2015 Solo Campaign Rules

Personnel Rules

Rosters

Player Captains

• Create a roster of eight ship captains.
• Assign ranks to your ship captains as appropriate to the nation for which you sail.
• For each scenario, choose ship captains that are available. Sometimes, ship captains are unavailable due to wounds or capture.
• Ship captains should be assigned to appropriate ships as needed by scenario requirements.
• As ship captains gain experience through victories, they will gain skills and be able to captain larger ships.

AI Captains

• I will develop AI ship captain rosters for each player.
• For each scenario, choose AI ship captains from the available roster. Sometimes, ship captains are unavailable due to wounds or capture.
• AI ship captains should be assigned to appropriate ships as needed by scenario requirements.
• As AI ship captains gain experience through victories, they will gain skills and be able to captain larger ships.

Abilities

Ship captains accrue ability points according to the following schema. For every 10 ability points accrued, a ship captain gains a new ability.

• 1 point for every enemy ship defeated (sunk/captured) that is of a broadly defined smaller class, for example a 74-gun SoL defeating a frigate, or a frigate defeating a sloop. The scenario author will define such classes.
• 2 points for every enemy ship defeated of the same broadly defined class.
• 3 points for every enemy ship defeated of a broadly defined larger class.
• 1 point for achieving a scenario specific goal - does not require the taking of a ship but the achievement of a strategic goal as defined by the scenario writer.

Choose two ship captains and assign each one an ability of your choice. I will assign abilities to the AI ship captains.

Ship Captain Ability List

• Charismatic Captain (CC): When the ship has only one empty box in the Crew Damage track, the player may ignore the next two Crew Loss special damages. When a third Crew Loss damage is taken, it is recorded normally, and the ship surrenders.
• Iron Captain (IC): When the captain is wounded, the wound is ignored. May be used once per game.
• Lucky Captain (LC): Whenever a rule requires a random occurrence to take place, the captain can choose the result instead of randomly determining it. May be used once per game.
• Intuitive Captain (InC): Before choosing a maneuver, the captain may use this ability to look at the maneuver to be executed in the present turn of an enemy ship within one ruler from the captain's ship's base. The captain must declare the use of the ability, and then check the distance. If the distance is more than one ruler, the ability is used, but there is no effect. Otherwise, the captain may look at the enemy's ship's maneuver. This ability cannot be used against an enemy ship that also has an Intuitive Captain. May be used twice per game.
• Quick Captain (QC): When a captain's ship would collide with another ship, the captain can maneuver the ship sufficiently to avoid a collision or entanglement. May be used once per game.
• Deft Captain (DC): After all ships have moved, the captain can rotate his/her ship. Keep any one corner of the ship is fixed, and the opposite corner can rotate by up to the width of the ruler. May be used twice per game.
• Handling Captain (HC): When wind facing is determined, if the ship is in the red zone, the captain can rotate the ship the minimum amount so that it is straddling the red and yellow, and thus is considered to have a yellow wind aspect. May be used once per game.
• Maneuvering Captain (MC): When maneuvering the ship, the captain can choose to stop at an intermediate spot along the arrow, and not at the end-point. May be used twice per game.
• Steering Captain (SC): The captain can increase Veer by 1 for duration of the turn. May be used twice per game.
• Aiming Captain (AC): When firing a broadside, and an enemy ship draws one or more "0s", the captain can make the enemy ship draw an additional counter. May be used twice per game.
• Reloading Captain (RC): The captain can lead the crew to reload a single broadside immediately after it has fired. May be used once per game.
• Deadeye Captain (DeM): When shooting muskets, if a "0" damage counter is drawn, the captain can force the enemy ship to draw an additional counter. May be used once per game.

Promotions and Decorations

Suggestions needed.

Maneuver and Combat Rules

Maneuvering

• Choose the quadrant in which the majority of the appropriate ship is. If the ship is equally in two sectors, choose the quadrant containing the front of the ship.
• If the wind direction falls exactly on a quadrant dividing line, randomly determine which quadrant via a die roll.
• If a ship is taken aback, use the red card corresponding to the maneuver card generated by the AI chart.
• When determining the +1 or +2 die roll modifier due to range to enemy ship, measure from the most advantageous firing arc red dot on the AI ship to the base of the player ship.
• If a die roll would cause a ship to violate veer, choose sharpest turn within veer limits.
• Sails are set to Battle Sails.

Combat

• Only use Ball ammo.
• When choosing between short and long distance shots for the AI ship, always choose short unless raking - B-damage is more deadly than A-damage - better to have less chits with greater chance of inflicting damage per chit.
• Only use the Crew Losses when special damage chits are pulled.

