Steam and Iron the Great War at Sea Review

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 by Paul Comben

In that location is an issue with naval board wargames that really does non apply to many other areas of the hobby. You tin accept some large creature of a Gettysburg game, or of Waterloo, or of Borodino; you lot tin accelerate through the steppes of 1941 Russia with dozens of divisions; return to Cannae or Gaugamela with artillery stretching to reach the extremities of your paper battlefield, only yous might still have less administrative hassle, elevate on gameplay, and threat of that precious weekend coming to a close far also quickly, than if y'all embark on grey seas to fight battles with the floating custodians of great affair and moment.

What exercise we exercise with Gettysburg regiments, Waterloo battalions, aboriginal cohorts or panzer spearheads? Well, we flip them, put a status marking or two on them, or under them, and then keep to the next unit of measurement. Meanwhile, the naval gamer, fifty-fifty with a system as apparently attainable as Flight Colors, will discover that the story of his or her boilerplate transport counter is constantly beingness enlarged upon by the application of marker subsequently marker – the sails are full of holes, the hull is full of holes, the guns are loaded this mode, or that fashion, there is a burn down on lath, the crew is ailing, the ship has gone the wrong mode against the wind…information technology has been remarked upon, photographed, sometimes admired and often lamented, only the truth is those ships tin can terminate up more covered in chits and emblems than I would need permissions to swan around the MI5 building or look at David Cameron's magazine rack.

Naval counters, and thus near annihilation budgeted a tactical level in naval gaming, merely requires far more than story to be told than the counter itself can convey. It goes to i extreme in a series similar Flying Colors; and information technology goes well off the scale with something like Fearfulness God and Dreadnought, or Shut Action. It hardly matters whether we are talking about ships with rigging and cannon, or turrets and turbines, these are complicated beasts, with the consideration of how they movement, fight, get damaged and sink bringing into play all sorts of considerations between the insensate material and the men on board. And when you start thinking seriously well-nigh what tin can legitimately be presented as the combat profile of any ane ship, the permutations of harm and general status go immense. I am certain Jutland has been fought past players using Fear God and Dreadnought, and someone must take approached Trafalgar using Close Action; but one other affair I am sure of is that none of these intrepid gamers always finished their battle, looked at the clock, saw it was not quite fourth dimension for lunch, and then decided to fix something else for the afternoon. "Suitable for Teams" is something to look out for – and in that frontier betwixt naval boardgames and minis, it is something you will see pretty often.

So where does the Slap-up State of war at Ocean fit into all this? Well, thanks to those who have molded this series over quite a number of years, it has tried to keep very much on the manageable side of things – virtually of the fighting forces are represented past individual ship counters if they would be seen every bit legitimate private fighting units inside the telescopic of the game – so everything from battleships downwards to light cruisers gets an individual counter, whilst destroyers and torpedo boats etc., which invariably fought every bit a swarming mass, get advisable flotilla-type counters. And aye, this is very much a ii level and inevitably therefore, two speed system. Battle groups which might correspond annihilation from a few ships to a whole armada of dreadnoughts, are manoeuvred by marker on the operational map of whatsoever part of the earth'due south seas/oceans whatsoever given championship is set in; and then, when forces disharmonism, the component parts of your group mark are placed on a battlefield map (basically a plain hex filigree battle "loonshit"), and y'all then move to a battle procedure with the emphasis of moving the game on in a feasible mode.

Only this is to move the review on a bit likewise far at this phase, since we must first introduce the serial properly. In this regard, it should probably be stated that Great War at Bounding main is a fleck of a misnomer. It may not have been for a while; it might not have been during the publication and play of some of the earlier titles in the series, but it certainly is a misnomer now.

Yes, first and foremost, and certainly one assumes in the minds of many players, this is a series about naval events, real and hypothetical, occurring at some indicate between 1914 and 1918. However, even in the main titles of the series, scenarios were wont to wander out of these fourth dimension parameters, and in fairly contempo times the series has in fact strayed into the post Slap-up War world, and likewise to before it. The shifts take not been vast, but it should be pointed out that the series now covers a period from the Spanish-American War through to the might–have-beens of naval tension between the Usa and France/Uk during the 1920s. Most games in the series are stand-alone titles, only there are too a number of expansion booklets that require a sometimes daunting collection of previous bits and pieces to be played – and sometimes those bits need to come from the partner Second Globe State of war series.

