Theses are a new set of rules published by Warhammer Historical. The aim is simplicity while trying maintain a Napoleonic Naval feel to the game. We have found the rules very enjoyable to play, however, although they are called 'Trafalgar' we found the maximum number of ships to be 12 a side to give a result after 6 hours gaming at the Attack Wargame Show. We have found 6 ships a side about right number for a 3 hour club night game we game at the Reading Wargames Club.
Like most wargamers, we have made some changes to the rules, following many of David Manley's suggestions published in Wargames Illustrated. We also found that many of the charts we needed to refer to during the game was left off the Trafalgar Quick Play Sheet, so we have produced our own Quick Play Sheet. We have also produced Quick Play Sheet (2) which takes account of our changes to the rules. One of our major changes are the weather rules. While the Trafalgar Weather Rules may be appropriate for compition points based games, as the player holding the weather gauge has a major advantage, so there was a need to allow it to randomly swing between the two players, we did not feel that sudden changes from fog to rain to storm historical. Our weather gauge rules tend to pull the direction of wind back to prevaling direction for the game and the strength to normal. Changes in strength must also pass through several steps and we follow David's recommendation that the players get a turns warning of any change - sailors we able to read the weather from watching the clouds and sea.
FLEET ACTION RULES
For large fleet actions such as our re-fight of the Battle of Trafalgar we use Grand Fleet Actions downloaded from the Wargame Vault.
