My interest in naval wargaming was rejuvenated when I considered how to recreate the Battle of Actium which I document on my page, Playing the Battle of Actium. My researches have pointed me at several other games and rule sets. Here are my notes and links.
Notes and Links
- A note on Reddit called Naval combat game recommendations
- Sails of glory 1650 to 1815, ~60% complexity rating, this link is from BBG
- The Naval war of 1812 from BBG
- Donald Featherstone’s Naval War Games ebook, from Amazon, which includes rules for Ancient, 16th Century, 18th Century, Napoleonic, the ACW, Late 19th Century, Early 20th Century, and WWI & II.
Perhaps I should return to the politics, while thinking about it, I came across this, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution 1648–1660 Capp, Bernard, Cromwell’s Navy: The Fleet and the English Revolution 1648–1660 (Oxford, 1989; online edn, Oxford Academic, 3 Oct. 2011), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201151.001.0001, accessed 19 Sept. 2025.
I mean Actium and Lepanto are about the hegemony of Latin Civilisation, probably twinned with the land battles in Israel and Poland that stopped the Mongol horde.
The Spanish Armada should be about technological superiority i.e, ship-to-ship cannon fire and point of sail, and so its important, not to mention the catholic/protestant dimension of the conflict.
Then there’s a gap of battles between Trafalgar and Jutland, although I wonder if there are any good representations of the Battle of Hampton Roads, which is also about technical transformation of warship technology and the Battle of the Falklands 1914 which was about the supremacy of the Dreadnought.