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Fire When Ready

In 2010 I bought a huge collection of 1/3000 scale pre-dreadnoughts, which included many of the ships for the Russo-Japanese War already painted. This began a search for rules to play this period. My favorite of the rules I tried was Fire When Ready by David Manley (full title "You May Fire When Ready, Gridley", but normally referred to as "FWR" in gaming circles).

I tried out the Battle of the Yellow Sea a few times, and found the rules to be fun, but a bit clunky and too bloody. It took too long to resolve shooting, partly because of arithmetic and partly because of the traditional multi-roll shooting sequence (roll to hit, roll for damage, roll for location, roll for any special hits, etc.), slowing the game unacceptably in big brawls. I also felt that ships were too easy to sink. I explored tweaks to fix these problems, but decided my time would be better spent modifying Fleet Action Imminent (a project I've sadly never finished).

In the hope my work will be of some benefit to others, I have attached the QRC I made for playing FWR, and in the sub-pages you'll find the rosters I made for the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the fictional US-Japanese battle of Cape Bojeador.
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I. Craig Nichols,
Dec 9, 2016, 1:08 PM