I remember reading about this a year ago, but just received a notice by email from Ares that it's finally on the way. The starter box is going to have 4 ships--2 British and 2 French--so I guess the game is going to simulate frigate duels rather than full fleet actions, something I'm hoping to to see. A few weeks ago I was part of a frigate duel game using the Close Action rules, and it still took more than 2 hours to resolve. Written orders and simultaneous movement is realistic, but not much fun to play, so I'm looking forward to how they use movement cards for this game system.
And the ships should be relatively inexpensive. Of course, they're plastic, but if the cost encourages more gamers to try age-of-sail gaming (like Ruckdog) then I'm all for it.