Crew Damage Effects on Captain

When half of a ship's Crew Damage boxes, rounded up, are filled, roll two six-sided dice to determine the effect on the ship's captain. Re-roll each time the ship takes additional crew damage.

Crew Damage Effects on Captain Table

• 2 or less - the captain is killed
• 3 - the captain is severely wounded; skip 2-4 scenarios
• 4 - the captain is wounded; skip 1 scenario
• 5+ - the captain escaped injury

Modifiers to Crew Damage Effects on Captains Die Rolls

• -1 if Crew Damage is caused by musket fire
• -1 if Crew Damage is caused by a rear raking shot
• -1 if all of the Crew Damage boxes are filled
• More than one modifier can apply on a given die roll

Capturing Captains

When a ship surrenders, the captain runs the risk of being captured. The first ship to touch bases with the surrendered ship, and remain there the following turn, secures the surrendered ship's captain. An AI ship will attempt securing a surrendered captain if it is within one ruler of the surrendered ship, and the player's other ships are more than one ruler from both the Ai and surrendered ship. Otherwise, it prepares to attack or defend itself against the oncoming player's ship.

If the only remaining ships of a given side on the board are surrendered, and if the opposing side has at least one functioning ship remaining, then the surrendered captain(s) are auto-captured by the surviving ship(s).

Disengagement

When a ship is within the last three boxes of hull damage or crew hits, role a 6-sided die for disengagement: 1-4 = remain in battle; 5-6 = disengage. Roll each time a ship takes additional damage. Disengaging ships will attempt to exit their side as directly as possible, and will avoid combat, only taking shots of opportunity. The nature of disengaging can be altered based on scenario specific rules.

Modifiers to Disengagement Die Rolls

• +1 if both hull damage and crew hits are within the last three boxes
• +1 for each enemy ship that is not disengaging
• -1 for each friendly ship that is not disengaging
• Additional modifiers as per relevant captain/crew skills

Scenario and AAR Guidelines

Scenarios

• Provide a background story to the scenario. The story can reenact a historical event, can be an adaptation of a historical event, can be based on a type of historical event, or can be purely fictional. Keep the scenario as nation-free as possible given the various navies for which players are sailing. It is acceptable to have the AI ships represent a specific nation not chosen by any of the players.
• Provide clear setup instructions.

1. State how large of a playing surface is needed. This will accommodate players who do not have mats.
2. State the number and relative sizes of ships.
3. State where ships are initially placed. If possible, include a diagram. Use phrases such as "Within a ruler of the Player's side of the board" or other helpful phrases.
4. State the wind direction. It is best to use a phrase such as "The wind is blowing from the AI side toward the Player's side" or some such thing. The clearer the phrasing, the better it will be understood by players.

• Provide any special rules that are to be used in the scenario, e.g. Player's ships hold fire until in short range.
• Provide victory conditions, for example, Player loses 2 points for every AI ship that exits the board on the Player's side, AI ships score 2 points for every Player ship sunk and 1 point for every Player ship that escapes, if the Player has 5 more victory points than the AI side, the Player achieves a decisive victory. The associated victory points do not need to match the captain ability attainment points; all captain ability attainment points will be determined based on AAR guidelines. Scenario victory points are used solely as a means to help players determine how well they played a given scenario.
• Provide any scenario-specific goals that go towards captain's ability attainment points, for example, Player prevents all enemy ships from exiting player's side of the board.

AARs

Please post AARs in the Campaign sub-forum under Normal Threads: http://sailsofglory.org/forumdisplay...Solo-Campaigns

At the end of each AAR, please post the following for each player and AI captain:

Captain's name (P or AI) / condition at the end of the scenario / victories and accomplishments
e.g.: Lieutenant Gerard Dujardin (P) / returned to port / no victories
e.g.: Commander Edward Wright (AI) / severely wounded - miss 3 scenarios / captured 1 ship

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Important Links

Solo Maneuver Charts

Player Rosters and Records

Scenario Writing Order

January: Eric (7eat51)
February: Neil (Union Jack)
March: Jim (Nightmoss)
April: Neil (Union Jack)
May: Eric (7eat51)
June: Matthias (spiessbuerger)
July:
August: Jonas (TexaS)
September:
October:
November:
December:


Roster

British
Eric (7eat51)
Neil (Union Jack)
Charles (CSherrange)
Finn (TexSwede)
Garrett (Grogmaker)

French
Jim (Nightmoss)
Matthias (spiessbuerger)
Kevin (Ozariig)