Anyone want to help thrash out campaign rules??

[Broadsword56]

Fred, thank you so much for making this excellent CDG for campaigns.
After looking over your rules and map, I think it's very nearly there. It looks easy and fun to play.
Lots of good suggestions by others, above -- but my only one would be this:

While I appreciate the CDG type of wargame, I feel very strongly that players should be in the role of the human commander, not God or Neptune. So the player should only be able to play cards that represent things somewhat under his or her control. For example, Fair Winds cards can represent putting up more sail or taking a better attitude to the wind. Sharp Lookout represents a skillful crew, and a Blockade is a command decision. Trapped Against a Lee Shore is OK with me because while it can just be bad luck, it can also represent superior maneuvering on the part of the enemy to trap the opponent there. And even Fog Bank is OK because it can represent the tactical choice to evade by darting into the fog. But IMHO there's no place in a historical wargame for "inflicting" a typhoon or becalmed winds on the opponent, or for inflicting things like the enemy's rotting cargo or his low supplies, which are not subject to your control. To me, that's akin to casting spells and D&D type stuff. Those are good and realistic events, but they should be in a separate category of Random Events and have a separate deck of their own, and which could affect either player depending on the circumstances.
To borrow from Daveshoe's Lord of The Lakes rules, how about inserting a Random Events check phase, just after both players have passed and before the turn ends. Roll a D10, and on a 1 or 2 a Random Event occurs. Some events could affect both sides, while others only affect one side (red player if the roll was 1 and blue player if the roll was 2). And there could be lots more types of those random events, too: For example, a fever outbreak that reduces crew strength/ability, storms, ship mishaps. Events outside the scope of the player/commander's purview could be random events too, like the Admiralty requisitioning one of a player's ships and transferring it out of the theatre, or an unexpected reinforcement arriving.

P.S. -- I'm going to make a Cyberboard module for the card campaign game. That will let people play it by e-mail, and eliminate the need to have printed components for those who prefer the PC to administer things. Once I have the gamebox made, I'd like to make two scenarios for it: One would be Fred's fictional campaign scenario, and the other would be a historical Lake Ontario 1813 scenario that would use the same system but have its own subset of rules, special cards, named ships, etc.