Preview: Set Sail with The Full Nelson
By Tom Gall
Full Nelson is a set of rules for age of sail ships written by Charley Walker and soon to be published by the Too Fat Lardies. Too Fat Lardies was generous enough to supply NoDiceNoGlory with an early copy to run some play tests, which is what this article covers. I won’t go into precise details here and there because it’s still a work in progress. My intent is to give you, the reader, a preview of the rules which are subject to change. If you want to try it out in person and happen to be in the area of Minnesota, I’m looking to add the game to the schedule for Austi-Con in October, Castle Con in January and AdeptiCon. Spread the lard!
Models
As with all things lard, they don’t dictate a particular line of their own miniatures instead deferring to others to sort that out. The game is ideally played on a 6×4, and the scale recommended for ship is 1/700 or 1/1200 using inches or 1/2400 or 1/3000 using centimeters. I’m blessed that a few years back our local gaming group had played a fair amount of Wooden Ships and Iron Men and Warfare in the Age of Reason at Sea, thus my fleet was more than ready to try out Full Nelson without any work what so ever.
I’ve mostly GHQ models which as it turns out is still making models for the period. I can’t recommend their kit enough as they’re great quality. I also have some NavWar ships but alas their website seems to be grumpy or perhaps they might not be around anymore. Warlord’s Black Seas ships range between 1/600 and 1/800 so they might be a something to consider if they are easier to obtain.
Weigh Anchor
For our game we decided on a 2 on 2 action with ships of the line. Two French 74 gunners taking on two British 74 gunners. We rolled where on the table each side would enter and made sure it was in a good wind for both sides to keep it fun. The British arrived sailing line ahead on the far side of the picture and the French on the right hand side of the picture, again sailing line ahead.
Each ship has it’s own panel which includes it’s capabilities such as speed, turning, number of decks, how many dice you’re rolling when firing at various range bands and most important places for Action Dice! Action Dice are a key element of the game, there are sailing, guns and leadership action dice. If an action dice passes that’ll set you up to perform useful things like fire the guns, but also address issues as your ship invariably starts taking hits. Each ship starts out with 3 sailing dice (white), 2 gunner dice (black) and one leadership die (red). These are rolled when the ship is activated.
Activations are similar to the Sharpe practice scheme of cards or flags which depends on the size of the engagement as well if if there are squadrons of ships running about following their leader. We opted for individual action this game so each ship had a card.
Fire as she bears!
Ranges in Full Nelson are 24″ and less. Given these ships are 1/1200 scale, it fits the scale well. One must spend an action die to fire and another to load. As our trainee Captains soon found one must watch not only where the enemy is sailing but also the friendlies in order to maximize your opportunities to deal damage.
One of the aspects of firing I most enjoyed in Full Nelson was the fact there isn’t a concept of hull points or damage to be tracked before your ship loses masts or slips below the waves. Rather it’s build into the action dice, whereby I mean as you take hits and determine where those hits land, a part of the ship is disrupted by the first hit, then an action die is put into irons (lose a sailing die or a gun or even leadership die depending on the nature of the hit) and then if you take a further hit, the other side not only captures the die but has a chance to give your ship a critical.
Lose too many action dice and strike your colors or run off or worse.
Brilliant!
In our little action the two sides thought they’d dance around the island playing peek-a-boo and other wise trading fire at long range which generally wasn’t doing much. As you see when you have an action die in irons or even if just disrupted, you can spend an action die of the correct type to “fix” / recover the die.
If ships have the time they can generally stay ahead of issues before they get too dire. However as the ranges close and the hits become more frequent, then luck (by passing your action die) and circumstances (good sailing) become all the more important in keeping yourself afloat.
Get’er another broadside this time with feeling! The Command die can be used to improve your shooting. For instance you can encourage the crew to aim high, or aim low or even go for the devastating broadside that a number of 6’s will bring out.
Adept use of the islands aided one French Captain’s ability to close the distance. The British ships are closer to the camera and the French are further away. The ship I was running was the tailing Frenchmen.
And then with a specular bit of luck due to activation order and sailing dice (you can spend sailing dice to increase your movement speed), suddenly an exciting bow rake can be performed by the dastardly French.
The British come hard about, a grapple is attempted but fails! We were hoping that we might get a board action but alas not this game!
And then the dastardly French strike again with a stern rake against the other British ship causing it to start on fire. Both sides unloaded now and the British thinking they’d best turn away.
The other French Captain (me!) sails in to seal the deal as it were. We called it at this point. The one British ship having been bested and down to few action dice, the fire and all it was clear the day was done.
Fini
It’s hard to say when Full Nelson will be officially release. The rule book has obvious spots where things are yet to be written. No doubt there might be some tuning here and there as always happens with games that are under development.
It is fair to say that the mechanics are solid. This will be one of those games that is easy to pick up, difficult to master and very satisfying to play.