Advanced Rules
These optional rules can help to introduce more detailed Napoleonic combat effects to the game. Each of the rules may be picked and chosen individually, they do not all have to be used together. Some of them are somewhat experimental and could benefit from further play testing, but are listed here to help give ideas for what is possible. Because these are not part of the main rules, all participating players should know which optional rules (if any) are being used - optional rules are best used when unanimously up-voted by all participants.

Download the Advanced Rules Checklist to help keep track of which optional rules are being used for your current game.
Also available is this prefilled list of Recommended Advanced Rules, to help with a quick selection of a few of the more interesting and useful optional rules.

« Movement
101 - Sails Aback – If a vessel with normal sail setting turns into the wind and is not tacking, its remaining movement for the turn is immediately halved. This represents the braking action of the sails when they go "aback" and slow the ship. For example, a ship which began its move with 8" of movement and had already consumed 4" of movement, it would have only 2" of movement remaining.

A second optional step to the sails aback rule, is that any vessel under normal sail conducting the above movement must immediately roll once on the Mast Hit table for rigging damage.

102 - Rudder Damage – If a D rated crew attempts to make sternway, there is a possibility that they will damage the ship's rudder. At the moment the ship attempts to move backwards, roll one six sided die; for a D rated crew, they will suffer one "R" hit on a die result of 6.

« Command & Crews
201 - Repeating Frigates – Any frigates within line of sight of a fleet's flagship will immediately post a copy of the flagship's message into their own ship logs. This is done merely by posting additional notes to the frigate logs with the flagship's name on it – it is not necessary to write new copies of the original message. Other fleet commanders who can see the frigate more easily than the fleet flagship, may use the more favorable signal table conditions to read the original message via their line of sight conditions with the frigate. Repeating frigates may not be firing at enemy ships while acting in this capacity, and they may not be within 8" of any enemy vessels.

202 - Variable Crew Grades – Some crews might be better trained at some on-board actions than others, or they might have unusually good or bad morale regardless of training. To account for this, try assigning different crew grades for the four main parts of the rules where the grade rating matters: Actions, Gun Dice, Boarding and Surrender. For example a French ship might have C grade seamanship (Action table), D grade gunnery training (Gun Dice) but A or B grade Boarding and Morale (Morale = Surrender table).

« Cannon Fire
301 - Partial Broadside – Whenever a ship has just come into another ship's field of fire and is positioned so that it blocks over half of an enemy ship's arc-of-fire, yet still has its center-point outside the arc, the enemy ship may still fire half of its broadside batteries at it. Note that this will usually only apply when ships are offset enough that full broadsides are not allowed, yet too close to ignore the potential for even half the guns to do damage.

302 - Weather Effects – At wind speed 5, ships firing from a weather position onto a lee target lose use of half or all of their heavy guns due to the ship heeling into the ocean. Another weather effect might be to declare unusually heavy sea swells despite calm conditions - caused by a storm at some distance away - which reduces gun dice quantity by 25% to 50% for ships sailing perpendicular to the wind.

303 - Crashing Masts – Any vessel Locked with another vessel (either with its own L hit, or locked with a vessel that has an L hit against it) must roll on the M hit table if the other ship suffers an M hit table die roll result of 5 or 6. Apply all hits as called for. In addition, a result of 5 or 6 on the second ship's die roll will also result in one die roll worth of L hits for each of the locked ships.

304 - Inferno Aid – Ships with an inferno burning on board will immediately surrender to the closest enemy ship and ask for aid. The enemy ship must stop between 1" and 2" distant from the burning vessel. Both ships will remain in that position as non-combatants until the burning ship either explodes or successfully evacuates its crew on a die roll of 6, whichever occurs first. If the ship explodes first, the formerly assisting enemy ship may resume fighting. If the burning ship's crew successfully evacuates, the assisting enemy ship will take a station away from the battle area but remain as a non-combatant. It may not attack enemy ships, and enemy ships may not attack it.

305 - Frigate Immunity – Ships of the line may not fire at enemy frigates unless the enemy frigates fire on them first.

306 - Prepared Broadsides – Ships with A or B rated crews may declare before game play starts that they have carefully loaded a prepared broadside for the ship's cannon composed of special double-shotted loads of grapeshot and shot. The first time the ship fires, it gains double the normal gun dice. However, prepared broadsides can only be fired at close range and are consumed upon use (the doubling modifier can only be used once).

307 - French Rigging Doctrine – The French (and to some degree Spanish) navy is considered in this optional rule to maintain ammunition supplies supporting its doctrine of firing high to disable enemy rigging. This would in theory make them more likely to be firing chain or bar shot as part of their cannon loads, at least when firing at enemy rigging. To reflect this doctrine, French ships receive an additional +1 on the Hit table for Rigging attacks only. A convenient way to decide when such ammo might be exhausted is to say that the modifier can no longer be used after the firing player rolls three or more sixes on their gun dice roll (or four or more sixes, depending on how strict players want the ammo control to be).

« Boarding Actions
401 - Weather Effects – At wind speed 4, subtract an additional die from the boarding attempt and add two dice instead of one for the boarding action defender. At wind speed 5, no combat boarding actions are allowed.

« Repairs
501 - Cranky Pump - A repaired pump must roll a die each turn in order to keep working. It will fail on a roll of 5 or 6.

502 - Crew Loss - A ship which has lost more than half of its original gun dice and suffered at least half of original available sail speed may not attempt any repairs to L, B or S hits.