As regular followers of the blog will know, the last few years of my wargaming hobby has been centred around age of sail gaming with a theme around producing large naval battles for the tabletop using 1:700 models in the Grand Manner.
The rules provide just the right amount of granularity that produces all the narrative to the drama on the table as it unfolds, whilst placing the tabletop commanders firmly in the role of a senior admiral rather than one of the seventy three captains, and they are a rule set I'm very happy to commend to others looking to do something similar.
One such addition was the adoption of an idea produced by Alan Butler for his rules Grand Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail, namely a set of chance cards which he put together for his rules that he used in his own Trafalgar game back in 2005.
That said I am part of a generation of wargamers who are inveterate adopters, adaptors, and improvers, and I have never used a set of rules yet without rewriting bits of them or adding house rule adaptions here and there, part of which saw me rewriting FDS to work with the larger 1:700 models I wanted to use, which the rules facilitate excellently, along with a few other additions that caused me to have my own copy of them for use with my games and as references for the players.
One such addition was the adoption of an idea produced by Alan Butler for his rules Grand Fleet Actions in the Age of Sail, namely a set of chance cards which he put together for his rules that he used in his own Trafalgar game back in 2005.
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| The Trafalgar refight at NWS Yeovilton 2025 |
Grand Fleet Actions were supplied by A&A games via Wargames Vault up until very recently and Alan provided a set of these cards in PDF format to go with his rules, and I simply used them with changes for use with FDS and found they worked very well in adding to the historic narrative in both Trafalgar and Camperdown games; with the most recent game of Trafalgar fought at the NWS Yeovilton last year seeing the card play result in the death of Nelson and the wounding of Collingwood, following the actual events unerringly.
Since those games I have reported on here on JJ's, I have had enquiries about getting a copy of the Chace Cards and so if you would like them in PDF format produced for Far Distant Ships you can use the link to my files, under Resources and Downloads, as illustrated, and I will reply back to open access to them for you.
You will get a simple PDF that has some basic instructions for printing each card with a back and front that are easily reproduced on light card and folded back to back to produce the cards of which there are ten and requiring three copies to produce a deck of thirty cards.
I hope they add fun to your own games.
In the meantime Carolyn and I are off on our travels again and I hope to bring you another interesting 'JJ's on Tour' historically themed post from another part of the world yet again illustrating what a fun hobby historical wargaming is no matter where in the world we may be.
JJ
