A try at advanced rules without crew actions.

[TWR]

I seem to be alone here but I rather think the advance rules force players to make hard decisions as damage increases and crew casualties become greater. Once down to two actions things become very desperate.

Can I reload or do I need to focus on pumps? Should I focus on breaking off or is it realistic to continue the engagement? Can I fire a broadside or should I focus on boarding the ship I'm entangled with?

I think the importance of these decisions would be more significant if the games were treated more in a campaign context. The loss of a ship having a greater campaign impact than an individual action.

[fredmiracle]

I seem to be alone here but I rather think the advance rules force players to make hard decisions as damage increases and crew casualties become greater. Once down to two actions things become very desperate.

Can I reload or do I need to focus on pumps? Should I focus on breaking off or is it realistic to continue the engagement? Can I fire a broadside or should I focus on boarding the ship I'm entangled with?

I think the importance of these decisions would be more significant if the games were treated more in a campaign context. The loss of a ship having a greater campaign impact than an individual action.

Not alone, I agree that is exactly when the actions become very flavorful and tactically engaging:

The one thing you would lose by this method is when the ship is close to destruction and you have few crew and need to make hard decisions. Even then what you need to do is usually clear, but the feeling that you are holding your ship together with spit and bailing-wire, and trying to outlast your foe who is doing the same, is a part of the game I appreciate. And there is the occasional interesting dilemma about things like whether to pump or work the guns...

But I do see the flipside, which is that juggling the action chits is annoying.

One thing I was rolling around in my mind is some kind of hybrid, where you play without actions at the beginning, but a ship switches to using the normal action rules when it gets reduced to 2 or 3. I'm not sure if that would work though...

Anyway, paper logs are better

[Jason]

I seem to be alone here but I rather think the advance rules force players to make hard decisions as damage increases and crew casualties become greater. Once down to two actions things become very desperate.

Can I reload or do I need to focus on pumps? Should I focus on breaking off or is it realistic to continue the engagement? Can I fire a broadside or should I focus on boarding the ship I'm entangled with?

I think the importance of these decisions would be more significant if the games were treated more in a campaign context. The loss of a ship having a greater campaign impact than an individual action.

As I've stated - I've seen things exectly the same way as you do when I played the game first couple of time. It promised to deliver a rewarding and dramatic experience. Except... it didn't. After a couple of games I've felt that any dramatism generated by that kind of decision-making was ruined by a need for counting and shuffling the chits and keeping an eye for when the leak floods the deck and when it's pumped out and stuff like that. I am not theoreticaly speaking - these are just my experiences with the game. It's just the games with basic rules proved to be insanely more fun, but I wanted to make use of all the special damage chits.

Jan, we used these rules this weekend and they worked very nicely. Further tweaks we made for playability were:

1) After the first mast hit is repaired (requiring two broken mast cards to be played - replacing the planned card - no coasting), a ship can take three mast hits before it surrenders.

2) We decided that the broken mast cards indicated wreckage alongside, and could be cut away in two turns. Thusly, after the first (repaired) damage, subsequent damage would force the ship to move for two turns with the broken mast cards, then after the wreckage was cleared, it was able to move with the regular deck, only not use full sails. On the next hit, the same thing, only when the wreckage was cleared, battle sails were no longer an option. On the third hit, the vessel would surrender.

Oh, and we chose to recycle the various damage chits after each broadside to maintain the same probabilities for all shots.

We found that your rules combined with our tweaks made the game much less randomly bloodthirsty and more tactically interesting.

Thank you! I have also assumed that it takes two turns for the crew to cut away the wreckage draging alongside the ship. The "No full sails" rule is a great - and self-explanatory - idea :) Thanks!

Not alone, I agree that is exactly when the actions become very flavorful and tactically engaging:

But I do see the flipside, which is that juggling the action chits is annoying.

One thing I was rolling around in my mind is some kind of hybrid, where you play without actions at the beginning, but a ship switches to using the normal action rules when it gets reduced to 2 or 3. I'm not sure if that would work though...

Anyway, paper logs are better

I need to try the laminated/paper logs thing... But you may have a point with the hybrid thing! Perhaps, the crew actions might be used after receiveng enough crew damage indeed?

[Herkybird]

I seem to be alone here but I rather think the advance rules force players to make hard decisions as damage increases and crew casualties become greater. Once down to two actions things become very desperate.

Can I reload or do I need to focus on pumps? Should I focus on breaking off or is it realistic to continue the engagement? Can I fire a broadside or should I focus on boarding the ship I'm entangled with?

I think the importance of these decisions would be more significant if the games were treated more in a campaign context. The loss of a ship having a greater campaign impact than an individual action.

At our club, we started playing SofG with crew actions, and subsequently tried it with just the standard rules (while playtesting Powder Monkey), and found the crew actions made the game for us, as it seemed to make us feel as we were actually commanding a real ship, to some extent.

I always felt Wings of Glory WW1 slightly strange when a damage result seemed to 'get better' by itself after 3 actions!

[7eat51]

I always felt Wings of Glory WW1 slightly strange when a damage result seemed to 'get better' by itself after 3 actions!

You mean you don't utilize an ariel form of AAA?





We adopted the rule of removing a turn card from the deck of the same direction as the rudder damage.

[Jason]

We adopted the rule of removing a turn card from the deck of the same direction as the rudder damage.

I just had an idea - how about removing cards from the deck when you receive rudder damage in SGN? Instead of -1 veer.