Playing with Battle Box: Age of Sail

 “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.”

— Seneca

I’ve dabbled in many historical wargaming periods over the years. The Age of Sail remains one for which I’ve never really found an accessible game — in both cost and rules — until now. Feral Wizard’s Battle Box: Age of Sail promises to deliver an intuitive game with plenty of tactical choices in a small package (much like its previous game, Battle Box: Napoleonic Wars). The game ran a successful Kickstarter back in the spring and should deliver physical components by the end of the year...but backers received the print-and-play component files when the campaign ended. So I printed out some cards and rules and played a few battles using my craft store sailing ships and my large-hex light-blue ocean canvas. After a few games to help me grasp the mechanics and strategies I found it offered a host of player choices to add depth to what seems on the surface a basic Age of Sail game.

Feral Wizard’s first foray into this game-in-a-tiny-box format, Battle Box: Napoleonic Wars, piqued my interest when it appeared on Kickstarter; I quite enjoyed it when it arrived, being a concise set of rules for period battles, with appropriate forces represented by wooden blocks, a modular map of cards, and intuitive gameplay with just the right amount of tactical choices. It also catered to my occasional interest in that era with a low price point and short play time. The small box and involved gameplay was a nice change from large, expensive “table hog” wargames that consume time, money, and space. So when I saw Feral Wizard was releasing an Age of Sail game in a similar format, I looked at the Kickstarter campaign and backed it.

In my many years of adventure gaming I’ve dabbled in many different genres across wargames, board games, and roleplaying games. The Age of Sail seems to be one of those, a period I enjoy exploring as part of my maritime history explorations, but one where I’ve not really found a game that both represents the technicalities of the time and caters to my urge for not-terribly-complicated rules.

Years ago my son joined a kid-friendly game sponsored by a regional club at a large wargaming convention, part craft activity and part game. Participants built and decorated ships from craft kits, then sailed them onto the wargaming table in a huge fleet action. (I’d post a link to the rules if I could find them online, but it was a long time ago and the internet remains quite ephemeral.) For a while that was my go-to game when we wanted to play an Age of Sail game. At one point I acquired Ares Games’ Sails of Glory core set and a few extra ships;. We played it a few times and I felt the basic version game mechanics were just about my speed. The system isn’t too hard to strip down to run for kids and newcomers, which I like to do to demonstrate using games for learning. And although the ship models look fantastic they can add up when purchasing components for a fleet.

So when I noticed the Kickstarter for Battle Box: Age of Sail I knew it would also work nicely. It seemed to have some basic, intuitive rules with some tactical depth, a small format for portability, and the ability to scale up with some of my existing wargaming resources. As a backer I had access to the rules and print-and-play components. Although one can find a free PDF summary of the rules on the game’s BoardGameGeek page, the full print-and-play version at Wargame Vault provides all the components — cards for ships, damage, and upgrades, map sheets, the wind chart reminder, counters for ships, and the rules — for $5.95. While I appreciate a physical format small enough to fit into a tin, I wanted to try the rules with my existing Age of Sail toys: several craft-store ships* (about seven inches long) and a large blue hex mat I made for other naval wargaming.

Although the game is suitable for fleet actions, my first self-play solitaire games involved a head-to-head battle between a British ship and French ship. Each ship gets a card with essential information on it: a track to monitor Hull Points (HPs) with a colored block and a few notes on the Sailing Points (SPs) and a seamanship rating (listed as a number and plus sign, like 4+). Both get a penalty when the Hull Points dip below a certain threshold. A card indicates the wind direction and the effects that has on ships depending on their position relative to the wind.

Each turn sides roll for initiate, deciding which one activates a ship first. For single ships this proves easy, but with fleets, players activate groups of ships in line...until they disperse, then it’s one ship out of formation at a time. Rolling double ones or sixes on the initiative changes the wind direction by one hex face and forces a roll-off of the tie.

Each activation players may make a seamanship test, move, and fire. It seems pretty basic, but each step has a host of nuances that affect one’s strategy.

“Regular” crews have a seamanship of 4+ while “Able” crews get 3+. Players can use the roll in one of three ways each activation: removing one point of damage or one critical damage card; maneuvering one hex port or starboard without having moved a hex first (useful if facing into the wind “in irons”); or using it to repel boarders. The roll comes at a cost; making a seamanship roll at the beginning of the activation imposes a –1 penalty when firing later.

The British ship unleashes a fierce broadside
at the French ship, now on fire....

