Coal & Guns!: British ships 1885 – 1905

This volume contains “ship cards” for the rule set Coal & Guns!. In order to play with them you need the basic rulebook.

Coal & Guns! is a three-dimensional tactical naval wargame for the era of the so-called "Pre-Dreadnought".

Above all, it wants to be a very simple and fast way to arrange on the table some models of those picturesque ships that marked the transition period between sailing ships and warships as we know them today.

It was a short period of only a few tens of years, between the end of the 19th century and the very first years of the 20th century (conventionally from 1880 to 1905), but which, from a technical point of view, was literally upset by new inventions or applications that followed one another at a frenzied pace.

The intensive use of steam energy, the construction of increasingly efficient breech-loading guns, the production of enhanced explosives, the invention of the electric motor and the radio, the use of torpedoes, the continuous development of steel armor and aiming devices are just incredible examples of applied technology that changed the way of waging war at sea in those few years.

The shipbuilding industry, of course, had to keep up and in less than half a century they passed from sailing ships to battleships, through a series of intermediate stages that made the obsolescence of the projects very rapid.

All this caused the flourishing of projects among the most imaginative and disparate that have ever been seen, with ships that were a synthesis, with different shades, between the pomp and romanticism of sailing ships and the solid reality of steel, the dirt of coal and the cold effectiveness of modern technologies.

Those vessels, especially in the bright pre-war colors, with white or black hulls, wooden decks, light or ocher superstructures, bright yellow chimneys, red or green keels, gold finishes, were a triumph of Art Nouveau style applied to instruments of death, often destined to be torn apart by the cannon fire of opponents who are perhaps less attentive to aesthetics but with the most advanced technology.

From a wargame point of view, playing with these ships is very interesting, because they are often very different from each other and because, despite being equipped with powerful guns, they did not fight at unimaginable distances on the gaming table.

The individual ships of the different nations, even within the same fleet and the same category, have great differences between them in terms of armament and armor, so the game can become quite varied and exciting.

Here, on a 180 x 120 cm table you can use models in 1: 2400 or 1: 1500 scale, in order to allow a good representation of the ships involved.

Coal & Guns! is very simple and intuitive and the heart of the system lies in the “status” cards of the ships.

Drawing free inspiration from the very nice Brigade Models steampunk rules Imperial Skies, we tried to create a very linear and pleasant game system, but with rational mechanisms that, even in a few rules, aim to give you the flavor of that way of fighting.

—description from the publisher