Any experience with Oak & Iron and Black Seas?

I’ve been absent from SoG for a while since discovering Post Captain. No game ive ever played has been a better simulation while somehow also not being overwhelming at all.

With PC as my more serious game, SoG has been more of a quick beer and pretzels game with the simple rules.

Would love to see how these other two systems compare though. Black Seas is the same period as Sails of Glory, Oak & Iron is 17th century buccaneers and fleets.

There are some old threads when these systems first came out, but nothing new. How do they compare in fun, realism, and playtime to SoG?.

I have O&I (Oak & Iron) and I like it because it is different but not necessarily better than SoG. So far I have only played 3 games. You usually have 2 or 3 ships in your squadron in O&I and the firing is not simultaneous which means that if you get some good hits then return fire is often reduced. To me that rewards good planning although there is stil an element of luck with dice rolls. The downside of O&I is unpainted ships. I am no artist but I have painted mine. You could probably drill a central hole in the O&I bases and use SoG minis if you wanted to if you want pretty ships. I do not have Black Seas.

Unfortunately, the forums are on their facebook page. Even if you do not like facebook then you are going to have to use it to see what is going on. The Boardgame Geek forum is pretty dead apart from my VFCBodie persona posts.

To summarise, in opinion O&I is different enough to be interesting and without complex rules. There are skills and abilities cards and other upgrades you can use to make every game unique. Dice tossers will love it. :beer:

Thanks for your appraisal Gary. I hope this is helpful Joseph.
Rob.

Thankee both! Great write up Gary thank you. I’ve been doing a lot of digging and it seems BS is just considered the inferior ruleset. o&I seems different enough to be worth having along with SoG. Plus firelock games makes Blood and Plunder which is a roaring good time. I’ll grab a set of Oak and Iron ships tomorrow at historicon!

Been thinking ........ you probably can use all your SoG minis in Oak & Iron just as they are. The SoG ship inserts have red, orange and green zones that approximate the O&I bases for wind and ship movement purposes. You can also copy and laminate the O&I ship cards for your fleet or you can make new cards using a spreadsheet. That would be a heck of a lot cheaper than buying umpteen O&I sets where you need multiples of the same ship class for any scenario.

I will be playing Oak & Iron Friday with my gaming group. As I noted on Twitter very similar to B&P in the game concepts. Points of sail are a bit abstracted but it is a fun game. I will try to remember to take pictures.