It all depends what you desire in terms of coverage, and what you lot really want from the series. The entirely obvious starting bespeak in terms of "star quality" has surely got to be the Jutland game – which covers far more than that event, as there are scenarios for only virtually anything that did, could, or might have occurred upon the northern waters of the Great War menstruation. There are non simply British and German ships, but everything from the Russians down to the Dutch and Swedes. While at that place is obvious legitimacy in being able to recreate serious naval possibilities in the Baltic, I for one recall it is superfluous window dressing to include odd bits of fantasy involving small fleets of rather nondescript or non-existent nations fighting battles and campaigns which were never going to happen.

I personally consider the Jutland game to have been fairly and properly fleshed out with the tensions in the Northward Sea and the actual Nifty War Baltic, and the game in that state offers plenty of scope for planning things your own way with actual historical fleets in a huge number of historically-based scenarios. Beyond that, at that place have been occasions when eyes have proved bigger than bellies, such as with the Plan Red offering, where the United states of america and British fleets come up to blows in the 1920s (not remotely unrealistic equally a concept) but the contents of the box were not what was hoped for, with the map stretching but sparsely along the American eastern seaboard, and the ships on offering beingness rather few in number. For me, the game rather lost its historical grounding at this bespeak, and the ability to enter this alternate reality was certainly affected by the sense that the game was short of what information technology should take had equally a fully fleshed-out piece.

Of course, with a series that has then many parts, at that place is ever going to be a chance that quality and character will vary, and as we will see, there is plenty of good stuff to indulge in – and that before we even get to what makes this series an attractive option for those who want to fight legitimate naval campaigns in a fashion that volition not clothing out your endurance. So, let usa proceed to look at what the series soon and about conspicuously consists of in broad chronological social club of historical setting.

Remember the Maine

One of the most contempo offerings, but the first in terms of setting. Whether you lot opt for this depends on what your feelings are regarding fighting battles with ships many people volition never take heard of. To the designers' merit, they take done more than than simply apply some paltry ratings to some antique ships – there are rams and provision for ships with depression freeboard, (sails!), which each help remind u.s. that we are still in a sort of transient era between the last tactical vestiges of an before menses of naval warfare, and what is to come less than ten years later on when the world start sees HMS Dreadnought. This game offers up-shut fighting – far closer than just about every other title in the range. It besides offers considerably more pure battle scenarios than many of the other games, where the battle scenarios are very much a quick gaming prepare readily outweighed by the abundance of operational settings.

Unfortunately, in both this game and the 1 that chronologically follows subsequently, Russo-Japanese War, we are on the receiving end of AP's efforts to produce new counter cut/presentation techniques – and neither effort is an unqualified success. RtM has send counters which readily drib out of the sheets, only bluntly every one of them looks similar it was stowed too close to the furnaces. They are covered in scorch marks, and while some people say they like the result, I do non. And equally an aside to this, unless counter sheets are going to be sealed in plastic moving picture as Legion Wargames exercise, I run into precious little merit in receiving a box full of jumbled and displaced counters – as I did with the PG Saipan game.

The trouble was rather different with Russo-Japanese war, where the counters had some form of coating on them, which may well have been there to avoid the incendiary effects of the cutting, merely did make the counters rather difficult to read (they await slightly blurred); and in addition to that, they were very difficult to remove from the sheets and so split – a bit similar trying to break upward a thick bar of chocolate that has been sitting in the freezer.

Russo-Japanese War

I should probably signal out here that these games are all nearly the navies and naval assets – so if you are thinking near the land aspects of events like the Russo-Japanese state of war, look elsewhere. As the series moves deeper into the Twentieth Century, you will see a growing presence of submarines and aircraft…and airships, merely the fighting on state goes beyond the telescopic of these designs.

When it comes to the quality of naval leadership, throughout the series you lot are somewhat hovering between a mild abstraction and the elementary reality that no commander in this era could do a vast corporeality once battle is joined. Leaders can affect contact and battle initiative, simply that is it.

