Seahammer Rules And Playtesting, Welcome, gits and snots!

Ahoy!

Several forums and members have expressed an interest in naval battles in Warhammer. We have affectionately termed this "Seahammer." While there are different rules out for playing these games, we can discuss what works, what doesn't and what we want to see. This project will go hand-in-hand with our Pirate Orc project in the other forum, but the results will be different. Ideally, this will serve as a resource for members who want to play with ships on rivers and seas. Perhaps we will develop our own set of house rules? I look forward to your input.

Goomb

Good work Goomb! Glad to get this going. I wonder, though, if Warhammer Ahoy! isn't the answer. I've not tried it out, but a lot of folk like it. Perhaps it's already the revamp we want? Or can we improve it.....?

Well, we have three sets of different published rules we can check out and play with:

The General's Compendium
Warhammer Ahoy!
Legends of the High Seas

I think each platform offers different advantages and elements we can explore. in addition, I know Flame On! has some house rules, and our friend Arrgberg has some house rules as well.

We should take a look at some of these platforms and see what we can cobble together OR use one of the game systems listed above.

Goomb

Ahoy ye swabs! Goomb! Groznit!

I love it! I'm swamped at work right now, but I love it! I'll try to codifiy our house rules as soon as I can.

Grog for everyone!
js

OK....I have still not had a chance to play any game of Warhammer with boats in it. I know my local guy likes the Warhammer Ahoy rules. I just glanced at them and they do seem geared towards skirmish rules. Still, though, a lot of the same rules look to be the same as the General's Compendium. I'm not sure if one borrowed from the other, but they look to be meshed together.

Do we have anyone who has played enough of the ship based games to know if there are any real differences between any of the game systems and/or to know which areas need/should be improved?

Personally, I am hoping someone with actual experience can hobble together a great set of rules that I can then start to play with!

Iv'e always wanted seahammer games, I just need some ships though. Well if I ever throw together a decent fleet, probably just two ships or maybe four I will playtest.

Ahoy Git!
Dont foget to add Man O War into yer factoring. It has a lot of rules that make for speedier play with alot less book keeping. It does lose some of the "realisim" but you can certainly add things to it to spice it up.
Ever forward!
BlackSquig

Specifics for add ons? Add a Man O' War Warhammer scale thread. I've looked at the Yahoo group site, but found no compelling reason to leave the swashbuckling General's Compendium.

The local Seahammer expert in my area will be playing a mini game on 4/31 (or 31/4 for you Europeans!). I signed up and will get to play some for the first time. Part of me wants to play for the rules and part of me wants to see how he converted his boats. I plan on directly stealing his ideas to convert my own craft that sit unused in my closet.

I will take pictures and make notes. I'm not sure on the rule set he uses, but gave him this thread to review and/or participate.

I've played a couple of game with the Ahoy! rules.



They seem to work pretty well. Pretty much has to be used with skirmish or Mordheim rules, though. What I'd like to try is a combo game with land forces as well as some ships.

This post has been edited by Sharkbelly on Jan 25 2011, 02:15 PM

Sharkbelly! Welcome aboard! Woot!

Always a pleasure to see these ships.

Sharkbelly - what did you think of the Ahoy rules as published? My group has played with the original rules and, from that experience, made some modifications to help the game run quicker, smoother and, so far, a bit more fun. I'd like to know what your thoughts are... Very nice ships by the way. That Dwarf ironclad is awesome and the use of the toy ships was a great idea. We did the same with the Pirates of the Carribbean ships from Megabloks and they turned out pretty well also.

I'm in skavenwarlord's group and with the modifications he named, I didn't feel like they had to be done with the skirmish rules. I felt that they would be fine to go with the main WHFB rules. It wouldn't be hard to mix regular mass combat and the ships.

Hi Everybody. I'm still alive after my surgery and I am stuck on the sofa with my leg propped up high. I can't do much hobby wise in this position. I did just finish reading "Fell Cargo" from the Black Library, though. It got me thinking about all sorts of Seahammer things and ideas from different quarters. I figured that this might be the most appropriate place to talk about it, as it's the main thread in this forum.

