rules

[swordman]

hello,
as I am a rookie in pirate games I wonder what rules are the best to use for ship to ship encounters and land rules.

[joroas]

Ganesha have just released Flashing Blades suitable for this era, only $8 for the PDF.

[tomogui]

I don't know about ship-to-ship, but we've been playing a lot of Freebooter's Fate recently for pirate skirmishes on land, and it's excellent.

It has some very light fantasy elements, which may not delight the pirate purists, but it's fast and great fun, with simple but comprehensive rules for fighting (bluff-based card combat, which includes rules for sneak attacks, reloading, overwatch actions, ganging up, shooting into melee, morale, fear, etc.), swimming, climbing, jumping, carrying/activating items, and more. The models are great too. Highly recommended.

 

[Lowtardog]

Flashing blade is only land actions at the moment but a nice set for small skirmishes as you build up larger crews.

Legends of the High Seas works quite well with the Gary Chalk style smaller ships.

[n815e]

Pirates! from Flagship/Scale Creep is a popular choice for ship-to-ship combat, with landing parties.

[richarDISNEY]

Pirates! really is the MOST fun and quick ship/ship rules out there. 
LotHS is a modified version of the Pirates! rules.

For land actions, I like Freebooter's Fate and Black Scorpion's Cutlass.  Both really are a solid set of rules.
Pirates also does land actions, but its more geared for the ship on ship action.

[Mako]

Sailpower is designed for naval actions on the tabletop, from the Pirate era through the Napoleonic.

It also has rules for boarding actions, and basic rules for land battles too.

Prevailing Winds is designed for the War of 1812, but is a superb naval set that can easily be converted to the Pirate era.  You just need to compute some ship sheets for your sloops and brigs, but can use those provided as a good guideline.

You'll need to come up with some values for smaller cannons too, but again, that is relatively easy to do.

In order of preference for pure naval actions, I give PW the nod, with Sailpower coming in at a close second.  The latter is probably better if you want to include land combat as well, but you can use another set of rules for that easily, instead.

Both are excellent for small to medium-sized naval battles, and many people use 15mm (1/100th scale ships) with them for their games.

[Galland]

Heya

Theres allways Gloire from Rattrap Productions with the additional rules Under the Black Flag. A lot of people like this rules set and I am about to enter its world my self.

I would also say that Legends of the High Seas is fun and I have enjoyed many battles with it.

Cutlass! From Black Scorpions is another different but good looking game. I dont like the fact that you cant swim, its silly, really really really silly. Its a pirate game =P

Freebooters Fate is good looking indeed, but dont use dice and differ a bit from the mainstream wargames.

The other rules mentioned here I dont know much about, and hence will not comment them.

[swordman]

thank you all for the info.

[Melnibonean]

We're using Legends of the High Seas at my club at the moment. The rules seem to be working well but we've only had land battle so far. Haven't tried any ship/boat exploits so far.