Needless to say, whatsoever else players know, or do non know, nearly the Russo-Japanese War, the battle of Tsushima will figure prominently. Here, it is just the one battle scenario amongst many scenarios covering the menstruation of the war. The broad brush approach to battle, which is essential to preventing the whole series bogging down the moment the guns open upward, does at least mean that detail situations can be tweaked with a die modifier or an easy to implement special dominion. Hither, the out of practice gunnery of the worn Russian fleet is only represented past a qualifier on whatsoever hit by the Russians actually doing something.

What should be apparent with a game like this 1 is that a very considerable corporeality of effort has gone into creating the ships as counters and as information, and putting them into campaigns and battles that ring true.

Cruiser Warfare

Rather different in telescopic to other offerings, instead of a specific body of water or ocean area linked to a theatre of war, here you move ships on an area map of the world. The forces are not large, but the situation is interesting, as information technology centres on the German commerce raiders of the early on war period, and in particular, on the efforts of the German East Asia Squadron to hurt Allied commerce and possibly (but rather improbably) return back to Germany.

Particularly in focus within this context is fuelling stocks – for while fuel carried by ships, or bachelor to ships via colliers or port facilities practice play a function in the other games, here the key aspect of Allied strategy is to hunt down the colliers and seize the High german overseas possessions, and thus reduce Von Spee'due south squadron to the condition described at the time by Winston Churchill – "A vase of cut flowers, beautiful to expect at, but doomed to die."

Mediterranean

This is one of the veterans of the serial, and covers Great War events and possibilities in the Mediterranean/Blackness Ocean theatres. Historically, the fleets hither did more staring at each other than actual fighting, merely in addition to events linked to the Goeben and the Dardanelles fiasco, the game does brand plenty of effort to requite players the hypothetical scenarios where they can get the big boys out and commencement thundering away. Merely in recognition that many a country with a fleet of these expensive battleships/condition symbols did not feel that inclined that oft to get the large boys out to do anything, there is provision in one of the system'southward booklet expansions (Dreadnoughts) for forcing the actor's hand away from valiantly/heedlessly/criminally demolishing his own fleet.

Jutland (formerly Northward Ocean)

Certainly the most bonny function of the series for about gamers, this is where you will discover the imposing strength of The British, the Germans, along with the Russian Baltic Fleet…and the Dutch.

When playing a total-blooded operational scenario from this game, equally, in all fairness, with many others, you will go an understanding of how much bluff, tension and logistical/textile considerations went into the movement of fleets set upon the settling of "considerable affairs."

There are non that many battle scenarios in this blueprint, but if the fleets exercise see, you will be faced with the biggest battles this system tin provide.

Pacific Crossroads

Well and truly in the realms of hypothesis here, this game postulates the Japanese making a power move into the Pacific proper one war early.

And just two of the books…

Dreadnoughts

This is meaning in that, equally well every bit providing a large range of hypothetical scenarios, information technology also contains a new set of rules for the tactical battle arrangement – more anon.

Bay of Bengal

I mention this book in that it shows something particular about this series – we have all encountered systems which are good for things at a given scale, larger calibration, smaller scale, somewhere in the centre. Here, with a set of scenarios that are small in numbers of ships but can involve large expanses of h2o, we encounter the other end of the system in contrast to doing big moves and big battles with large fleets.

The activeness again concentrates on the German commerce raiders, and in a number of scenarios, but one raider in a big sea with limited only more powerful Allied forces looking to hunt information technology down. And it all works very nicely, although this is one prepare of scenarios that require materials from hither, in that location and everywhere around the arrangement in club to play all that is on offer.

And then how does it all play?

With the exception of Cruiser Warfare, all the games have an operational map divided into offset squares. Hither you will manoeuvre the forcefulness elements you have available via a counter linked to the actual ships kept on an off-map display. Information technology is largely up to the player how he/she divides and organizes their forces within the restrictions of the scenario's lodge of battle and the dictates of specific mission types.

