Trafalgar Design Notes

by Mark Latham

At the time of writing, Trafalgar is almost finished and is about to be sent to print. So, I’ve been asked to put together some notes about the game, to explain what it’s all about. Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to take you back to the book’s inception.

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to 1:1200 scale Napoleonic naval miniatures. I’ve been wargaming a variety of systems and periods for years, but I’d never seen anything like these. The models were by Rod Langton, and I was staggered at the level of detail. Imagine my surprise when I got round to painting the things, and discovered that they required a whole new approach to miniature painting, and then I had to rig them, too! It was really these miniatures that got me fired up about wargaming in this scale. I’d always been a fan of the Age of Sail in history, literature and film, so making the leap to the tabletop hobby seemed natural.

That was, however, until I entered the minefield of looking at different rules sets. There are lots of sets of rules out there for this period and scale of gaming. They generally come in two types – those that are geared towards fleet actions, and those that focus on single-ship or small-scale actions. In either case, I personally found all the rules I looked at to be horrendously complicated – far too much so for a landlubber like me. The main problem, it seemed, was that every set of rules (even the ‘quick play’ ones) assumed an intricate knowledge of sailing ships, and was designed to accurately simulate sailing on the tabletop. This led to me buying a few books on the subject and reading up on basic seamanship, tactics, command & control, and firing procedures. Once I had a firm grasp of these principles, I returned to the rules, and found that not all of them accurately represented the real-life scenarios of the period, and the ones that did were so complex that they offered a hyper-real simulation rather than a light-hearted gaming experience. Not a ‘beer and pretzels’ hobby at all, I thought.

Then I grabbed Matt Hutson, who introduced me to the classic GW game, Man O’ War. We had a few games, and had a whale of a time. However, any ideas I had of using these rules to play with my historical ships were soon quashed – fun it may be, but Man O’ War wasn’t really appropriate to the period. That’s when I decided that I was going to write my own rules set, just for fun, to strike the balance between simulation and fast and furious fleet action. Once I started, I realised that it was going to be a massive undertaking, so I contacted Rob Broom of Warhammer Historical and we agreed to make it an official project. Hurrah! I recruited fellow naval enthusiast Matt Hutson to design the book, and embarked on the project.

Over a year on, and the book is ready. My aim throughout was to make rules that were quick and easy to play, that reflected the naval tactics of the Carronade era of the Age of Sail, and could cope equally well both with small actions and large fleet actions. I think I’ve been successful in these aims, but there were many complications along the way.

Getting a rough set of playable rules wasn’t too difficult – I even went so far as to use the structure and turn sequence of Man O’ War to help me, but the biggest problem by far was getting ships to behave realistically – moving using manoeuvres, and forming a line of battle. In the first draft of the rules, the turn sequence was my nemesis – ships at the rear of the line of battle wouldn’t be able to move without clattering into those at the front, and manoeuvres were either too difficult to perform or were just identical regardless of ship types. The latter problem was easily solved – a more comprehensive list of manoeuvres, plus two different turn templates instead of the original one that I’d devised, and new rules for fore-and-aft rigged vessels. The problem of the line of battle didn’t go away, however. So I went and had a chat to Rick Priestley, and the scales fell from my eyes. Through this discussion we realised that the most important tactical advantage in naval warfare was holding the weather gage, so any mechanism for determining which ships moved first would have to have this as the prime motivator. Rick, being a fan of simple, clean game mechanics, suggested that I have the most leeward ship move first, giving vessels with the weather gage on their side more time to react. Secondly, collisions between ships were made a little more abstract, so that vessels had more of a chance to avoid other ships, allowing them to sail in closer formations. These changes seemed to work, and I later had a game against Rick to try it out, before unleashing the rules onto my playtesting group.

Movement and manoeuvring is the most complex part of this game, and at times it may seem as though it gets away from my basic ‘fast play’ principle. However, I realised early on that anyone playing this genre of wargame wanted a degree of simulation, and that ships should move realistically. I came up with a method whereby players must estimate how far they’re going to move, depending on the wind strength and direction, sail setting, turns and the ship’s natural speed, and then make their move – this system means that poor judgement (or, sometimes, poor maths) can result in collisions, but actually brings an element of judgement to the game not unlike real-life seamanship! Not only was the manoeuvring of a man of war complex, but it was also critical. Players must try to work out where they’ll end up in relation to their opponent’s vessels, in the hope of getting a crucial broadside against an enemy vessel.

Which brings me to another rule that I inserted near the end of the design process – Fire as She Bears! In real life, ships of the line were ponderous behemoths, and enemy crews would often have time to snap off a broadside at an approaching foe before the ship got into position. To reflect this, I introduced ‘opportunity fire’, common to many rules sets in my 25mm gaming experience. The idea is that, if a ship turns towards you, thus revealing it’s fragile bows or stern, and you think it’s in range of your guns, you can fire out of sequence. If the vessel proves to be out of range, the shot is wasted. If it’s in range, you can hopefully inflict some real damage before it gets into position to shoot at you in the Gunnery phase. The idea here is either to reduce the enemy’s broadside rating by inflicting damage to the hull, destroy the masts so that it can’t complete its manoeuvre, or sink it! In the Gunnery phase proper, shooting is simultaneous, so opportunity fire is your only chance (however slim) to inflict damage on a ship without too much fear of retribution – if you're crossing the enemy's 'T' (i.e. They're sailing head-on towards your broadsides), then you get one last chance to submit them to raking fire before they get between your lines and dish out some punishment of their own.

