Friday 15 October 2010

Memoir of Battle at Sea....Part 3

I have finally managed to ready the first draft of my variant of the Command and Colours system covering naval warfare from 1890 to 1945, with the exception of the air rules (amongst others). From my previous post on the subject the only difference I have adopted from the list of salient points is that the 'superior, normal and inferior' ratings will be replaced by the actual hit points, combat dice and speed of the ship class in question. The reason for this is that I initially worked on the basis that an individual specification could be varied by plus or minus one from the average number but this is a little restrictive and so I have instead opted for a freer approach. A small difference perhaps but a significant one from a psychological perspective!

I shall be play testing these rules on a solo basis over the weekend and shall be using the ship counters and tactical battle map from the board game 'The Great War at Sea: The Mediterranean' in place of models. This will kill two birds with one stone as I have yet to punch out the counters for this game so will finally have the opportunity to do so. Initially I was planning on using my old friends the Balkan Wars navies for the play test but am now leaning more towards the Black Sea in WW1 with the Turks engaging the Russians. I shall write up the results of the play test for the blog although depending on how it evolves I probably will not tackle it on a turn by turn basis.

After what seems like a number of naval war game 'false dawns' in respect of my attempts at writing a suitable set I am feeling cautiously optimistic that this particular variant may finally be that which I have been searching for..............................;-)

We shall see, and in the meantime I am certainly keeping most parts of my anatomy crossed in expectation!

2 comments:

Paul O'G said...

Good luck old bean!

David Crook said...

Cheers Tas - I am hoping this will shake the halls of the good and the great!