Missions help give a character to the scenario, and forestall forces simply wandering around the map with no sense of definition or purpose. At that place are eight mission types, from minesweeping and minelaying, to intercept, raid, bombard, escort, send and abort. Missions allow or forestall certain types of move, including pre-plotting, and some must be led by a naval leader – peculiarly raid.

If we recall of a typical operational scenario from the Jutland game, it is not hard to picture the German player looking to raid with his boxing cruisers whilst the residual of the fleet trails at a decent distance. Of course, there is plenty of telescopic for bluff, and with submarines and mines in the mix, the German player will be looking to deadfall elements of the Grand Armada any way they can.

Getting to battle is past means of establishing contact, and the outset premise for that is that the opposing forces were in the same sea zone(s) at some point in the same turn. Contact is then resolved past dice result, with modifiers for factors such equally a leader existence present, conditions, size of forces, blazon of mission etc. etc. It must be stressed that the opposing players will see zilch on the operational map salve that a forcefulness marker is present – contact is the just way to tell the story of what is actually there.

If contact is made, battle will ensue. There is a basic battle arrangement, which is only a step or two upward from War at Ocean. However, for just about any taste, or unless time is especially pressing, players will dispense with that in favour of the playing out of boxing in rounds on the battle brandish.

Although this is a broad brush system in many respects (in the handling of armour and the resolution of hits) individual ships are rather highly detailed. Most of this pertains to how they volition fight and endure damage, but there is also the provision of private ship fuel provision, including whether the ship in question is using coal or oil.

When people fall out of dearest with this organization, or fail to get interested in the first identify, information technology is largely due to how combat works out. Ships are stacked up to their limit in the display, they move a hex in sequence co-ordinate to their speed rating, they get several chances to fire, and when the multiple footstep combat round is ended, including some more movement for some ships, you cheque to see if some other circular volition be fought.

It all moves rather rapidly, and it seems to put some people ill at ease with what they are doing. For a starting time, this is a bucket of die system – you roll dice equal to the ship's firepower rating for the armament that is firing (primary, secondary, tertiary), with whatever 6 signifying a striking. Then, for each hit, you roll to see what it affected. Armour is a unproblematic thing of type – Heavy, Light and No Armour. Hits from primary guns volition go through anything, secondary guns will do aught through Heavy armour, and tertiary guns tin can merely affect unarmoured sections. In a large battle, you lot do get a lot of rolling, only on the other paw, you are non trying to shave off this or that percentage modifier, looking at graphs, reading things off charts, and thus losing your risk to win or lose a war in an afternoon. There is some finessing hither and there, such as critical hits and battle cruiser explosions (guess whose battle cruisers), but along with an equally simple torpedo system, that is essentially it for the main pulse of battle.

Yes, information technology is simple, and some would claim simplistic, but I endorse the design ethos behind this combat mechanism. The moment y'all first adding more, the system drags; and as well much elevate, and the facility of the game as approachable and reasonable in issue will begin to suffer. And it is not every bit if the game has simplified the bang-up ships to the point of nameless counters. The top downwards views of the ships are highly detailed, and suffer only in that everything is depicted the aforementioned size, from super dreadnoughts to calorie-free cruisers. But the information on the ships, when not covered in coat or encroached on by laser burn marks, is articulate, and the accompanying damage/send characteristic logs for each nation's overall OOB are more detailed than the newcomer might expect. Take, for example, Jellicoe's flagship, Iron Duke. Utterly typical in depiction to about everything else individually represented in the Jutland game, there are the armoured boxes for her main guns, for her less armoured secondary batteries, notes of her her torpedo ammunition, her speed rating, more boxes for her armoured hull, and for her fuel blazon and chapters – actually, that last one is done in circles. And then while we are throwing our dice bucket around, it really pertains to a profile of this and of many other ships which contains far more than detail than, for example, the old and rightfully revered Jutland from Avalon Hill, and this with the added bonus that you are not going to have to clear the furniture out of the lounge to set the game up.

