As I’ve discussed previously, I’ve wanted the old out-of-print Broadsides and Boarding Parties for a while so when my friend decided to sell his copy, I jumped at the chance. It just happen to be about the same time that Ares Games’ Sails of Glory was hitting the shelves. I ended up with both games in my collection at the same time and was playing around with both when it hit me: why not make a giant-sized version of Sails of Glory using components from both games?!? (the why not is actually pretty obvious as my living room picture below can attest but whatever. Paying attention to “details” kills too many otherwise fun and absurd ideas).
After getting the sizing scale differences down, I looked at the optimal card sizes and went from there. I found some cheap 11×14 frames that worked great as a ship card holder and base and then borrowed a friend’s art projector to map the maneuver decks to large scale “cards” (just cut up blue poster board).
To save on time/cost, I choose the B and D decks and their corresponding ships since they have the fewest maneuver cards. Since I wasn’t giant-sizing everything, I was able to save some time by only making one giant copy of the same card (since the regular board and maneuver cards would function normally).
There were still other components that needed to be in scale so I found some small pvc piping and cut them down to the appropriate range ruler size and use the art projector to trace out an island. Finally, I picked up a big general purpose tarp (blue!) for a nice gaming “mat.” I was ready to test.
My first test went pretty well. I had to mover around most my the furniture in the living room and it still wasn’t quite enough but it played quite well. I was confident enough that everything worked that I decided to host a game at a local convention (Genghis Con) and it went quite well.
The convention floor space was definitely big enough and I added a little island castle (via Heroscape pieces) to bling out the game a little more. I’m looking forward to hopefully snagging another copy of B&BP for more ships so I can throw a full 2 vs 2 game on the floor (or maybe the backyard…)