Man O War 
Introduction
Welcome to the supplemental Man O'War game page. This page was created to collect and organize the imformation for the Man O War game and it's two supplements into one area without cluttering up the main BGG listings for any of the Man O War game entries. This page will have detailed information on the various fleets, resources and other information useful for those looking to obtain and collect the ships and boxed sets in the Man O War setting.
Rules Summary
Currently, the rules for the game are only legally available second-hand, most commonly via ebay. PDFs have, at various times, been illegally downloadable from third-party websites (the most notable being WonderDog's Space Hulk site), but these have been shut down. universalhead has created a great rule summary that was available here at BGG until the GW file purge of November 2009. It can instead be downloaded directly from universalhead at http://www.headlesshollow.com
Templates
There are also smaller, concise, templates available for all of the ships produced by Games Workshop formerly available here at BGG in the files section. universalhead (with a little proofing by manowarplayer) created these invaluable cards to be printed up, slipped into standard card sleeves and the marked with dry erase markers - eliminating the need for a large portion of the counters needed in the game. Again, these were deleted during the 2009 file purge and can instead be found on universalhead's website.
Fleet Summaries
Those familiar with the Warhammer setting will recognize the following races for which ships were produced (the boxed set listed is where the rules for that race can be found):
- Man O War Boxed Set
- Plaguefleet Boxed Set (Under Construction)
- Sea of Blood Boxed Set (Coming soon)
- Norse
- Sea Monsters and Beasts
- Flyers
- Additional Imperial Ships
- Additional Dwarf Ship
- Citadel Journal
- Undead (Rules were available from the Citadel Journal - see below. No miniatures for the Undead fleet were produced by Games Workshop. The ships pictured in this fleet summary are player created interpretations from the descriptions in The Citadel Journal).
Other Official Rules
- Citadel Journal
- Issue 1
- Blood and Iron (rules for Dwarf Runesmiths, Engineers and Slayers)
- Issue 2
- Wind and Wave (High Elf Man O 'War Magic Rules)
- Issue 3
- Cursed of Naggaroth (Dark Elf Man O' War Magic Rules)
- Row, Row, Row Yer Boat! (Dinghies and Small boats in MOW)
- Issue 5
- We Be Sailin! (Orc Shamen, Waaagh Magic and Kustom Kards)
- Issue 6
- When the Dead Sail the Seas (Templates & Rules for the Undead)
- Undead Playsheet (Undead Fleet Summary Sheet)
- Issue 9
- Necromantic Magic (Undead Fleet Changes and Expanded Magic Rules)
Player Created Rules & Ships
Player created ships are just that - ships that have been created by players of the game. Typically they are made for an already existing race, but that is not always the case. Currently it is not part of the scope of this page or of BGG in general to provide the rules and templates needed to build your own versions of these ships. Fear not however, as most are readily accessible over at the Yahoo! group for Man O War: The Sea of Claws
- Rules
- General
- Admiral Class Ships
- Swimming
- Imperial
- Dwarf
- Ships
- Imperial
- Bretonnian
- Dwarf
- Goliath
- Mithril Airship
- Iron Carrier
- High Elf
- Dark Elf
- Great Black Ark
- Gargantuan
- Sea Dragon
- Orc
- Colosses
- Splattapult Barge
- Hand Of Mork
- Khorne
- Tzeentch
- Slaanesh
- Nurgle
- Great Unclean One
- Bloatship
- Skaven
- Floating Nest
- Dunglobber
- One Rat Barrel Sub Carrier
- Chaos Dwarf
- Black Obsidian Barge
- Rocket Boat
- Norse
- Pirate
- Lone Wolf
- Recreant
- Rapier
- Undead
- Skullchukka
- Bone Ripper
- Spectre
- Tombship
- Khemri Floating Necropolis
- Sea Monsters and Beasts
- New Races
- Lizardmen
- Wood Elf
- Triath
- Vampire
Links and Resources
- The Sea of Claws
- The Sea Of Claws mailing list is the largest and best resource on the net for MOW. Currently over 2600 members and there is a lot of activity here. This is your starting point for MOW.
- Headless Hollow
- universalhead's website includes his excellent rules summary and improved ship templates for Man O' War, along with an assortment of resources he has produced for a huge range of other board games. universalhead is a professional graphic designer, and his designs are frequently superior to similar official products. They are highly recommended.
- Chaos Orc's Superstore
- This is a great site to find miniatures at a FIXED price. No Auctions - if you see what you want, just buy it. They often have a decent selection of MOW miniatures.
- Green Forest Trading Co.
- Green Forest Trading Co produces a small range of generic fantasy fleets in a similar scale to Man O' War.
