Captaincy

As the designer I'm far too modest to give myself a perfect score, but I have no trouble recommending this abundant game to anyone who likes the age of sail, and anyone seeking new ideas in tactical wargaming.

I'm not particularly familiar with the Age of Sail, but there's a lot here to chew on for people who are. I had the pleasure of playing with the designer, and he's incredibly knowledgeable about the era, and that knowledge translates to the mechanics of the game. There's obvious impacts, such as what direction the ships face relative to the wind, and where the guns are mounted, but there's also much more advanced mechanics that represent how much sail you expose, how many men you have exposed to fire, crew morale, and turn-to-turn momentum. It really [i]does[/i] feel like you're sailing the ship. Determining a high-level strategy seems appropriate to me from what I know of the era.

Aside from that chrome, the most interesting part of the game is a dice-roll movement system that has you rerolling dice based on the skill level of your crew and managing risk. You generally want to go fast, but going too fast can send your ship out of control. You are consistently judging whether it is worth the risk to push your ship a little harder, or if that's likely to backfire and put you in a really awful position, floundering about while your opponent fires on you repeatedly with their cannons, or even worse, gets in a trailing position where they can fire at you with impunity and board at their leisure.

If you're looking for a granular ship-by-ship level of Age of Sail combat, it's worth a look.