, medium breeze, and strong breeze, which, in the Beaufort scale, represents 2, 4 and 6. You can have one of three types of sails. Instead of backing sails, you have "light sails", Battle sails, and Full sails. The track below each breeze category is your actual speed in knots. When you turn into the red zone on your ship, your speed is halved, staying one more turn means you are taken aback. Here's the best part: you don't need a dozen movement cards per ship. It's just a sneak peek, so stay tuned.

This looks REALLY promising! Keep up the good work.

Instead of using a deck of cards for movement, you have one movement card that is the same as SOG distances. Each ship can turn up to 60 degrees before it moves per turn, and it moves (5 knots, 5 moves) according to how many knots it is traveling, subject to veer rating. Each move (if you have more than one) lets you correct your course. Veer rating of 8 for sloops means that sloops go wherever they want. I am working the details out as I write this.

Interesting idea, Kenneth.

How would subsequent turns of being taken aback work? Like the current SoG rules?

Is there basically one type of turn per player's turn - 60 degrees? Any form of side-slip maneuver?

I imagine some type of table-template would be needed for measuring the 60-degrees.

Looking forward to seeing how your project develops. :thumbsup:

I ran a game Monday evening at our FLGS, and I noticed the newer players spending a lot of time looking at their decks. I have not played much with experienced players to notice if they handle decks easily. We used our laminated ship log/mats, and everyone adapted them quite easily and rapidly. We ned to make new ones that incorporate advanced rules.

You keep track of your speed in knots. as you turn leeward, your speed increases a knot per turn until you are at your maximum speed, as you turn windward your speed drops to zero. I'm experimenting with a turn card. I chose 60 degrees as the limit per turn so that it takes 3 turns to come about. That's around six minutes. It will take longer if you are going slower and shorter if you are going faster. Most square riggers could turn around between 5 and 10 minutes. You only need a 60 degree line on the movement card and that represents your limit. You can turn up to that maximum. If you are going 5 knots, you can move straight, turn, move straight, turn, 5 times up to 60 degrees. Side slip could work to leeward I guess. What do you think? One beam length per turn in a medium breeze? The more I think about it, you should use the wind direction compass to limit your turn. If you are sailing due north, you would only be able to turn northeast by east in one turn. This has the added bonus of forcing land lubbers to learn the points of the compass the way all good sailors do.

I keep adding to this post as I come up with ideas. By writing down your speed in knots and your heading, you could literally play by mail. You could also discontinue and restart a game anytime you want without having to leave the game set up. And, you could replay any game, review tactics, and write very accurate after battle reports.

Right now, my movement card is just a card with horizontal lines on it denoting knots per hour. So the card has 12 lines on it. If you are traveling at six knots, you move your ship six lines. You can turn at any point or at the beginning or end of your turn. If you have enough room, you could actually use the card to sail the true scale distance. The base of each ship is the same size as a movement card. If the base is equal to the length of a first rate ship, the base, and the card, are about 200 feet long in scale. Converting knots to feet per minute is easy. One knot is one hundred feet per minute. 5 knots is 500 feet per minute. If a movement card is 200 feet long, 500 feet would be two and a half card lengths. Since each turn is two minutes long, you would double it so that 5 knots is 5 card lengths, 4 knots, 4 card lengths, etc. You would be sailing to scale. In a light breeze, sailing to scale could be done on a table top. I'll have to try it out.

I can see rules like this to be fun for an afternoon experiment with my friends. They are gamers as opposed to war gamers, none of whom are knowledgeable about naval anything. They are open, though, for trying things. They seem to like SoG as it is, but I can easily set up a day in which we play with to-scale movement, etc., just for the experience, if nothing else. When you have your rules where you want them, we'll give it a try and share with you our experience.

Instead of moving upwards of five card lengths, would it be advantageous to make each turn one minute and adjust what can be accomplished in that time limit?

