Dusted off my copy of Warlord Victory at Sea for a quick Tuesday night game session. I recently finished updating all my ship cards and QRG, so this would be a chance to use them. I had to cut out the cards on my paper cutter before the game, which took me much longer than I planned! However, I was able to get them done and make the game only a fe minutes later than scheduled.
I had not played this version of VAS for a very long time, so I had to refresh myself with the rules and latter go over everything with the players. I went with a simple chase scenario that would pit the Bismarck against a squadron of British destroyers. This would be a good test of the new gunner and torpedo rules and see how they worked in isolation.
The game starts with the Bismarck in the center of the board. I had to ersatz some ships (I really need to get back to ship painting), but we adapt. She is damaged and can only move at half speed, and has rudder damage. The British destroyers are in pursuit. The game takes place at night. The Germans win by escaping off the table or going a full turn without detection.
I quickly determined there was a flaw in the scenario design… Night detection is limited to twenty inches. Two of the British ships start the scenario with detection, but are thirty inches away. I guess we have to assume that they have radar…. Anyway, I made the executive decision that once the ships fell out of twenty inches, after being within twenty inches, they would loose the observation. In the end, it was not an issue though. The scenario is really about the Germans driving off the destroyers with gun fire and the British getting off successful torpedo attacks.
Well, that is basically how the game went. The Bismarck moved towards the board edge each turn, while the British destroyers closed the distance. The British made it two within twenty inches and their other destroyers were able to get detection. Unfortunately for the Bismarck, she could not see the British destroyers on any of her rolls. This would mean she would not be able to use her gunner advantage at range. With the modifiers for speed, destroyer and night, the main batteries had no options for fire anyway, but the secondaries could have used the early shots.
The destroyers started to pepper the Bismarck with cannon fire. It could not damage the Battleship directly, but could cause Critical Hits. Well, a few lucky dice and an engine critical was struct, slowing down the ship to only two inches per turn. It took the Bismarck three turns to repair the hit and get back up to three inches. However, this allowed the British to swarm in time to get all their destroyers into action.
Once the destroyers made it to within five inches, detection was automatic. Once this happened, the Bismarck opened up with its secondaries. The heavy fire sun the first DD that came in. This was followed by either crippling hits or out right sinking each of the following turns. One destroyer went down before she could unload her tubes. However, the remainder where able to fire before they got hit hard.
Over three turns, the torpedoes struck. The Bismarck’s torpedo belts protected her from a lot of damage, but once salvo overcame the defenses and slammed hard into the engine room, causing massive flooding and fires. The damage kept piling up, as the Bismarck crew could not contain the damage (no luck on damage control rolls).
The scenario ended with most of the destroyers shot up. The survivors broke off with their tubes empty. However, the Bismarck sat crippled and dead in the water. Would she be able to get underway before more British ships arrived? The game ended as a British Victory.
It is a small scenario and we were able to finish it in an hour. It was a good test of the destroyer vs capital ship rules. The changes in the gunnery and torpedo rules from the old game seem subtle, but defiantly have changed the dynamics of game play for the better. The torpedos are now not about the direct damage they cause, but the critical hits they cause, the gunner changes make lighter faster guns much more important and make it so just having bigger guns is not always better.
- Manteuffel