SAILBOAT

Wooden Ships
A Generic Age of Sail Play Aid

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By Walter O'Hara

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This is another generic gamebox, which hopefully recreates enough of an era (like Minute Napoleonics) for the fledgling designer to get started with.   Wooden Ships started out as a desire to create a gamebox for Wooden Ships and Iron Men, the Avalon Hill Game.  Howver, I also own Close Action, the excellent game on the same subject by Clash of Arms.  I was struck with the fact that while there are many differences between the two games, there are still many similarities as well.   So I decided to make this a GENERIC gamebox that could be used both for WS&IM and CA, and perhaps HEART OF OAK (FGU) as well.

Note Bene: This gamebox is FAR from complete.   A complete gamebox would have every ship from every scenario from every Age of Sail game... and I don't have that kind of time on my hands!  What I have done is create a gamebox with sample ships from major nautical powers of the day: UK, US, France, Spain, Russia, and Turkey.  You may feel free to alter the gamebox for your own scenarios... that's what it is designed for you to do.  You will notice that the top three ships in the Image Tile groups for the major nations are blanks.  These are blanks for Ships of the Line, Medium to Small ships, and Small ships.  To create your own ships, Simply bring up the gamebox in Designer:

1) Select the Tile Image Group for the particular nation you want to create a ship for.

2) Clone the large, medium or small ship image.

3) Type the number of guns under the flag

4) Rotate the tile 90 Degrees.

5) Type the NAME OF THE SHIP. I've been using ARIAL, SIZE 7, PLAIN.

6) Rotate the tile 270 Degrees. Save.

7) If you develop a bunch of new ships, please save them out as a tile library (GTL) and send them to me.

NOTICE: This Gamebox is created using Dale Larson's excellent Play By Email utility, Cyberboard (the poor man's Aide De Camp!)

Visit the Cyberboard website by following this link

Wooden Ships was created by Walter O'Hara

Portions, Copyright Avalon Hill, Clash of Arms and Fantasy Games Unlimited.

The Action

Ranger vs. Drake from Wooden Ships and Iron Men Scenario 2

This screen shot demonstrates the single scenario included in this gamebox, RANGER Vs. DRAKE, WS&IM Scenario 2.  The Wind Direction marker, Speed and Rate of Change are indicated on the map above. 

Ship Chart (WSIM)  

This is an example of a ship chart from the gamebox.   In the scenario being indicated here, the ship has taken 3 hull hits, 2 sailor crew hits, three marine hits, and 3 rigging hits.  The Ship is loading round shot on the Port side, Chain on the Starboard, and is under Full Sail.

Movement Plotting

This is an example of the movement plot chart, which is common to both CA and WSIM (with some divergences...).  There are little markers to indicate what either captain desires to do with his ship in the marker section.


How to get the files

Download Gamebox:

Wooden Ships Gamebox (zipped, Ranger vs. Drake scenario file included)

Related Links/Resources:

This page content copyright, Walter O'Hara 2000