I'm assuming what everyone wants is to find the best way to play naval combat within the Warhammer rules. Whether this is finding the best rules system, modifying the best rules system, or creating a new rules system based on the best of all systems. Personally, I am leaning to the last one. I think if we can hobble the best of all systems and throw in some of our own, we come up with something grand.

From the thread that compares rule systems, I can see that all three of them have different ideas of how combat should take place. Should Seahammer be more about naval guns firing at each other? Or about boarding actions? Should there be a point system involved to create fair battles? What types of guns should all the different races get? How can we balance out fair games?

I will start off by listing one of my biggest influences on what would be cool. Sid Meier's "Pirates" computer game is one of the biggest influences for me. It is a fantastic game that really gets into the flavor of what it was like to be a pirate or privateer. You started off as a captain to small vessel with a crew and a letter of marque for one of the four main powers of the Caribbean (Spain, England, France, and Holland). You prowl the waters of the Caribbean and prey on enemy ships and colonies.

One of the best things about that game was its versatility. You could do almost anything with it. You could capture enemy trade vessels and steal their cargo. You could even steal the ship (if you had enough crew). You then sold all of your goods at friendly ports and hope for a good price. You had to worry about how much tonnage your ships could carry and what was worth the most. How many men did you carry and did you have enough food/water for them? The more men you had made it easier to capture enemy ships, but they took up more cargo room, as did their food. If you captured enemy ships, you had to spread your crew out to man each ship. Sometimes you really wanted to capture the slow trading vessels so you could use their large cargo holds to put your treasure. It wasn't always about which vessel was the best fighter, but about what was the best ship for your needs. Some had large holds, but were slower ships and would slow down your fleet. There was always a balance of what you needed that had to be maintained and it made it a challenge to follow through with.

If you wanted to blast the ships of the enemy, you could sail the waters and just blow up any enemy ship you found. Foreign powers would send out pirate hunters to capture you. You could attack enemy towns and cities and plunder them! You could also install your own governor of whatever major power you wanted and make it a home port. The best part about defeating pirate hunters was that you could capture these large, enemy vessels and use them as your own! Sometimes you wanted a large and many gunned warship, but sometimes it was better to have a smaller and faster ship that was filled with troops! You didn't want to outgun the enemy, you just wanted to out-maneuver the enemy and start a boarding action. There were different styles of combat that you had to take. It made the game really interesting. If you were smaller, maybe you didn't want to be boarded or you would be overwhelmed. You tried to use the bigger ships size to its own disadvantage while you sailed around it and fired broadside after broadside into it.

So, what I would like to see is something that was a bit of an open system. I like the idea of limited crew from the Warhammer Ahoy! rules, but I also like the idea that you can have a ship crammed full of troops that were meant to board the enemy, perhaps at the expense of something else or the addition of points? So, if we try to make it more of a campaign like game, there are values to different types of ships and the amount of sailors you have in your fleet. Or, just have it situational so that you can try to field the type of ship that you want to have. It would be nice to find something with a good balance.

Also, I read "Fell Cargo" from the Black Library and I enjoyed it. It gave me some ideas. It dealt with a cursed ship that was hard to kill. It made me think about all sorts of special ships you can have. There would be Undead ships, like VC ships and TK ships, but there could also be Demon ships. Maybe they would be crewed by damned souls or even demons themselves. They could have rules to always have the wind (mystic wind) and perhaps have some ward saves against even cannon balls. Yes, they would be tough, but not meant to be equal on a one vs one fight. It would be something like 3-4 ships vs one. Still, it would be kind of cool to have a fight like that.

OK....these were just some open ideas of what inspires me and what I would like to see done.

I know this is going to be tough but my group would definitely want to get a balance between boarding and blasting away with lots of cannon. At the moment we are trying doubling the Hull Points listed in the General's Compendium, so reduce the chance of sinking a ship before a boarding action can happen. We are still getting a few good rounds of exchanged gunfire but boarding decides the action.

(Sid Meier's "Pirates" sounds great!)

This post has been edited by WarbossKurgan on Apr 27 2009, 08:40 AM