Tacking action?

[John Paul]

Fast play being the opposite of accurate portrayal? I have noticed a trend among the old salts on this site to engage in apologetics when anyone points out something wonky or missing in the rules (and that happens with alarming frequency here). This game won't last long if ARES doesn't sit up and take notice. In a historical game such as SOG, it is better to err on the side of accuracy or you risk losing the people who bought the game in the first place. If you want fast play, may I suggest rocks, paper, scissors?

Fast-Play and Accurate Portrayal are not mutually exclusive. Though in recent years Fast-Play has come to mean more often then not that accuracy is compromised, abstracted, or ignored to varying degrees.

As has been pointed out by several posts Captains/Sailing Masters tended to Wear ship rather then tack particularly when their ship was engaged in action with an enemy vessel. Woe befall on the Captain that was forced into a tack while engaged, as it meant crew would be pulled from their guns to handle the ship. Any Captain that decided to make a tack while engaged with an enemy more then likely would end up surrendering his ship no matter if he made the tack or not!

I believe the folks at ARES are the only ones who can rightly state why an accurate means of tacking doesn't exist in SoG.

I think the suggested change of not being able to Fire when playing a Red maneuver card would fix the Tacking problem rather easily, as it simulates the need to pull crew from their guns to handle the ship.

[Jason]

As has been pointed out by several posts Captains/Sailing Masters tended to Wear ship rather then tack particularly when their ship was engaged in action with an enemy vessel. Woe befall on the Captain that was forced into a tack while engaged, as it meant crew would be pulled from their guns to handle the ship. Any Captain that decided to make a tack while engaged with an enemy more then likely would end up surrendering his ship no matter if he made the tack or not!
.

That was pretty well said. Thank you.

I've thought that if a ship is forced to leave the playing area it should be allowed to reenter two or three turns later, and say two to three base lengths from it's original point of departure. I don't care much either for the automatic surrender deal.

I cant even consider this surrender rule. It just contradicts the very foundation of man's desire to sail: freedom of the high seas.
So whenever need arises, I dont hesitate to shift the playing area (although I usually play on a blue bed sheet on the floor 1x2 meters)
On the other hand, I do rarely play just "meeting engagements", it happened maybe once or twice to test the rules. Most of the time we set up a scenario - a raid, running a blockade, damaged ship running for cover of shore batteries... so there is rarely a need to shift the playing surface, as the point of scenario is to get form point A to point B for one side to win.
Perhaps that is why I seek more challenge in sailing itself, like harder tacking - to make those chases more interesting. It's hardly useful in a typical slugfest.