A set of rules for naval battles in the age of sail by Stephen Harrison and Robin Peck and originally published published by Hardcover Designs and/or Raider Games. A simple set, uncluttered by the minutiae of crew assignments, sail settings and complex damage rosters they enable you to handle large numbers of ships in a quick and easy to learn set of rules. A second edition was created by David Manley and the rules are now in a third edition.

For more FLOB stuff than you can shake a mainmast at, visit the David Manley's, site .

Stephan O'Sullivan has written a fine review of this edition, thus eliminating the need for me to do so.

For those of you who play the first edition of these rules (or just have a copy gathering dust on your rules shelf) here are the optional rules we use.

Although they hadn't been in print for many years, a second edition was released by the now-defunct Felix Enterprises. I have reviewed this edition here.

We also have a set of extra rules and clarifications for the second edition as well. Read them here.

A third edition of 'Form Line of Battle' was published in 2000 by A and A Game Engineering. This set keeps the simplicty of the first two editions, but is better written and clears up some of the problems in them. Highly recommended.

Scenarios

The Staines Wargamers have done Camperdown and Lissa using these rules (as well as Trafalgar, but that was before my time). Here are some scenarios. They were written for different editions of the rules, but conversion from one to another should not be too hard. I am slowly attempting to bring them all into line with FLOB 3, although I'm sure that by the time I do so FLOB 4 will be on sale:

• Fox's Action - Lieutenant George Abercrombie Fox commands a squadron of four British ships against a combined force of seven French and Spanish vessels. From 'Battle smoke' by Adam Hardy.
• Action In The Ionian - Jack Aubrey takes on the Turks in this battle from 'The Ionian Mission' by Patrick O'Brian.
• Action Off Neuville - A small ship action with a French squadron trying to protect a pair of merchant vessels and the British out to capture them.
• Bishops Court - A historical frigate action from the Seven Years War.
• Flamborough Head - John Paul Jones' most famous action.
• Ocracoke Inlet - The last fight of Blackbeard the pirate.

• Naval History of Great Britain - An online version of William James' 1837 work. Volumes cover the years 1800-1827.
• Ships of the Old Navy - A history of the sailing ships of the Royal Navy, by Michael Philips. Anectdtal histories of hundreds of Royal Navy vessels from about 1750 to 1850.

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