Well, as I am GMing a Sails of Glory game at Rincon 16, I am looking at scenarios that I can host using the paltry 30 ships I have. I am seriously looking at the 1 June battle. The order of battle for the French clearly shows the French split into three commands; the van, the center, and the rear. Replicating just the van is about all I can accomplish with my ships. Even then, you have to reach down into the frigates or up into the first raters to complete a reenactment of the actions of the van on that glorious day. The french van consisted of 9 ships of the line, 8 of which were third rates with one first rate right in the middle of the line. The English equivalent was exactly the same.Owning one each of every ship Ares makes (minus the kick starters) means that there are 32 french and 28 english ships represented by 16 french models and 14 english models. The rates of the models are as follows:

French: 3 - first rates, 3 - third rates, 6 - fifth rates, 2 - unrated = 14 ships total (Kickstarter repaints, which I don't have bring the total number to 16)

English: 4- first rates, 4 - third rates, 5 - fifth rates, 2 - unrated = 15 ships total (again, no Kickstarters)

Remembering that I need 8 third rates and 1 first rate for each side, that means that I am short 5 third rates for the French and 4 third rates for the English.

I am experimenting with filling the third rates with 1st and 3 rate ships by using burdens. First raters have a burden of 6. Third raters have a burden of 5. The fifth raters have a burden of either 3 or 2. The French frigates with a burden of 3 are the Hebe class and the English frigates with a burden of 3 are the Concorde and Charmonte class. Balancing each side so that they are "equivalent" to the actual ships of the van means that I came up with about 1116 points for the French and about 1032 points for the English. A difference of about one frigate, or .8% difference, which I consider negligible. The French forces are slightly more powerful, but the British have the weather gauge, so I think the forces are pretty equal.

I'm using basic rules, of course but can anybody tell me if I am "in the ballpark" of the force used in the van of that battle? Is there a better way to substitute third rates using just the models included in the first and second wave? Should I use a couple of first rates and a couple of fifth rates to replace the missing third rates? or should I use all fifth rates?