Having said all that, there are still those more detailed battle rules in the Dreadnoughts booklet, which was clearly a response to a desire amid players to have something more to work with. For me, possibly the nigh controversial thing missing from the main battle system is whatsoever notion of facing and gunnery arcs. If you play with the standard rules alone, in that location volition be no crossing of any "Ts" at all. Yous only close in, or non shut in, roll, hit and go hit, firing with factors unaffected by anything other than prior impairment and peradventure the weather. My feeling with the advanced rules is that they are better seen as a pick and mix rather than applied as a wholesale replacement for the originals. If you put the whole lot in, and that as part of a substantial operational scenario, your game pace will tedious appreciably. On the other hand, with a smaller engagement, or with a stand up-alone boxing scenario, you might opt for as many of the new rules as you like.  Ranging shots, and a much more involved list of modifiers are role of the story, along with more than relation to historical results via damage dice rolls, and a tad more detailing on armour efficiency.

However, tucked away at the end of these rules is the highly significant "Meliorate Part of Valour" dominion. Being of a sure age, I well think the notes accompanying the Brigade Combat Effectiveness provision in the original Terrible Swift Sword. This was introduced, as the notes retrieve, to forbid players, as seen in playtesting, avidly grinding their units to nada without whatever real sense of consequence. The Meliorate Office… rule does much the same affair for larger combats in GWaS (not a practiced thought to use it in anything minor or where forces were locked by honour and/or foolishness, like Coronel). The premise of this rule is that no admiral, given all the prestige considerations tied to these fleets, was going to expend his nation'southward assets without a serious amount of inclination to canvass away in a different direction. And to emphasise how petty a prod were needed, the rules here call for a pause-off whorl the moment casualties get to 10% of the force. If that seems a bit iffy to anyone, only retrieve of Scheer at Jutland, who turned away twice from the British when he still had non lost a upper-case letter ship; or consider Jellicoe, turning away from a torpedo attack and losing sight of the Germans when he all the same had well over thirty functioning or entirely unscathed capital ships against little more than half that number.

It might exist considered interesting that so much of the controversy about this series has concentrated on the "I don't similar the combats" line of argument. Somehow, the operational side of the games tends to exist overlooked; and yet, it is such a vital and integral part of the system and what the games are meant to be well-nigh. At the level of those commerce scenarios, fuelling and moving your one ship in the big broad h2o is as tense every bit moving the Grand Fleet to a meeting with the Hochseeflotte, and hoping that no mines, submarines, or other mischief are encountered forth the way. Von Spee's courses were often adamant by the hunt for coal – from islands, from stopovers in neutral ports, and well-nigh fatefully, from an aborted visit to the Falkland Islands.

And in that location are footling things to be learnt, or better grasped, by play. The German fleet, the Kaiser's do in egotistical mania, was bars not only past inferiority of numbers and unfavorable geography, but past the fact that its range was severely limited. This was something actually depicted in gaming equally far back as Avalon Hill's Jutland, where the initial German language campaign plot was not going to exist able to cater for going a long mode and then hanging around a bit. German colliers might supply a send or two, but the whole fleet? No risk. And not simply that, but as at Dogger Depository financial institution, the Germans were to lament the junior quality of their coal, which kept the speed of their vessels below what information technology might otherwise take been.

And what about playing the serial solitaire? This is entirely feasible in pure boxing scenarios, merely when one enters the world of complex operations, where lack of noesis is predominant, and where ambush and surprise is of utmost importance, the whole thing looks distinctly unpromising. But there are solitaire rules on the Avalanche website, which will allow you to play operational games on your own; and in whatsoever instance, an experienced gamer will always be able to find means of randomizing choices and options, revealing the true and concealing the false, and thus enjoying to the total what I believe to exist the best, and certainly the about attainable, historical naval series in the hobby.

Most the Author

Paul has been involved in the hobby since the early 1970s. Of largely Belgian ancestry on his begetter's side, and English (Yorkshire) on his female parent'south, later on finishing his education he worked in tourism and student services, and also spent some time in the quondam West Germany. He met his wife Boo in 1990, and they married a couple of years later.

Paul hails from a long line of former servicemen – one grandfather was a sergeant in the BEF of 1914, whilst two of his great grandfathers were killed serving with the Royal Navy. His own father, who was born in Britain, served with the army in Malaya in the early 1950s.

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Source: https://theboardgaminglife.com/2014/09/13/great-big-war-at-sea-a-board-gaming-life-series-review/

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