Session report for Revised War at Sea WAS-1 scenario

The peak of the action. Map and most of the markers are from Gale Force Nine, while the two red crosses are Litko markers showing that the ship's once-per-game special ability has been used.


Following up on this post, here's a resent session played at Arkham Asylum in Norwich CT. We had four players, so each player took one of the four task forces.

The pre-game die rolls were tough on bost side' destroyer forces. Iachino rolled a '5' and therefore had just two DD's while Campioni rolled a '6' and had just a single DD! The British hardly rolled better, rolling a five and therefore they were down three destroyers!

On the other hand, both sides were pretty fortunate with their reinforcement rolls. The British heavy ships showed up on Turn 3 while the Italian reinforcements arrived on turns 3 and 4. The Swordfish also made frequent appearances, missing just one or two possible turns. The Ark Royal must have been stationed just off the map edge.

The revised scenario seems a little tough for the British to me (as did the original version) but two solitiare playings did result in one British victpory on points, so it hardly seemed hopeless. There are a lot of random variables in the scenario, between destroyer rolls and reinforcement rolls, not to mention the air support rolls. It's also a very large scenario, with four capital ships, 11 cruisers and up to 20 destroyers.

One element that worked against the British was initiative, Despite having only a +1 edge on initiative rolls, the Italians won the initiative all but one time during the game.

Admiral Holland's cruiser force shaded to the north as it advanced, which Iachino's cruisers initially matched. Initial exchanges of fire were fairly even with the Italinas losing a destroyer and the Berwick being crippled and forced to fall back.

Somerville's capital ship/destroyer force soon arrived and started to close, although the Ramillies couldn't seem to make a speed roll (it failed every single one!) an was soon left behind.
Meanwhile Campini's force also arrived on the scene. Taking advantage of their initiative and spped special abilities the Italian cruisers swept south suddenly while the battle line headed straight at the British force. An awful turn of firing saw every single British cruiser miss its shots while the Italians sent two light cruisers t the bottom. This proved to be a major turning point, as it put the Itaians seriously ahead on points. Despite some clever maneuvering and efffective smoke screening by the British destroyers the Italians were able to capitalize on their firepower superiority to continue pounding the British while taking less damage in return.

With the "Limited Opportunity" die roll ending the game on Turn 7 the Italians pulled back to preserve their win. The Renown charged in to boarding range under a hail of Italian fire that left it crippled, but afloat, on the last turn. At point-blank range the Renown clobbered the Guilio Cesare and, with the assist of a DD-fired torpedo, sunk her!

This made the final score somewhat closer than it would have been, with the Italians scoring 112 points and the British 86. The sole survivors on the British side were the cripples Renown, Berwick and a destroyer -- and an unscathed Ramillies. One of the two swordfish also survived.

The Italians were in much better shape. The Vittorio Veneto and two heavy cruisers were undamaged, two cruisers had 1 point of damage and one cruiser was crippled.

While I think the scenario is more challenging for the British, it does appear they have a chance. Bad British luck during the first turn where both cruiser forces were blazing away at each other put them behind the power curve. The British commanders also didn't take advantage of the slight edge they had in reinforcement arrivals to draw the Italian cruisers out of supporting range of the battleships. With the aid of the smoke screening destroyers they could have arranged at least a one-turn firepower advantage. While called light cruisers, the British warships in Holland's task force are comparable in points, firepower and protection to Iachino's cruisers. Holland's task force is worth 63 points, rolls 31 dice at range 3 and all have armor 4 while Iachino's cruisers are worth 85 points, roll a total of 36 dice at range 3 and have armor values of 4 and 5. But add in Renown and the British have another 33 points of ship, with 11 more dice and an armor of 7. It's a fleeting potential edge, however, and in the event the British didn't achieve it.

Overall the revised scenario worked well. It's been suggested that the three Luca Tarigo's in the revised scenario should be replaced with more Ascari's to better reflect the historical OB but in this case so many DDs were removed by the pre-game die rolls that none of the Luca Tarigo's appeared anyway, so it made no difference.

Game ending positions

War at Sea -- Settling on a happy medium?

It's not unusual for the cards associated with collectible miniatures games to undergo format changes. Dungeons and Dragons miniatures, Heroclix and the land version of Axis & Allies Miniatures have each see significant format redesigns.

The Axis & Allies War at Sea naval miniatures system has been very consistent for the data side of the cards, as shown by the three different Fletcher-class destroyers that have appeared so far across the base set and two expansions:

The only ship class that has appeared in all three sets is the American Fletcher class destroyer, although it's not the only sculpt that has appeared in all three sets. Each set so far has also included a version of the Japanese Zero fighter.

On the other hand, the decorative side of the card has swung like a pendulum from nice to awful to acceptable.

