How much space?

[Legionary312AD]

Hello folks.

I am rather hoping Trafalgar can scratch my rather considerable naval warfare itch that has been driving me crazy for years. The main problem I have at the moment is space. How much space does a game take up? Is it the usual "wargames standard" of 6x4ft for a 1000pter?

[Kealios]

For 1/1200 scale, most encounters are on a 4x4 board. A few scenarios ask for a 6x4 board. In 2400, which is what I play with my Old Glory ships, we get to halve that

[Legionary312AD]

Excellent, nice and manageable.

I am going to go all out for 1:1200 scale as I just love the look of the Langton miniatures and like the hard work. I'll start with a couple of Frigates and then get the starter kits.

[scrivs]

We are playing in 1/2400 but keeping the rulebook ranges so we play the fleet engagement on a 4ft x 4ft

[Legionary312AD]

I just ordered 2 British Frigates (a 28 and a 40) and two French (both 36) from Langton. It took a while to figure it all out with sail settings, pennants, bases and ratlines.... now I just need to get the right kind of string to do the rigging.

I am moving to a new house soon and am thinking of tables and gaming areas and am relieved that Trafalgar uses a reasonable play area.

[Mattblack]

We had a 600 point game on a 4x4 table (2No. 2x4 boards) but ran out of space pretty quickly. We found that there is a tendancy to go down wind so once we got to the end of the table we simply switched the rear board over so the fighting could continue. Only a few flaming wrecks were left on the up wind board so we decided they wouldn't contribute to the game any more anyway. In this way we actually played over a 4x8 boards as we did it twice.

[scrivs]

We play on quite a large blue cloth over a 6ft x 4ft and ignore the daft "anything that leaves the table counts as dead" rule. We just scroll the cloth over the playing area to give us more space.

Of course we may have to invoke a daft "anything that leaves the cloth counts as dead" rule one day

[midpoint]

I think 4x4 is an adequate amount of space for a small game. I try to play on at least 6x5 and up to 9x5 if I can. A lot of course depends on wind direction and entry point - bit boring starting a long way downwind if the table is too big.