Fighting Instructions are naval wargame rules covering the 18th century era (1700-1789), including the Wars of the Spanish & Austrian Successions, the Seven Years War & the American War of Independence.
These rules have sections on: Starting weather conditions for various seas for wind, fog, &c., Unique sailing rules system, Signalling, Leeward drift, Veering & tacking, Boxhauling & in irons, Running sail & sail shiver, Running foul, Heaving-to, Grounding, Pooping, Wind shadow, Cannon overboard, Towing, Jury rigging & rudders, Hull shapes, Gunnery, Small arms fire, Friendly fire, Swivel guns, Fire aloft, in the hull, Flooding, Heated shot, Bomb ketch shore bombardment, Boarding attempts, Striking colours, Secured prizes, Ships boats, Cutting out operations, Raising and dropping anchor, Turnings on springs & warping, Linking cables, Girt, Fireships, plus discussions about rates of fire, damage, carelessness, the light room, thick smoke, gunnery, carronades, obusier de vaisseau, waterlogging, suction pumps including Coles-Bentinck chain pumps, danger to magazines from fire, tactics, doubling the line, falling out of line, en fluyte, crank & swift ships, and East Indiamen.
Fighting Instructions use to the same core mechanics as our England Expects rules, but tweaked for the specific period so players don’t have to deal with clutter during gameplay for another period. England Expects covers the later era, Fighting Instructions covers the 18th century before the Revolutionary Wars kicked in. There were lots of subtle changes which took place, which are reflected in the rule sets. For example, signals were more in use during the England Expects era covered, and fighting instructions during the Fighting Instructions era covered (hence the title!). So, to summarise, they are very similar sets but tweaked for their specific periods.
The tabletop games is played with model ships, or counters, with several model scales directly accounted for in how the rules are set out, making the game easy to play no matter what scale ships are being used. There’s lots of dice rolling for broadsides, and we’ve done intensive research to get results to match historic impact: so pistol shot initial broadsides raking the stern of a ship is going to be more effective than cannon fire at random shot range (long range in modern parlance).
Wind direction is tied to tabletop game sides, making working out the direction a ship is facing easy to establish, which is necessary since the sailing rules show how to veer, boxhaul, tack, etc. The number of ships in the battle can increase once you’ve mastered how the system works, but it’s best to start with a few ships to master the basics. To summarise, it’s quite a unique system in parts, developed over years of original research in some cases using first hand sources, such as Falconer’s Maritime Dictionary (which is an 18th century gem!), and involved visits to HMS Trincomalee, HMS Victory, membership of the Navy Records Society, &c., coupled with what you’d expect: tabletop games, using tape measures and model ships, rolling dice, that sort of thing.
Game sequence is I go-You go. There is a guide to putting together ship records included, and some brief examples. Damage to ships has to be written down.
As an example of movement: a swift sailer frigate (cruiser) facing a tabletop edge designated as facing wind on the beam can move 8 knots, or 24 centimetres, in a light breeze, according to checks on a table in the rules when using 1/3000 scale model ships, and then a roll to check for leeward drift is die using the seamanship table. For a crank ship with average crew a roll of 4,5 or 6 would be necessary to avoid drifitng. In light airs the drift, or slippage, in the direction of the wind would be half a knot, or 1.5 centimetres in this example. So if ship slipping like this would be moved 1.5 centimetres in the direction of the wind after doing its normal move. Ship model scales catered for are 1.4800, 1/3000, 1/2400, and 1/1200.
To show how shooting basically works: you check to see if you ship’s broadside (or stern chasers?) is in position to shoot at the intended target, then check the range, see if there are two or more ships engaging it, decide if aiming at the hull or sail and rigging, then shoot: range depends on gun type, so for example an 18pdr cannon when staying with our 1/300 scale example used above has a point blank range of 21 centimetres, and maximum random shot range of 105 centimetres (also pistol shot range equates to 2 centimetres). You also need to know if there enough men available to work the guns, of course, so being engaged on both sides can be difficult if you don’t! Say you are shooting within point blank range, with double-shotted guns, against the hull, then you roll two dice per gun, with 6 scoring a hit (on six-sided dice). Say four hits are scored, then you roll again four times and another 6 means roll again on the hull damage table in each instance to see if there is specific damge, for example causing deck beams to fall, or to the bowsprit. Anyway the four original hits will still cause damage: 4 hits by 18pdrs against a stoutly timbered target causes 8 casualties (this is worked out by consulting the Casualties Table).
