Welcome to Line of Battle, Fleet level miniatures rules for gaming the pivotal battles of the Age of Sail. While focused initially on the Napoleonic period, Line of Battle may be used for any Fleet action from the 17th to early 19th centuries.
Line of Battle was written during the course of a Napoleonic campaign to solve a fundamental problem: How can you play a large free-form battle from a campaign when rival fleets clash, let alone a large historical battle such as Trafalgar, in a single afternoon?
There are a number of high quality Fighting Sail-era rules that excel in depicting ship-to-ship, or small squadron actions, and usually entail such a high level of detail that makes fleet scale actions impractical to play -- unless you have a week of free time! Line of Battle fills the fleet-scale action gap, and allows gamers to step into the role of Fleet Admiral, directing the actions of dozens of ships, not just a small squadron.
Line of Battle lets you re-fight major actions like Trafalgar in one afternoon, and with its scenario generator and campaign rules, conduct free-form games or tie-in with campaigns. These rules may be used as a stand-alone game, or in conjunction with the strategic campaign rules in Hoplite Research's "Corp Command."
Among other features, Line of Battle includes:
- Signals-based Command Quality
driven
orders system - Boarding Parties, Land Batteries,
Night Actions, Fog, Gunboats, Transports
& Hot Shot - Detailed Navy and Admiral
Lists of All Major
and Minor Powers from 1792-1815 - Unique ZOOM Chase and Intercept, and Naval Terrain Generation rules to create naval battles
- Fulton's Infernal Machines: Submarines & Steam Batteries
- Scenario & Campaign system ties in with Corps Command
- Features starter battles of Trafalgar, Nile, Camperdown & Cape St. Vincent
- No rebasing of ships needed, good for any scale
Line of Battle comes with:
- a bound 29-page basic ruleset
- 3x reference sheets
- appendices covering the
major
fleets of the period, campaign rules,
scenario generators, battles, unique
units, and a "Naval Combat 101"
tactics discussion - numerous player aids like
fleet forms,
ship silhouettes, and game templates.
Take Charge of the greatest navies of the Age of Sail! Line of Battle! will let you refight the major naval battles of Naploeon's Day, generate "pick up" battles for on-the-spot games, or with Corps Command, run lengthy naval campaigns.