Monday 9 February 2015

Resources for 'Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls'

With just 2 more ships to paint, and my Seascape terrain mat due any day, my thoughts are turning to using the ships in action! 

I'm hoping to run a small game at the New Buckenham club in a month or two, probably a simple parallel engagement for 2-8 players to try out Alan Abbey's 'Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls' ruleset. It looks a good set of rules, fast to play and simple to pick up, without too much in the way of charts and so on.


Age of sail stuff has been played at club, but not for quite a while, and I'm keen to put on an enjoyable game for everyone. To help, I've worked on a few game resources.


The first set are some foamboard game aids taken from the rules and based on a set I've seen on the 'anything but a one' blog. Thanks to Clive (who writes the blog) for the idea! Clockwise these are the firing arc indicator, wind direction indicator, turning measure, and wind/speed measure.


I've also made/bought some other resources. At the bottom are simple markers to indicate ship sail settings and whether the ship is disabled or sinking. Top left is a set of phase cards I've made, showing the British Repair phase in this case and the back is an old naval map I found on google images. I've also sourced a set of Nelson playing cards to use as damage cards. 

Hopefully they will all contribute to a decent game!

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