Here’s a set of free wargames rules for the Russo-Japanese war naval battle, Tsushima Strait, complete with printable ships.
Rules: Naval
Naval War WWII Rules
Naval War is a set of free wargames rules for World War II naval battles. From the website:
Naval War is a Tabletop Naval Miniatures Game designed to be played on a table-sized battle area with World War Two ship miniatures. The game rules and any aids needed for play are free and available for download on the site. The game is not tied to a specific minatures line and is suited for many different game scales (1:1800 – 1:6000)
Naval War is a game, not a simulation. The aim of the game is to recreate the feeling and immersion you get when reading the battle reports of famous sea battle like the Battle of the Coral Sea or the battle of the Java Sea. The focus lies on the action and on the ships on the table, so a lot of the technical details have been worked into easy to read datacards and quick game mechanics.
Corpen 1899 19th Century Naval Rules
Corpen 1899 is a set of free wargames rules for 19th Century naval combat. The author writes:
Corpen:1889 is a set of rules for simulating naval battles in the late 19th century. It was inspired by GDW’s excellent Ironclads and Ether Flyers (I&EF) supplement for the Space:1889 role-playing game. It tries to preserve the “flavor” of that era that I&EF conveyed, while at the same time requiring less dice-rolling and record-keeping than I&EF did. It is based upon my earlier Corpen 18 WWII surface naval combat game, with significant alterations which were required to take into account the much different nature of naval combat in the late 19th century.
The Galleon and The Flame
Trevor Brabyn has posted The Galleon and The Flame, a Sword and The Flame variant for land and naval battles in the age of Drake and Hawkins.
This is just more evidence to support my contention that — if miniature wargaming has a standard — it’s Larry Brom’s The Sword and The Flame. There are more variants of this rules set than I can count.
Coal And The Kaiser
Coal and The Kaiser is a set of “low to moderate complexity” rules for surface naval combat in the 1904 – 1918 era. The author writes:
This is a game of low to moderate complexity portraying tactical naval combat in the period from 1904 through 1918. While it will not yet you play Jutland in a day, it will let you play some fairly large actions reasonably quickly. It uses a scale of 4 minutes to the game turn and 1000 yards to an inch on the playing surface. The rules focus on big ships and big guns: battleships (and particularly the Dreadnought-type battleships that began service in 1905), battlecruisers and armored cruisers. Rules for smaller ships are meant to facilitate fast play and authentic tactics. I consider the rules to be at the beta test stage; I’ve tested them myself over a period of three years, and have started to play test them with others face to face.