Close Action

Close Action is a tactical wargame of fleet combat in the age of fighting sail. Each turn every captain secretly plots his ship's movement and gunnery; then it all unfolds at once — the wind, the range, the fall of shot. No one waits idle while an admiral dithers, so the whole line comes alive together.

Designed by Mark A. Campbell as a truer answer to the old classics, it rewards seamanship and squadron discipline over luck. It plays as a taut frigate duel for two — and scales, famously, to sixty-player monster refights of Trafalgar and the Nile, where a single misread signal can lose the day.