If each turn was only one minute long, you would have to wait two or three turns to fire another broadside. I would think that just getting your ship lined up for a broadside would be daunting because you travel so far each movement turn. I'll be working out the details this weekend. Movement has to be fast and easy. In SOG, the farthest any ship can move is two card lengths because you start at the front of the base and place the rear of the base on the appropriate mark so you are at least moving one ship length each turn. That means the fastest the ships can go in SOG is 4 knots to scale. It also means that the slowest any ships can go is 2 knots! Most movements using the decks results in ships actually going between two and three knots to scale. For these alternate rules, you use only the front of the bases, so you can go any speed up to the maximum allowed for full sails given the wind conditions. In a medium breeze a frigate under full sail would move 4 1/2 card lengths or 13 1/2 inches per minute! That's just not practical unless you are using a really large area. For a broadside to occur, you would have to be really careful to match the other ship's speed and heading, which means that a line of battle is about the only way you could do it. Crashing through the line like Nelson in anything but a light breeze would simply cause you to overshoot your target as you whizzed by and then your enemy would be windward!

One thing folks mentioned the other evening was how hard it was to visualize where their ships would end after maneuvering (I guess that is one of the benefits of hexes for new players). I think if you plan on always measuring from the front of the bases, that would alleviate some of this type of confusion. I believe players would have an easier time, when learning the game, visualizing a ship's course while maneuvering.

I imagine all firing would occur at the end of movement, correct?

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Originally Posted by Kentop

.... That means the fastest the ships can go in SOG is 4 knots to scale. It also means that the slowest any ships can go is 2 knots! .....

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Only if you assume that the model scale equals the ground scale, which is clearly not the case.

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Originally Posted by David Manley

Only if you assume that the model scale equals the ground scale, which is clearly not the case.

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"Ground scale" in SOG is 1:2,400 where 1/2 inch is equal to 100 feet. If the ship were that scale, it would be one inch long. How did I get that scale? by letting two card lengths equal the fastest any ship can go in SOG (the length of the base plus the length of one movement card). I'm ball parking the speed. Maximum speed on a frigate is around 12 knots. The HMS Victory is said to have been able to sail 8 to 10 knots maximum, but I sincerely doubt that it actually ever sailed anywhere near that fast. Using the movement system for these alternate rules, you can sail at any scale you want, room permitting, using the same movement card. In a card with twelve divisions, each division is .25 inches apart. You can select the scale by simply defining the scale at which you sail. 1/4 inch equals 100 feet up to 1 1/2 inches equals 100 feet (the scale of the ship model itself). Simple, no?

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"Ground scale" in SOG is 1:2,400 where 1/2 inch is equal to 100 feet.

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Do you mean in your variant? Potentially very handy given the extensive ranges of 1/2400 AoS models available :)

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Originally Posted by 7eat51

One thing folks mentioned the other evening was how hard it was to visualize where their ships would end after maneuvering (I guess that is one of the benefits of hexes for new players). I think if you plan on always measuring from the front of the bases, that would alleviate some of this type of confusion. I believe players would have an easier time, when learning the game, visualizing a ship's course while maneuvering.

I imagine all firing would occur at the end of movement, correct?

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Eyeballing a manœuvre is an important part of the game. You have to do that with the basic movement rules. In SOG, the ships move so short a distance that its relatively easy to judge where the ship ends up. In a more realistic scale of movement, you would quickly get the hang of it. I will post pics of actually moving the ships around at scale to give you an idea of what it looks like and how much space it actually takes at various scales. The point of it all is to add a little more distance to the movement so that the ships move a little more realistically.

Also, you can still use the card decks to plan your movements. You would just use the new movement card to actually move the ship. That way, you stay true to the intent of SOG. You are only changing the scale at which sailing is done. Same rules apply, including being taken aback. An added benefit is to be able to fine tune your turns by turning less that the rigid turns on the original movement cards. This would result in much fewer collisions (especially for beginners), even at scale distances.

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Originally Posted by David Manley

Do you mean in your variant? Potentially very handy given the extensive ranges of 1/2400 AoS models available :)

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Yes. As I said before, at the actual scale of movement in SOG, a ship model would be around one inch long. That's the size of most 1:2400 AoS models. Figurehead ships, available from http://www.nobleminis.com/Figurehead/Figurehead2400.pdf have bases about 1 to 1 1/2 inches long would actually sail to scale in SOG.