The simultaneous fire aspect was another mechanism that came out of my game with Rick. I found that players with heavily upgraded ships and double-shot were a bit too bold – sailing between enemy vessels with impunity, safe in the knowledge that they could probably reduce those vessels’ effectiveness before a shot was returned in anger. This was rather contrary to the historical exploits I’d read of ships like the Bellerophon and Téméraire, who became entangled with enemy vessels at Trafalgar and were forced into a war of attrition, with all the ships involved unleashing broadside after broadside simultaneously into each other’s hulls until one was crippled. By introducing simultaneous fire into the battle, players would have to be more wary of each other’s forces (although having the largest ships still provides some advantages), and the emphasis was shifted back onto manoeuvring rather than firepower alone. Of course, rules for becoming entangled and fighting boarding actions are included – it wouldn’t be a true blood-and-thunder naval game without those, after all. Due to their unpredictable nature, boarding actions were not quite as commonplace as the movies depict, but did play a substantial role in some of the most famous actions of the day. In game terms, a close action is a calculated risk – if you have a larger ship, you’re more likely to win. However, that also depends on the upgrades your opponent has chosen for his vessel. The only certainty is that neither side will leave the action unscathed!

So, with the mechanics sorted out, what about the fleets? I was keen throughout the development of the game to allow players to choose their fleets using points values to balance the forces, in much the same was as the army lists work in WAB. While some scenarios have a full and historical list of participants, they all have the option of forgoing the historical fleets and instead using forces of the players’ own devising. This simply allows players to choose fleets on the basis of the models they like, or their idea of a tactically superior force, and I felt it was important that players should have the utmost freedom when choosing their models. Of course, it’s still perfectly viable to collect an historical force – I myself am collecting the vessels from Nelson’s division at Trafalgar, for example – but it’s by no means the only way.

Once the ships were attributed statistics and points values, the challenge was to add flavour to the national fleets whilst maintaining game balance. At first, this proved quite difficult, particularly with the British. Try as I might, I couldn’t avoid the fact that the British were the greatest naval power in the world during the Napoleonic era. The challenge was to reflect this in the game, without making them so over-costed that they would always end up outnumbered. In the end, I opted for a few subtle special rules that improved their gunnery and morale without making them completely unbalanced, and raised their points cost a little. The Drilled Crew rule is ostensibly quite innocuous, but actually allows the British fleet to enact Nelson’s famous historical tactic: crossing the ‘T’. The special rule allows you to double (or treble) shot at an enemy vessel, then remove the resultant ‘May Not Fire’ counter, enabling you to fire normally in the following turn. When sailing into an enemy line and raking an opposing vessel, this opening torrent of cannon fire will most likely cripple an enemy vessel in short order. Of course, getting close enough to perform this tactic is tricky, which is why many British ships also have the option to make their hulls more resilient with the Sturdy Construction upgrade. Taking this upgrade makes your ships rather expensive, so a good commander of a British fleet will really have to be canny with his manoeuvring in order to bring his firepower to bear where it is most needed. In addition, never forget the usefulness of Frigates or Brigs to harass the enemy line until the big guns can get there. The French are better at ‘aiming high’ (shooting at rigging) and a high proportion of their ships can choose an upgrade to increase their speed. The Spanish have the biggest, most overgunned vessels in the game, at the expense of manoeuvrability. The Russians and Swedes have lots of oared, shallow-draft vessels, while the Americans rely on small-but-elite frigates and overgunned schooners. The US fleet also has the Drilled Crew special rule like the British, but for entirely different reasons. The Americans’ lack of Ships of the Line makes inviting the foe to ‘cross their T’ a foolhardy exercise, but their improved firepower lends itself instead to devastating hit-and-run tactics. Just for fun I’ve included a Privateers fleet list, so that fleets can set aside a proportion of their costs to include private vessels amongst their number, and finally I made sure their were clear guidelines for allying fleets together, whether under the command of a single player or as a collaborative effort. This was a lengthy process, and the fleets were developed only through extensive playtesting – however, if you have any feedback, do please get in touch either through the Warhammer Historical website or the Trafalgar Yahoo! Group. As an added extra, there will be additional fleets made available through the website in the near future – these were developed alongside the main fleets, but had to be dropped due to space considerations (the book is 144 pages as it is, and absolutely packed to the gunnels).

One more thing to add about the book – and this isn’t really anything to do with the rules, so I am digressing a bit – is the design of the painting and modelling section. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a full-colour, step-by-step guide has ever been put together to illustrate how to assemble, paint and rig 1:1200 scale model ships. I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as possible with the instructions, and I have to thank Matt Hutson for his excellent painting skills and great close-up photography. This is a very niche hobby, and the intricacy of the models can really put people off gaming the period, so it was very important to us both to provide a practical primer to painters and modellers.

And with that, the designer’s notes are complete. There are more minutiae I could delve into, but by far the most interesting problems I faced are discussed above. Again, do feel free to pass comments onto us, and sign up to the Yahoo! Group.

Kind regards,

Mark Latham