Fleet actions in two ages

Past and future.

Firstly from a couple of weeks ago some shots of more War at Sea tabletop action. Myself Phil and Chris managed two 150 point games, beginning with an American Battleship group encountering a Japanese Carrier group. Here Japanese spotters catch sight of the USS Iowa and escorts.

The Japanese fleet was fat with air power, whilst the Americans relied on land-based fighters. It would not prove enough however.

The Iowa was the main problem however, its long range guns playing merry hell with the Japanese ships, the Akagi had to negotiate a narrow straight simply to avoid the Iowa's guns.

The Americans ultimately sunk pretty much the whole Japanese fleet, for nominal losses.

Game two was a convoy scenario, and an opportunity to use my scratch-built merchant fleet. I played the British, opting for lots of air cover, destroyers and cruisers. On reflection a Battleship was needed. Phil and Chris split an Italian-German fleet with several cruisers, submarines, Stuka aircraft and a German battle cruiser.

Mid way through the game and the Royal Navy was reduced to shrouding its' carrier in smoke. The merchantmen tried to escape, but motor boats and coastal submarines were playing amongst them. The Allies concentrated on a phyrric victory in sinking the German flagship. Soon the merchants and the remains of the allies were scattered and I was defeated again.

Not for the first time the Ark Royal was sunk.

As written the Convoy scenario in the main rulebook needs adapting; My 8 foot long table made the potential journey50% longer than it should've been, and the 150 point fleets gave too much ability to sink the convoy, I think you should increase the convoy size and victory conditions proportionately to the points. This game should've had 8 convoy boats with 4 or 5 making it for a victory.

Anyhoo.

Rather than make another post, here are some snaps from a game called 'Full thrust' we played at the Leeds club last night. Me and Chris commanded a "Russian" fleet (the bronze ships) in a massive battle. We were allied to a Japanese fleet, with support from "Germans". Against us were Franco-Italians with alien mercenaries. The aliens tore through both me and the Japanese ships, thanks in part to their powerful beam weapons, but mostly due to our losing the initiative every turn!

Beer, paperwork, dice and dozens of painted models, a geeks ideal night out?...

Germans swarm French, to no great effect...

Aliens trash the Russian super dreadnought.

Entertaining, but skewed by the outright power of the alien fleet and the missiles beloved of the Frenchies in the game.