Hi!
As well as playing the likes of Battlefleet Gothic and Epic, I collect a few bits and pieces for non-GW games, such as Mongoose Publishing's Babylon 5: A Call to Arms.
A while back, Mongoose published trial rules for a game called Victory at Sea (rules for which at this link... and this one! - which uses the A Call to Arms game engine to represent high seas warfare from the Second World War.
Since it's not likely we'll see a new editon of the old Man O'War game system any time soon (or even see it posted as an archive pdf...) and that there is a precedent over at Mongoose for doing what I'm about to suggest - why not put together a BFG-based game system for fighting out battles on the high seas of the Warhammer World?
When BFG was developed, it was quite different rules-wise to the prior spaceship game (Space Fleet) so the idea of updating the rule system is not a new one for GW either.
In terms of ship designs, we can take the old specs for the MOW ships and other units (like Gyrocopters!) and use them as a tamplate for the new system.
Models-wise, we could get around the need to have new figs (or using the small old figs) by taking a leaf from Mongoose's book and putting together ship counters (examples can be seen in the two pdfs linked above - here's a set of Drakh starship counters for ACTA as a further example)
Perhaps we could focus on a small number of fleets to start of with:
*Bretonnia (with possible regional variations between the L'Anguille fleet and the fleets of Brionne and Bordeleaux)
*Marienburg/The Empire (the former with more merchant caravels due to its massive levels of shipborne commerce, possibly more scope for mercenary allies? The Empire would be facing raiders along the Sea of Claws, less potent since Marienburg's secession)
*High Elves (the masters of the shipping lanes, though their power has waned in recent centuries)
*Dwarfs (the steam-powered navy sailing from Barak Varr, from the submersible Nautilus to the sturdy Ironclad!)
*Norse (a constant threat to the coasts of the Old World, with a variant representing Norse fleets loyal to Chaos)
*Pirates/Mercenaries (Representing fleets from Tilea and Estalia, as well as pirate ships from Sartosa, Araby and so forth)
Gradually, we could turn to the less orthodox races (Dark Elves, Chaos etc) and add in a few unique ships to the mix (perhaps a Cathayan treasure ship, based on Admiral Zheng He's gigantic Baochuan from the early fifteenth century?)
When we get things up to a workable level, we could present it to Andy Hall or Jervis at SG for putting into FOM.
So, who's interested?
Gary
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