In the initial War at Sea set we were treated to nicely done line drawings of the ships and planes, along with historical notes. Here's the Fletcher from the War at Sea base set:

It appears that Hasbro/Avalon Hill/Wizards of the Coast decided to cut back on the creative cost of making the next set, however, because instead of original line art the ships and planes were represented with pseudo-line art obviously derived from photographs of the models. While the models are pretty good for wargame purposes they are nowhere near good enough to serve as the source for line art illustrations, as the card art for the Destroyer Hoel from the Task Force expansion demonstrates:

Fortunately Hasbro/AH/WOTC does appear to listen to the fans, at least sometimes, and the Flank Speed expansion has returned to actual line art, in this case profile views of the ships. The profile views do not have artists' credits, so I assume they are derived from official drawings or other technical and/or public domain sources. This is a very traditional form of illustration for warships. often found in books, reference works and wargame rules, so it seems like an acceptable compromise to me. It's not quite as nice as the line illustrations done by Langdon Foss in the first set but it's a huge improvement over the butt-ugly pictures of models from Task Force. The USS Kidd from Flank Speed illustrates the latest version:

I hope that Hasbro sticks with this approach for the promised Set IV and any subsequent sets. Ideally it would be nice to see Foss re-employed of course, but failing that the profile views are attractive enough.

Being a boomer is hard

We're just not that good at delaying gratification.

Troll and Toad sent an email today that my two cases of Flank Speed are on the way, which was all well and good, but I knew that today was "Release Day" so I stopped the The Citadel and bought one booster of Flank Speed just to break the ice ...

The inherent limits of point-based army selection systems

Using points as currency to buy units in wargames has been popular since at least the 1970s, when a point-based design-your-own system for the Panzerblitz tactical armor game appeared in the pages of Avalon Hill's The General magazine.

That system was based on a simple formula, but sometimes point values are assigned by a more subjective process through playtesting. Probably most common is a mixture that starts with a formula and then tweaks the values based on playtesting experience. Most systems base their values purely on game impact, but sometimes the point value of a unit is boosted (or more rarely discounted) because of the unit's rarity on the battlefield. Advanced Squad Leader is probably the most well-known example of this approach.

The primary alternative to a point-based system is one that attempts to make all units of roughly equal value and carefully balances the game impact of the units accordingly. Some examples of this approach include Ogre, Victory and Navia Dratp. This naturally imposes some limits on the power of the pieces and is pretty intensive from a playtesting standpoint.

The advantages of a point-based system is that it can be wide open, with units of widely varying strength. It can include goblins and dragons, PT boats and Battleships, jeeps and King tiger tanks in the same system.

This can also be a weakness of point-based systems, however, because not all points are created equal. In some games, for example, the combat values or the rules may make a certain kind of unit virtually invulnerable to other kinds. In War at Sea, for example, 48 points of battleship (say the HMS Hood) is not worth as much as 48 points of U-66 class U-Boats. In fact, the battleship is doomed unless it has some supporting destroyers or aircraft because it has no weapons that can hurt the submarines. Point-based systems are vulnerable to mismatches of this sort or "degenerate" strategies that rely on extreme builds. Point-based systems work best when bounded by some kind of restrictions on the types of units built. For example, War at Sea mitigates the potential abuse of an all-sub or all-aircraft fleet by allowing only surface ships to claim objectives. In the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures game and in Axis & Allies (land) Miniatures there are limits on how many pieces can be in an army, so a player can't overwhelm his opponent with a horde of very-low value pieces.

Still, I read occasional complaints on the Axis & Allies message boards and elsewhere about the point values assigned to various units. Commonly posters argue that XX points of units should have an equal game effect. Ideally they should, except that in a game with as complex interrelationships as Axis & Allies not all points will be created equal, especially across unit types. I would agree that battleships of the same point value should have similar game value, and that subs of similar point values likewise. But it's unreasonable to expect that 50 points of subs will necessarily have the same impact as 50 points of battleships without considering the impact of the opponent's builds. Accounting for the differences would probably require an excessive amount of complexity.

Likewise, some complain that some nationalities are too powerful or too weak, based on the point system. With a history-based game such as War at Sea or Axis & Allies Miniatures there are limits on how much the game can even things up. Japanese and Italian tanks sucked and there's only so much that can be done to help them out. American warships had lots of AA guns and Japanese Long Lance torpedoes were an incredible weapon, there's only so much that the game can do to mitigate those facts without doing violence to the history.

Points are useful, but competitive players should be mindful of the limits of a points-based system and consider including other limits as well so that the playing experience isn't spoiled by uncompetitive builds.

Gale Force 9 War at Sea tokens

Gale Force 9 specializes in producing licensed play aids for popular games. I have to say that my experience is that their products are a little bit on the pricey side, but very high quality. I got their vinyl play mat for Dreamblade and was very impressed. I haven't used a paper mat since.