Movement depends on the wind direction relative to the ship’s position. Given their shape, ships sit on two board hexes. “Wind Abaft,” coming from the three hexes astern of the ship, allows it to move one hex for one sailing point. “Wind Forward,” pointing into one of the two side hexes ahead of a ship, costs two sailing points to move one hex. “In Irons,” with wind blowing directly at the ship’s bow, halts movement; to continue on the next activation, the player must make a seamanship roll which, if successful, allows it to turn on hex face and continue moving or, if failed, just lets it turn. Otherwise turning one hex face, pivoting on the ship’s stern, costs one SP assuming the ship has already moved at least one hex.

Ranged combat remains the primary means of reducing an enemy ship’s HP. Ships can fire on enemy vessels within their field of fire, a spread outward from the three hexes along the side of the attacker. The player rolls two dice, each hitting on a four or higher within the first four hexes, or a five or six for targets at those ranges. The attacker suffers a penalty for having made a seamanship roll earlier in the turn; raking a ship from directly astern or ahead also provides bonuses to reflect the deadly nature of the angle of those attacks. Hits reduce HP, but doubles count the damage and inflict critical hits with complications like fire, taking water, and a mast down that affect the ship’s performance. When a ship loses its last HP it “strikes the colors” and surrenders.

Close combat proves quite costly, as it does in most other warfare simulations. If ships are adjacent and even partially within the moving ship’s fire arc at the end of one’s movement, the active ship may try to board the other. Both exchange broadsides, then the target may make a seamanship roll to repel boarders and end the assault; if it fails or the ship does not make the roll, each side gets to roll two dice for melee combat, with results meeting or exceeding their seamanship score inflicting damage, with doubles doubling damage. The melee continues until one ship disengages at the start of its activation with a successful seamanship roll.

The game includes additional cards for “upgrades,” advantages one can attach to the ship card that provide bonuses to firing and SP, more quickly repair damage, and ignore reduced SP and seamanship when heavily damaged.

As I discovered with Battle Box: Napoleonic Wars the rules’ brevity sometimes leads to uncertainty about how some mechanics work. In the case of Age of Sail, I was initially unsure whether a ship had to use its full amount of SP to move each turn; but by examining an example I realized this was not the case. Some of this uncertainty comes from relying on the two-page rules summary included rather than more closely referencing the five-page “full” rules. But I find, when dealing with apparent questions, that just remaining consistent within a game session works until one has more time to closely examine the rules.

The game's contents fit in a tiny little tin.

Overall Battle Box: Age of Sail is a nifty little game that won’t take too long to learn or play, but offers some tactical depth and the kind of action you’d expect from a game set on the swashbuckling seas. I found myself constantly weighing whether I wanted to use a seamanship roll to repair damage at the cost of a penalty when shooting (a choice I didn’t have when my ship faced the wind “in irons”). Maneuvering in consideration of the wind direction took some practice. Starting the ships closest to the direction of the wind helped, but unexpected wind changes provided additional challenges during the game. And I was just playing with one ship on each side. I expect fleet actions would further add to the tactical choices. The game still depends on the luck of the dice for seamanship and combat rolls, but various player choices can affect those to enhance the tension and prolong the action.

You might like Battle Box: Age of Sail if you enjoy naval games of this period, have younger players interested in trying some lighter wargaming (possibly enticed by a pirate theme), and prefer a balance of intuitive rules without too much complexity. It’s going on my roster of kid-friendly games I can easily host at library, museum, or convention events. As always your mileage may vary; but with free materials online or a relatively low-cost print-and-play version bringing this game to the table for a shakedown voyage won’t break the bank.

* I bought these ships a while ago, in the “Before Times” prior to the covid-19 outbreak, when the AC Moore craft stores were still in business and carried these at reasonable prices (and offered generous coupons). I wasn’t concerned much for using them in historical games beyond testing out some kid-friendly games. So I used stain markers on them to give them a little finish before applying some stickers, rigging, and sails. I can change out the flags on toothpicks, used more for identification than anything else; hence they’re not historically accurate flags but ones easily identified on the playing field. I suppose if I really wanted to I could refurbish them with more historically accurate paint schemes and flags, though they wouldn’t as easily pass for ships of other factions after the conversion. I recently noticed Michaels craft stores carrying a similar pirate ship craft kit from Creatology at decent prices for those wishing to upsize their Age of Sail games.

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch, we are going back from whence we came.”

— John F. Kennedy