Last week I had a WWI Naval game with William. He set up the game and wanted to try out a new set of rules he had come across. He had some cardboard flats to represent the ships and I brought the mat. We played at the Abyss in Montreal.
The game uses d12s and the rules themselves are only 5 pages long. The game was mechanistically quite simple but there was certainly some tactical decision making. Interestingly it was not really IGO-UGO as initiative was diced for each turn but you also could decide if you had the initiative whether to shoot first or not by deciding whether you were going to make a full or half move.
We played the Coronel scenario from the book, seeing a battle between 4 British and 5 German ships. A clever record sheet was provided so the game was easily played with just the QRS and the Record sheet.
We played several rounds with a clear German victory, game probably took well less then 2 hours.
I believe that this is the first game from the Little Wars TV publishing entity Battle Box Studios. Little Wars TV has put out several previous games including their western game Ruthless. But they are now formalising the process through their own publisher. I would have a look.
I was quite impressed by this game and I feel that Little Wars TV is becoming the premium wargaming group in the US. I see that they have just put out a company level WWII game SNAFU!
For those interested in 20th century naval wargaming I can highly recommend this set.
We played our first game of this yesterday. Enjoyed it a lot, but we're still sorting thru what seem to be some inconsistencies in the rules. Maybe you can help us?? For example, regarding smokescreens, on Page-2, it says smoke "lasts until the end of the turn." But, on Page-5, it says, "Smoke lasts two turns." Which is correct?
ReplyDeleteHi Paul. I had a look at the rules in respect to your question. I wonder if there is some confusion with the term turn. Look at page 2 "destroyers make smoke during movement". This would be of no value unless it affects the enemy ships. But the sequence is so structured in the turn that fire is always after movement. Then on page 5 it says that smoke is removed in the damage control phase, the last part of a turn. But it says the smoke is from the previous turn. I can only interpret this as meaning that the smoke will be there for 2 firing phases or 2 turns. But there is a chance that if the ship moves in the next turn, the smoke is left hanging and does not continue to extend from the ship once it moves in the 2nd turn. This makes little sense to me but that is the only way I can interpret it.
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