Ultimate Skirmish Rules

I've been reading through the Legends of the High Seas rules and, thus far, they're virtually identical to the Old West version, at least as far as the land actions are concerned. There's a bit of re-phrasing to give them a suitably piratical feel and a few new rules for things like cannon but,otherwise, they're pretty much the same.

As I don't intend to do any ship to ship gaming at any point soon, it struck me that there are cheaper alterntives to the High Seas rules that might tempt other club members to have a go. One disdvantage of the rules is the price tag, which varies between about £18 and £20, which is a lot for a single ruleset that might only get used once or twice.

As a result, I've dug out some possible alternatives from my rules library, all of which are less than a tenner and readily available.

The front runner is a set produced by Steve Barber, the Ultimate Skirmish Rules, which look ideal for small scale skirmishes, with a few figures on each side. They also have a simple campaign system, so would work well for the pirates.

I got my copy via ebay a couple of years ago for about four quid but couldn't think of a suitable subject to use them for that wasn't already covered by other, purpose written rules.

There's a good review here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/neil.shuck/revskirmish.html

I'm hoping to try them out sooner rather than later to see how they compare with Legends of the High Seas and whether or not they give a good balanced game.