Full Nelson Playtest v2

 

Last Saturday myself and William got together for another playtest of the Full Nelson rules from TFL. This is the first time we had an opportunity to play version 2 of the rules.

We went with larger ships this time with the Brits have two 3rd rates and one frigate with the Spanish having one 1st rate and 2 frigates. The Spanish 1st rate was the famous Santa Ana was of the largest Age of Sail ships built.

First game setup with William taking the Spanish

We played 2 games with alternating sides, each game probably took less then 2 hours, it is a pretty fast playing set of rules. In our first game we were still learning the rules but the 2nd game went very quickly.

I pretty well have all the accruements required for the game done now, most of them of my own design. They all worked quite well. 

William slaughtered me in both games! It was a lot of fun.

Some Royal Navy Ships

 

I have enjoyed play testing the TFL Naval rules so I recently decided to finish off a couple of more ships. I already have quite  few brigs so I focused on the one 3rd and 5th rate that I had yet to assemble. I was lacking Royal Navy ships as my primary focus when playing Black Seas were the Spanish. Not sure why in retrospect but it is what it is.

The ships are easy enough to assemble and paint and I have applying the sails down but rigging is still a challenge. I have noticed that some of the rigging is not necessary and I am not a purist so it was ok to leave some off. I also had no interest in attaching the rat tails. I am pretty happy how they turned out.

I still have some work to do on the rigging of 4 or 5 more ships but that will have to wait until I get to Montreal.

Full Nelson Playtest

 

We had another playtest of the Full Nelson rules from TFL last week. Again a lot of fun, we had a 3 player game with two of the players having 2 brigs and 1 player having 3 brigs. The players with 2 brigs acted together against the 3rd.

We played the game with v1.1, we actually received the v1.2 pdf the next day. I believe we made gfar fewer errors and really the only challenge I am now having is getting my head around movement when the individual ships are acting in a squadron. 

Where the rules are in playtest, I will not say more but here are a couple of photos from the game. I think in our next game we will go up and play with frigates!

And the good news is that I finally found my 2 missing islands.

Full Nelson Playtest

One member of our wargaming club in Montreal has signed on as a play tester for a new set of Age of Sail rules from Too Fat Lardies. Graham has had one game with Pierre-Yves with v1 of the rules but since then v1.1 has been released so myself and Graham decided to have a go. 

Since these rules are not yet in public release, I will be limited in what I say in respect to the rules themselves. I do understand the rules writer Charlie Walker has been working on these rules for years as an alternative to the older TFL set Kiss Me Hardy.

We played with a frigate and a brig each, and I have to say these rules are very nice indeed and very easy to pick up. We made a few errors especially in respect to movement and I can say that the general mechanic of the game is somewhat similar to What a Cowboy in activation. I will leave it there but I am really looking forward to my next game.