Quote Originally Posted by Kentop View Post
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.