The Age of Fighting Sail, The Full Nelson, 1/1200 scale 

A few weeks ago, after seeing a post about these rules – the Two Fat Lardies’ successor to Kiss Me Hardy! – I messaged Richard Clark to ask about them. Even though he was about to leave for a holiday, he sent me the draft of the rules, and invited us up here in Orkney to playtest them. We’re all pretty keen on naval wargaming, so it was a good fit. The draft of the rules are pretty simple and straightforward, and use three Action Dice dice for sailing, two more for gunnery and then one for command. they act a bit like the Command Dice in the Lardies’ Chain of Command . You need a Ship Panel for each ship, where the dice rolls are placed – not unlike the system in these other two games – but you move on the turn of a playing card – a bit like a lot of other Lardy games, such as Sharp Practice. In this ‘learning-curve’ game we weren’t out to test the rules to destruction. This was about gently feeling our way. So, we had two matched pairs of frigates – the USS President (of 44 guns) and the USS Constellation (36 guns) on one side, and HMS Endymion (40 guns) and HMS Spartan (36 guns) on the other. The aim was for the British blockaders to sink and destroy the Americans as they slipped out of Boston. To save time we used my Sharp Practice cards – something Charley Walker suggests in the draft rules, and these decided which squadron would move, and then later, when formations were abandoned as the ships came to blows, they were used to determine the order our four ships moved. In fact this worked very smoothly, and after some fumbling we all got the hang of sailing using the wind. When it came to sailing the system was very simple and straightforward. Once you’ve worked out the direction the wind is blowing in relation to your ship, it’s literally plain sailing. You use your ‘Sailing Dice’ to turn, adjust your speed, rally off any sailing disorder or a few other tasks, including grappling and boarding. Within a few moves we’d all pretty much got the system taped.The next challenge was leadership. you get to roll a leadership dice, and for the RN or the USN, anything but a ‘1’ on a D6 guarantees your ship is rated’ Well-Handled’ for the turn. You can then use your Leadership Die to do several useful things, like giving orders to tack (turn around while facing into the wind), boost your broadsides, or deal with rallying or restoring lost Action Dice. Then it was all about learning how to fire our guns. There are three range bands, extending out to 24″, which was quite well-suited to my 1/1200 scale ships. You use your gunnery dice to fire a broadside, to reload, remove ‘gunnery disorder’ and a few other things. Each ship has a Broadside Rating – usually divided into the range bands, with the highest number being close range fire.Ours were 9/7/6 for President and Endymion, and 8/6/5 for Constellation and Spartan. We weren’t too subtle about this – everyone fired when they came within range. A nice touch is you can fire at any point during your movement, so there’s no missing the perfect moment to let rip! The chances of hitting depend on range and a couple of other seldom-used factors – so it’s all very simple. Once you score a hit or two the target rolls against their ‘Build’ – essentially a saving throw based on the ruggedness of the ship, with our two large ‘Super-Frigates’ President and Endymion saving on a 4 or more. You can also use a leadership dice to declare if you’re firing at the enemy’s hull or the rigging. It struck me that it does what a lot more complicated rules do – only in a much simpler and more elegant way. Of course, the more you get hit then the faster things going downhill. This close range raking broadside from Chris’ Constellation into my Endymion wreaked havoc on the British frigate, and she was lucky to limp away and carry out vital repairs. It helped, of course, that the powerful  President had her rudder damaged by Spartan, and as Nick had lost his Leadership Die, the super-frigate just kept sailing off the table!All in all all three of us playing the game were very impressed by The Full Nelson. With two naval historians and a very knowledgeable ‘civvy’ we’re a tough crowd to impress, but afterwards we all had nothing but praise for the rules. Of course, we haven’t properly playtested them yet – we just took them out for a spin – but next time, now we know what to expect, we’ll delve deeper into this promising new rules set. 

Tags: The Full Nelson