- Spartan Games
- Spartan Games produce a range of fantasy fleets designed for The Uncharted Seas. Their Battleships are substantially larger than the Man O' War ships, but the cruisers and frigates are much closer.
- Specialist Game Forum DEFUNCT
- Discussion Group for older GW games. The forum was closed when GW reduced their already limited support for their older games and the gaming community.
- Wonderdog's SpaceHulk DEFUNCT
- Although Wonderdog focussed primarily on Space Hulk, he was also making a "Player's Edition" of Man O' War. Rule summaries, cards, etc. His website was closed due to infringements of GW's IP around the time of the release of Space Hulk (third edition).
FAQ
Why is there no [insert Warhammer race here] fleet?
- Other Warhammer races do not have official rules for a variety of reasons:
- Ogre Kingdoms are a more recent addition to Warhammer and did not exist when Man O' War was published. While ogres existed, and were often used as mercenaries in Chaos, Empire and Orc armies, they had no society, culture or army of their own, so no fleet.
- While Lizardmen and Slann had previously existed in Warhammer, and have since returned, at the time there was no Lizardmen army, thus no Lizardmen fleet.
- Warhammer now seperates Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings into two seperate armies, but at the time they were combined in the Undead army, and so Man O' War has only a single Undead fleet list.
- Likewise, Chaos is now mostly split between races (mortals, beastmen and daemons), but in third and fourth edition Warhammer, Chaos was either treated as a whole or split between the various Chaos gods, a convention which Man O' War follows.
- No reason for excluding the Wood Elves has ever been given, but it is generally assumed that either the designers intended the Elf fleet to be used for both High Elves and Wood Elves, or that Wood Elves simply lack a significant naval presence due to their geographical and social isolation.
- Less 'mainstream' Warhammer forces, such as Kislev, Dogs Of War, The Hobgoblin Empire, Amazons, Cathay and Nippon, which have been only sporadically available throughout Warhammer's history were, as usual, generally ignored, with the sole exception of the Norse.
Where can I get Man O' War (and its supplements and models)?
Most commonly, ebay. Also check out stores like Chaos Orc or Noble Knight, who sell out of print gaming products. Other gamers will sometimes offer items for sale or trade on the Sea Of Claws. Those living in countries with more relaxed copyright laws may be able to find scanned pdfs of the rules through file-sharing services, but this is, of course, illegal in most countries.
Are other models compatible with Man O' War?
- See the Links section for comments on Green Forest and Spartan Games.
- Many historical naval wargaming models are suitable for use as some of the more 'normal' ships, such as Imperial, Bretonnian and Norse ships, 1:1200 scale is the closest for most of these, although Norse ships, being much larger than historical viking ships, are better at around 1:600 or even larger.
- Some players have used the ships, sea monsters and shoreforts from Pirates of the Spanish Main and its sequels/expansions, although they are generally considered less appealing than actual models.
- If you want to check how close a given model is in size, the Sea Of Claws mailing list has a database listing the dimensions of every ship.
Why did Games Workshop stop producing and selling Man O' War?
There are several reasons behind this foolish decision. There are even more wild rumours and speculative theories. But the simplest answer is this: Games Workshop cares more about producing profitable games than good games.
Why didn't GW resurrect Man O' War as a 'Specialist Game'?
We don't know. There are plenty of rumours and unverified theories around, but when contacted GW has generally either given no answer, or has given answers that make little or no sense, and are frequently contradictory.
Possibilities include:
- GW has lost the original rules.
- GW has lost, deliberately destroyed or simply worn out the moulds for (some of/many of/all of) the models.
- Legal complications between GW and the game's creators prevent either from re-issuing it without fighting an expensive lawsuit against the other.
- GW considers some of the lighter, sillier aspects of Man O' War to be incompatible with the darker, edgier image they currently want to project for Warhammer.
- GW considers some of the serious aspects of Man O' War to be incompatible with aspects of more recent Warhammer background that they happen to disagree with (example: Bretonnians armed with cannon).
- GW is only willing to support one naval game at a time and prefers Battlefleet Gothic to Man O' War.
- GW is only willing to support two naval games at a time and prefers Battlefleet Gothic and Trafalgar to Man O' War.
- The moulds were destroyed in transit when the vehicle carrying them crashed/sunk/got blown up by terrorists/derailed.
- GW is deliberately trying to alienate veteran gamers.
- A Man O' War fleet can be completed with as few as 8 models (Tzeentch fleet: 1 Bane Tower, 2 Winged Terrors, 2 Chaos MoW of your choice, 3 Deathgalleys =1000pts, Elf fleet: 2 Dragonships, 3 Eagleships, 3 Hawkships =1000pts). GW, having spent most of the last two decades fostering a 'bigger is better' mindset, considers the amount spent on such a small force to be unacceptably low.
- GW just don't care.
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