naval minatures games

[shadoes]

Anyone know of a good golden Age era ship to ship miniatures game? most of the naval games I find are either after period or fantasy based.

[blackjohn]

I have a copy of Heart of Oak. It's Napoleonic, but with some minor conversions you could do Marlburian. It is supposed to be one of the best. But I can't vouch for it, having never actually played it. I have played Wooden Ships and Iron Men as a Marlburian era game. But... that's not miniatures. Though you could convert it to miniatures. Or just use them in place of the counters. I think there is one called Blackbeard (not to be confused with the Avalon Hill game of the same name), or something like that. It came out about five or six years ago? I don't know much about it, other than some people liked it and some didn't. I forget the exact complaints by those who didn't like it. I'd probably go with Heart of Oak and do a conversion. From what I have seen, it is quite detailed.

[Patrick Hand]

This one is a bit on the silly side..... Lego Pyrates....

http://www.io.com/~sj/PirateGame.html

A few years ago, I was thinking of printin up the rules, and making the ships outta pine boards instead of legos, and using plastic toy pyrates... and then takin' the game to the park (dressed as a Pyrate of course) and letting anyone who wanted to play join in....

It's silly, its simple, and easy enough that most people could play... and sometimes just being silly is fun enough......

[blackjohn]

If you ever do, take some pics and send 'em his way. He'd get a kick out of it and I'm sure he'd post them on his site. One of my friends once photoshopped a picture of an Ogre (the giant cybernetic tank from the classic game of the same name) into a picture of the famous Las Vegas sign. We sent it to Evil Stevie and sure 'nuf, next thing you know it's on their front page.

[Joe Pyrat]

Take a look at this. Click the graphic for the link to Amazon then scroll down and read the first review which describes the chapters. This type of miniature war gaming can be done with paper cutouts or can go to the full lead figure, highly painted route including sunken ships (just tops of the rigging models). Shots are based on templates which are numbered. A dice throw determines where the shot hits and in the case of land based artillery where the bounces go to determine which sections of a formation of troops get hit and which get bounced over. Very detailed but rewarding, not to mention the collection and painting of the miniatures can be its own reward.

For your purposes you can modify or jus use rules that pertain to the type of ship and guns involved so it is completely customizable to any period, not just those covered specifically in the book. Google will lead you to hundreds of possibilities related to this hobby.

It is also free-form which means you are not locked into playing and replaying some fixed scenario. You could, for example, setup Royal Fortune vs. Swallow or Adventure vs. Ranger and Jane.

[Capt Thighbiter]

There is a Pirates game out there, you put the ships together ( pre cut plastic) and attach sails. Each ship is assigned different hold capacity, # of guns, weight of guns, # of masts, crew #s, etc etc. Rolling dice agains the opponent determines loss of masts, hulls or gold coins.

Not a band game, and the ships are not bad either, but the cards ( ships) cover all sorts of pirates - vikings, GAoP, China, etc. Just get the card sets for the GAoP ships. Any good comix shop will have the packs of cards, usualy 6 ships a pack.

[blackjohn]

The Pirates Constructable card game? Yep! That's a blast! Unfortunately, Wizkids has sorta gone under. They were owned by Topps, and Topps decided to pull the plug to save some money. But that doesn't change the fact that is is one helluva fun game. I seem to recall there's a thread or two about it somewhere in this here pub.