All Hands on Deck!!

Back in March during our annual trip of bullsh*t and misdeeds, I discovered Warlord Games had revamped and republished Victory At Sea, a WWII fleet battles game. Immediately my interest was sparked as I had been searching for a Fleet game for a long time - ever since Battle Fleet Gothic passed into the grand unsupported history that GW likes to create. So with excited energy I visited our most reliable dealer of Wargaming awesomeness (Mr Bowmans Hobby Corner) and bought the rulebook. I already had some old GHQ 1/2400 fleets lying dormant that would be perfect, plus, I did make some over opinionated commentary on the suckiness of the Warlord 1/1800 ships bases. Much to the mirth of all the fellow bloggers, after purchasing the mighty Yamato, I completely changed my thoughts and I now love the scale, models and bases. I am such a fickle beast?!

So onward I went splitting a starter box with fellow blogger Pooch, and starting the mighty IJN. Into the research I went - watched some youtube and joined the obligatory FB groups. As expected the whinging was high. Mostly about the points discrepencies, and at first glance there are a couple of head scratchers. However in the best traditions of playtesting I thought I would get a few games under my belt before forming any opinions. I have now got a reasonable eight games done now and I am forming a fairly strong opinion. Apart from a couple of outliers the points work pretty well. So far we have played IJN, RN, USN and KM fleets, and they all have a unique style, which is very cool but tricky to accurately point. Warlord have been developing their naval games through the last few years and with a lot of cross over from Cruel Seas and Black Seas. Good lessons have been learnt and Victory at Sea has benefitted. The fleets seem well matched and the outcome of the games have come down to good tactics sprinkled with a little luck.

The mix of big ships, air power and submariners are a real challenge and make for fantastically fun games. The mechanic that really makes the game sing is the Critical Hits mechanic. In every other game that I have played that have critical hits they tend to be a big swing in the game, where as Victory at Sea has worked the crits into the game as a genuine tactic to aim for and an important part of damaging the big ships. The Criticals can have 4 effects. You can take out weapons, engines or crew, and all these are on a sliding scale of effectiveness. These crits can be repaired (or fires put out) but if a captain ignores these, things can quickly escalate and blunt your fighting ability, or your defensive ability. For example if you take too many weapons criticals you can loose your AA, and then the planes will make mincemeat of you! The last possibility is that a critical hit hits a vital system - remember the HMS Hood! Vital systems hits can pour on the damage to a capital ship, or with an extreme bit of luck, hit your magazine and you explode catastrophically. I lost the Yamato this way (after taking a massive pounding from a USN battlegroup). This is brilliantly thematic and a huge amount of fun.

So if you are looking for a fun fleet game that plays well and is quick moving and well balanced - Victory at Sea is your puppy. If you want a simulation - look elsewhere (lots of moaning about the abstraction of the game online from the grognards). Warlord have done a great job with both a pick up style game and the scenarios they have created. The magpies of the Regiment say, cacaw, this is one to crack into, CACAW!!