Why are naval wargames good?
1) They require fewer models, so are more likely to be merciful to your wallet
2) They require fewer models, so it's easier to get (even inexperienced) players involved
3) They are immense fun
What are the hindrances?
1) Even the most basic ones require some sort of charts, stats, sheets etc.
2) This can bog the game down
3) This can make the game less "portable"
I developed my first naval wargame in my teens. My nephew and I played using poker chits and paper ships. It was fun and it worked. Ships used fix movement and fixed amounts of damage. I tried to recreate that game but it fell back on problem #1, individual ship trackers are still required.
Fighting Sail gets close enough, damage is very straightforward, but still you need to dice against ship stats and it's not enough to look at a ship to know what it's able to do.
The new basic concept of my rules is to be a generic age of sail engine, and have the following features:
- Ship movement is decided by damage and position to the wind (both can be told by looking at the model)
- 'Critical' damage is represented by tokens only (up to three types to make things easier)
- There is a roll to hit & roll to save mechanism, which is where the probability curve thing enters the stage.
A ship getting completely destroyed during a sea fight was a freak accident. This is why the destruction of L'Orient for example is so noted. Read up on the Anglo-Dutch wars, where smaller and weaker built ships (mostly Dutch Indiamen) took extreme punishment and still limped out of the line and went home for repairs. Instead (or at least until Nelson came) ships battered each other until one side withdrew or struck. Due to high buoyancy, a ship could indeed be razed down to the waterline and still kept floating. It was a continuous grinding down of enemy resources, and grand scale rules should aim to represent that.
So my thinking is the following:
- it's easy to hit a ship, especially from a short distance,
- it's also very probable that cannonade causes superficial damage (at least in the short term).
So, for example, a generic 3rd rate should have 4d6 gunnery dice per broadside and 4d6 saving throw. She hits on a 3+ at close distance, and also saves on a 3+. That is a one in six chance to score a hit, if I count correctly. Such attrition rules work well on army-level rules, see Blücher, where only sixes cause hit point loss.
Then we can advance the rules and apply bad visibility penalties to the shooting roll, and a cumulative/cascading effect when there is a stern rake or multiple ships are battering the same target. Some playtesting and tweaking, and it should work.
