Avenge Medway! Anglo-Dutch Wars naval age of sails 17th century wargame rules

Avenge Medway! is a set of naval wargame rules covering the 17th century era (1652-1699), including the Anglo-Dutch Wars.

It features sections on:

Starting weather conditions for various seas for wind, fog, &c., and

a unique sailing rules system, Signalling, Leeward drift, Veering & tacking, Boxhauling & in irons, Running sail & sail shiver, Running foul, Heaving-to, Grounding, Pooping, Wind shadow, Cannon overboard, Towing, Jury rigging & rudders, Hull shapes, Gunnery, Small arms fire, Friendly fire, Swivel guns, Fire aloft & in the hull, Flooding, Heated shot, Bomb ketch shore bombardment, Boarding attempts, Striking colours, Secured prizes, Ships boats, Cutting out operations, Raising and dropping anchor, Turnings on springs & warping, Linking cables, Girt, Fireships…

plus discussions about rates of fire, damage, carelessness, the light room, thick smoke, gunnery, waterlogging, suction pumps, danger to magazines from fire, tactics, doubling the line, falling out of line, en fluyte, crank & swift ships, and headsails.

Avenge Medway! uses the same core mechanics as our England Expects rules, but tweaked for the specific period so players don't have to deal with clutter during gameplay for another period.

England Expects covers the Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars, Fighting Instructions covers the 18th century before the Revolutionary Wars kicked in, and Avenge Medway mainly deals with the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century. There were lots of subtle changes which took place, which are reflected in the rule sets.

The tabletop games is played with model ships, or counters, with several model scales directly accounted for in how the rules are set out, making the game easy to play no matter what scale ships are being used. There's lots of dice rolling for broadsides, and we've done intensive research to get results to match historic impact: so pistol shot initial broadsides raking the stern of a ship is going to be more effective than cannon fire at random shot range (long range in modern parlance).

Wind direction is tied to tabletop game sides, making working out the direction a ship is facing easy to establish, which is necessary since the sailing rules show how to veer, boxhaul, tack, etc. The number of ships in the battle can increase once you've mastered how the system works, but it's best to start with a few ships to master the basics.

To summarise, it's quite a unique system in parts, developed over years of original research in some cases using first hand sources, coupled with what you'd expect: tabletop games, using tape measures and model ships, rolling dice, that sort of thing.