Hi all,

I've been mulling over a C&C homebrew for naval warfar, I just haven't been able to convince myself that the playstyle of C&C is really geared up for navy battles. In land battles I can see units not responding to orders, taking time to get going etc so appearing to stand still before moving into the fray but ships, I think it would look a bit disjointed, lurchy even.

Units wise its a doddle,
big slow ships move as infantry but battle with more dice - roll 2,3,4 dice based on colour + 1 if within 1 hex to reflect more crew to to fire and volum of cannons
smaller nimbler ships move as cav but battle with fewer dice - roll 1,2,3 dice based on colour
Battle savvy would be default but give an extra +1 if supported

Terrain
shallows, roll 5 - number of battle dice any match allows you pass over, no match and a black flag (pr more) and you're stuck -1 battle dice
Coastline only smaller ships can sail next to it

Specialist cards (a couple of examples)
sharp shooters, roll some dice each flag forces ship to retreat as officers are killed
chain shot - only hits on a matching colour but reduces hit ships movement by one

Ships
Pirates of the Spanish Main is your friend!

Pretty much the whole of the Lore deck / command deck will need re-wording to fit the theme though effect / cost can be kept the same.

So any stabs at curing my 'lurching' feel - and anyone else vaguely interested in helping with re-doing all the cards (I don't have time for all of them ;-> )

Chris

Elberon said:

Depending on ones point of view, I either don't have the time to devote to well designed player additions, or choose not to make the time lol, but I think the cards you could design could smooth out the lurching. But, at the same time, and this goes for the base game as well, it isn't just standing around, it is parsing out the action into a game-able fashion. The action is continous, it is the interruption of moving pieces, etc that makes it seem stepwise. If one "re-plays" the game just watching the flow on the board, without noting the time between turns, rolls, etc, it flows very much like the battle fronts do/did.

I think mechanics/cards could be made to smooth the lurching as well, but I don't think it needs to be very drastic. I am not a naval war buff, so am unsure if the board sections work well. For example, I hear many criticisms of M'44 that the sections do not fit the theme, but I feel they are being taken too literally. I think that they could be made to work for naval battles as well, not in that orders are being issued by "sector", just that that is used to manage ones hand/battle plan.

I will certainly try to comment on any suggestions you or anyone else have about the cards/mechanics, and may even offer some solutions myself if I come up with any.

As with all of your BL endeavours, good luck and good play

Just a couple thoughts:

1. You may want to have your ships behave in a sort of 'battle group' where you might order a cruiser/battleship in addition to a couple adjascent destroyers with certain command cards etc.

2. Depending on the era of ships, you may want to have rules that take ship facing and wind into account. Obviously this is more important for old wooden ships with broadsides than in the era of steel battleships with rotating turrets.

Hi there,

Yeah battle group would make a fantastic command card (pick one red ship of line and up to two escorts and move as one unit kind of thing)

The trouble with facings and wind direction is it
introduces a level of complexity that (I feel) really shouldn't sit on a C&C game,
would also make set up odd (two lines of ships being parallel to each other or one side not able to move as they face the wind),
also assumes reliable cannon fire (this would be a Battlelore expansion) so you'd be 'left' with archery, experimental cannons, Lore and critter to do the fighting
- and to be honest having ships charging headlong into combat with each other looks cooler / more fun than worrying about wind direction (well for C&C gaming, I can see the merit in having to worry about it in general).

Perhaps you can see the need for a creative spark - I wonder how good the internet is for info about HYW naval warfare....

Chris