Above is the Hr.Ms. Mercurius, a (completely fictional, though named after an actual) 17th c. Dutch sailing vessel. Judd saw some earlier prototypes, but honestly the other ones are really primitive in comparison. They lacked a mizzenmast (the most sternward mast) over the poop deck* and were overall much clumsier in appearance.
I realize that the sails don’t make a lot of sense just yet; some of them put others in their lee. Some pictures I’ve been looking at seem to imply that that’s OK. I don’t know. I suspect that talking to actual sailors might help. Fortunately, I know some. Maybe next time I’m at home.
You’ll note there’s really nowhere to put crew markers. My original intent was to have them be little markers you move around the ship physically, but I think that it’s a pipe dream that would require bigger ships, which would require more table space. More likely, there will be a Lego plate with dots on them: yellow dots represent Sailors, red dots represent Marines, maybe black dots represent Cannon. Maybe you have a dot with a big hat and a fancy coat that represents the captain.
Check out this very interesting article on shipboard combat. It supports the offense/defense comments I made in the last post, too.
*Hee hee hee!
So you don’t want to use lego man heads as markers? You can even fit those out with hats and feathers.
Ha ha ha! Great idea! I think it’s probably not very cost effective, but it’s really funny.