Wow. THAT was embarassing. A War at Sea session

There's nothing more embarrassing than "cheating" and still getting crushed!

Threw together a 200-point game of War at Sea at the game store facing the redoubtable Game Store Tony -- r at least it was supposed to be a 200 point game of Allies against Italy, with me being the Allies (mostly British) and Tony taking the Italians. But my quick math was off a little bit and I inadvertently gave the British a 225-point fleet. Oops.

The Allies fleet comprised the battleship HMS Royal Oakm the battlecruiser HMS Repulse, the carriers HMS Ark Royal and HMS Glorious, the light cruiser HMS Euryalus, the destroyers HMS Cossack and HMS Javelin, three Swordfish torpedo bomber squadrons and three squadrons of Martlet fighters (all British), the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia, and three allied destroyers (St. Laurent (Canada), V. Olga (Greece) and Witte de With (Netherlands) and the Greek submarine Proteus.

The Italian force comprised the battleships Lirroio and V. Veneto, the heavy cruiser Zara, the destroyers Ascari and Luca Tarigo, the subs Leonardo Da Vinci and Ambra and a strong air arm of one C202 fighter squadron, two squadrons each of JU-87 dive bombers, SM.79 torpedo bombers and Atrone patrol planes.

Well, the 25-point edge didn't help at all as the Allied force simply wasn't able to deal out enough heavy blows while the Italians were able to hammer away.

The allies were able to cripple the V. Veneto and slightly damage the Littorio, but they only shot down one squadron (the C202) and sunk four naval units, the Zara, the Acari, the L. Tarigo and the Da Vinci. Yep, just 42 points worth of Axis lost.

Meanwhile the Axis chewed up their opponents. Besides grabbing two objectives worth 200 points they sunk all the Allied naval units except the Ark Royal, the Javelin and the Proteus. All three Martlets and one Swordfish also survived. Still, the Axis scored 158 points for eliminated Allies -- which is what clued me in to my math error. I realized that if I lost 158 from a fleet of 200 then I had too much left! Sad.