I also got some of their Axis & Allies tokens for the land game, and liked the quality, although I'm not sure that the nationality specific approach was best. For one thing it kind of forced multiple purchases -- good fort heir bottom line, but not mine -- and for another thing it necessarily leaves out a lot of nations. There are no tokens for Axis or Allied minor powers such as China, Finland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria or Greece. And even if there were, I can't see them as worth buying.

Fortunately the Axis & Allies naval miniatures tokens skipped all this and are generic, usable by any power. They're very substantial and I happen to like the 1940s-style art font, although some people don't. The insubstantial light cardboard counters that come with the starter kit are shown with the Gale Force 9 tokens below.


The set includes a nice selection of tokens and seems to be a better value than the land tokens in every way. I understand Gale Force 9 has plans to produce a vinyl set of maps for use with War at Sea. I hope it does, as this would be a very nice enhancement for the game.

Naval what-ifs

Avalanche Press' Great War At Sea series (and the sister series Second World War At Sea) are notable for the large number of scenarios included. There are, literally, several hundred scenarios between them.

This marks a significant break from naval wargames published in the "golden age" of SPI/AH games in the 0s-80s. Typically they included just a historical battle. The classic Midway has just one scenario, as did the original edition of Jutland, although the second edition of Jutland added a couple of others. Games covering the South Pacific battles around the Solomons usually depicted all the historical carrier battles, but that's it.

This is rather remarkable, in hindsight, because naval miniatures wargamers there's been a very long tradition of creating various "what-if" battles and not just sticking to historical fights.

Naval battles are, compared to land battles, very rare. Nearly every war will involve a lot of fighting on land. Even before the 20th Century and the rise of continuous combat, land battles were much more common than naval actions. There are at least four dozen full-scale Napoleonic land battles, where fleets met just a few times in comparable fights. Many wars see hardly any naval warfare at all.

But even wars with a large naval component usually see a lot more land fighting. Huge armies of British and French grappled with their German foes on a daily basis in the Great War. But actual naval battles between the Germans and their enemies added up to maybe a dozen or so, depending upon how generous a definition of battle you use.

There are many reasons for why naval battles are rare, but probably the most significant is the enormous cost of warships and the difficulty of replacing losses, especially in capital units. As many countries have demonstrated, it's possible to raise a large army in a relatively short period of time. Indeed, it's normal for most of the people who serve in a war to have enlisted after the start of the war, unless it's an unusually brief conflict. In contrast, aside from light ships, it's rare for a Navy to end a war larger than it started. Even in those exceptional cases where a major navy grows in wartime, it's usually based on a pre-war building program. The enormous World War II U.S. Navy's large ships were all started before the war and most of the major units started after the beginning of the war were never finished.

So every admiral is well aware that any loss he suffers is likely a permanent one for his nation, making admirals notoriously cautious about committing their biggest ships to battle.

Wargamers, of course, have no such qualms, but the historical reticence of admirals means that there really aren't too many naval battles to model.

Avalanche Press ignore the limits of history to provide wargamers with so many scenarios that one is highly unlikely to ever play all of them. With the notable exception of U.S. Navy Plan Orange, which has an atypically sparse seven scenarios and the unique Cruiser Warfare. the rest of the line has a dozen or more each, most of which are hypothetical to some degree or another. And U.S. Navy Plan Orange, along with the plan Gold , Red and Black games, is wholly hypothetical.

But even Jutland and the Mediterranean games, which are firmly grounded in well-researched history, are mostly made up of battles that didn't happen. In many cases these are battles that almost happened. It wasn't uncommon for fleets to steam and yet fail to make contact. Many others postulate some significant departures from actual events, often to include ships that were planned but not built. Not a few of the scenarios are fanciful, imagining that a power such as Turkey might actually be able to afford and man a battleship squadron or that the United States and Austro-Hungary might fight a naval campaign off the U.S. coast.

Liberated from the constraints of history, AP has given naval gamers an entire line of games and supplements and helped usher is what may truly be the "golden age" for naval gamers, if not wargames as a whole. There's still plenty of history and near history for players for whom some of APs more extreme flights of fancy might be too much. A Canadian battleline bombarding Virginia Beach ( Operational Sc. 9 - in U.S. Navy Plan Red) does require leaping a pretty big chasm for the suspension of disbelief.

In defense of this kind of scenario, however, there's this to consider. For Jellicoe or Scheer, the historical Jutland was an unprecedented event. They didn't know how it might turn out or what the possibilities were. The power of hindsight means that any gamer replicating Jutland has a very unrealistic level of knowledge about the battle. Recapturing some of the uncertainty faced by Jellicoe is actually easier in a hypothetical battle, especially one based on an unprecedented situation. Drawing up plans for a campaign that never was such as an Austro-Hungarian war with America (Dreadnoughts scenario book, Imperial and Royal Warship Projects section, scenario one "Plan Black, Austrian Style, April 1924) may be a much better test of admiralship than refighting Jutland for the umpteenth time.