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I know you have to be pretty old to remember seeing this game in stores, but I was wondering how many of you still have it or play it.

The Epic series of games are probably my faorite of GW's games, but as much as I love Epic and the variety of the different systems, I dont think any of them are put together into a nicer package than the single Man O' War game is.

My knowledge of Warhammer Fantasy is limited even after all of these years, and I have zero interest in any other naval warfare games. But there is something about Man O' War that really sets it apart from everything else. Even with the limited number of unit types, the game mechanics really allow for a variety of game situations I just never get bored of playing through. It doesnt take itself too seriously like more recent games either, which tend to be much darker. No idea where Nigel Stillman is today, but he put out a real classic here in my opinion. I never bought Dreadfleet, but from the reviews I read it was disappointing, which I wasnt surprised with, as I dont think you can make Man O' War better than it is. Except I did buy the Dreadfleet playing mat, which is excellent, for my Man O War games.

Anyone else love this classic?

I do - have an Elf, Dark Elf, Empire and Dwarf fleets. Have a look in my Specialist Games blog - I replayed it recently and wrote up a couple of reports. It's a great game and very under-rated in my opinion.

This is it?!?!?! Only one other guy cares about this game???????

Dakka shame on you.

It doesn't help that a) the game wasn't massively popular first time around (which is a huge shame because it is an excellent game), b) the GW ships are extremely hard and costly to get hold of these days and c) suitable proxies are difficult to find in both the right scale and the right aesthetic.

I would love to round out my collection with further fleets but the lack of alternatives and crazy Ebay prices means I just can't at the moment.

I always wanted to play it when it was first about (I think I might have been 12 or 13 at the time), but nobody else showedthe slightest interest. I finally got my chance about 5 years ago at a club, and...

Oh my god, it's an awful game. I don't even remember any specifics, just thinking when it was over: 'dodged a bullet there'.

Played the crap out of Uncharted Seas though.

WHAT?!?! How dare you Riquende...

No idea what uncharted seas is tho. Will look it up on Boardgame Geek.

Since filbert nudged me back into the GW unsupported Games with his excellent blog I've been picking up ships here and there.

I've currently got a Dwarf Fleet and half a Skaven and Nurgle fleet and a Empire fleet in the post which should be arriving tomorrow. I'll be painting them on my blog soon.

Cant wait to play again I used to play when the game first came out when I was much younger I had a Dark Elf and Empire fleet back then.

Alas, I wish I got to play MoW. Among the other games at the time…WHQ, Necromunda, Epic, 40K, Fantasy (which all got some degree of play)…MoW was the one game our group collectively decided to not invest into solely on finances (with us being poor aloof teens at the time).

KTG17 wrote:
I know you have to be pretty old to remember seeing this game in stores, but I was wondering how many of you still have it or play it.

...

Anyone else love this classic?

Ugh...Thanks, I didn't feel old until today :(

I attribute ManOWar for really sparking my interest in the hobby. At first, a friend and I had been playing 40k once in awhile using a RT Book from a used book store and whatever models or proxies we had. We went to a FLGS one day and saw a couple guys playing ManOWar laid out on a nice blue board with beautifully painted terrain and models. They described things like the Dark Ark, sea monsters, dwarves nautilus, and that the High Elf ship had a chance of cutting right through the enemy ship when ramming.

Mind blown.

Played it a bit, again mostly with a few models and proxies since there was no way to afford GW back then. I do remember making a bunch of ships out of wood and buying my friend some dwarven war balloons for his birthday. Anyways, ManOWar was the proverbial hook for me.

Do they still post the rules etc online for free?

gravitywell wrote:


Do they still post the rules etc online for free?

Not for Man O' War, no. If you look at the sticky here:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/458652.page

It lists all the freely available rules for old Specialist Games that GW have deigned to release.

I actually picked up 2 full copies of this game fairly recently, even managed to get both the expansions as well. I have yet to have a game of it, as I would need to scratch build the fleets themselves and I simply do not have the time for that. From my limited readings of the rule book it seems like a fairly decent game, just need to find the time for it now.

You don't need to scratch build anything. From what I have read online, I believe that Man O' War is fairly scale agnostic so you can use ships of a slightly different scale if needs be. Many people use the Spartan Games Uncharted Seas models as substitutes. They don't scale with the GW Man O' War models but you can use them instead of the hard to get hold of GW stuff.

Oh cool, I like scratch building though, I just can't find the time for it. :(

I love Man O'War and I have just about every single fleet for it (I was staff at the time of release... Hurrah for lead weight!) But alas I have no one to play against so it's sitting up in my loft feeling very unloved.

Let me know if you ever want to get rid of any of it - I am always on the look out for Skaven, Chaos, Ork and Bret fleets

Flippa wrote:I love Man O'War and I have just about every single fleet for it (I was staff at the time of release... Hurrah for lead weight!) But alas I have no one to play against so it's sitting up in my loft feeling very unloved.

filbert wrote:Let me know if you ever want to get rid of any of it - I am always on the look out for Skaven, Chaos, Ork and Bret fleets

Likewise, I'm fairly good on the Bretonnian, Dwarf, Chaos, Empire front...but have very few Dark Elf or Skaven and no High Elf, Orc, or Chaos Dwarf ships. Prices on ebay are still pretty off the wall 25 (rarely) to 50 bucks + shipping for a box of smaller ships or a man o war.

Haven't actually played since the 90's, when (like an idiot) I passed the game up preferring to spend my pocket money on 40k and the like.

I plan to make some island-coastal type terrain roughly this scale and maybe even start selling them on ebay.

Ghostfacekilla wrote:
I actually picked up 2 full copies of this game fairly recently, even managed to get both the expansions as well. I have yet to have a game of it, as I would need to scratch build the fleets themselves and I simply do not have the time for that. From my limited readings of the rule book it seems like a fairly decent game, just need to find the time for it now.

I love the rulebooks just to read up on the various units, as their descriptions are pretty entertaining, like the Chaos Dwarf Thunderfire Barge firing its missiles and incinerating the slaves. There is a lot of flavor in the game with such a small number of units.

But to me the real gems are the ship templates. Yes they take up a lot of room and make larger games difficult to manage, but the variety locations on a ship to hit, and having various kinds of damage, really adds to how different each Man 'O War game plays out. In Epic or 40k for example, you may or may not remember vast units getting wacked, but you'll probably remember a Warlord titan that got its arm blown off, and staggered on to still win the battle. In Man 'O War, even the cheap ships of the line can have some epic moments. Take away those templates, and the dummy down how they take damage, then I think the game becomes more about the overall game and not about the character of the ships. Or whatever else like short forts or air support.

I paid a bundle buying just about every mini for that game, and the expansion sets, and its one of the few games I have had that over all these years still gives me goosebumps when I think about having it. I get the same from Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine, and Warhammer Quest.

I liked it. However, the later expansions kind of broke it.

Played it as a little kid and found it amazing at the time. Loved the sea monsters.

Im currently building a Chaos Fleet. I have just picked up a squadron of HellGalleys. Bloody hell, these models are amazing and really well detailed.
The rules are free online and they are really good, far better than the crap that was Dreadfleet.

It's a game I've always wanted to play as I always though it looked cool. I always keep a look out for it on ebay, at car boot sales and charity shops.