Some Rule Question

[Fabian]

Cheers,

i ordered the 2 player starter box a while ago and after some test games my wife surprisingly joined me in playing this game.

Still after this games there are some rules/game questions which i have and i hope some of you can help me…

First of all…
–Hit modifiers

What happend if the to hit score reaches more than 6? Do this means that it is impossible to hit the enemy model?
–Visual Range / Beyond the Horizon Attacks

Every weapon can only be fired 30″?
If i want to fire more than 30″ i need an Observation Flight AND(!) the target must be stationary?!?!
So it is impossible to fire beyond 30″ at a ship which has moved?

–Scouting/Aircraft X

If i use the aircraft of a ship to scout i can roll in the scouting phase for every Aircraft one dice and for each 5 or 6 i will get a scouting point?
for example: i have two aircraft 3 cruisers in my list and i decide to use all of them for scouting… i will have 6 dice to roll in the scouting phase…

–Radar/adv. Radar 

As written in the rules, the radar systems give you a bonus in the scouting phase. But are there other things?
I ask because battleships have this trait … but only destroyers and cruisers are able to “scout”…

–Aircraft/ AA battery

If an aircraft flies over a ship with the local X trait the ship can immediately fire at that aircraft.
Is the ship also able to fire its local X weapons when the ship moves “through” an aircraft model?

 

Cheers from germany, keep on playing and stay healthy! 🙂
FaBa

 

 

[Nat]

Hi,

i’ve put some player aids in the thread ‘news from the wardroom’ which you may find helpful…

but to answer your questions:

1)you always need a 4 or more after D6 + modifiers, so yes if you have more than 3 negative modifiers over positive its an auto miss (ie the 7+ to hit)
2) yep, 30″ max range against moving targets – 1″ is ~ 1K yards realworld distances… so the 30″ range is the warspites longest range hit on a moving ship
3) yep aircraft X – add all the X’s up then split between scouting and BHA observation (and sub-hunting if you have the rulebook),  for every one assigned to scouting you roll 1 D6
4) in the core rules (what you got with the 2 player set) yes Radar only affects scouting – in the full rule book Radar & Advance Radar have rules that interact with bad weather / night & obscured shooting

5) local AA is used when the flights move & at the start of the gunnery phase not when the ship moves.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Nat.

[Finn]

Hi,

I have another Question: do Submarines that have a point blank range for 1″ no way of getting into the range? Because if i measure from tower of the Submarine to the front of the base, that is mostly already 1″. I coult argue that two subs, that are in an geometrical constellation right beneath each other, the 1″ would be possible, but not to any ship. That would make subs quite a lot less usable. When i consider them against Nippon with their 7″ move, it makes it quite impossible to get them into action.

Thank you for your Time

[Nat]

A common house rule (which I may put into a Wardroom FAQ) is that base to base is always point blank range irrespective of the actual distance.

[Finn]

Hi, me again.
Since i have now made some games, me and my opponent think that the dodge move of the ships is way to strong. Every ship just dodges all the time and there is no real progress in the game even in short and point blank range. For all but the wakeless torpedoes that order just simply costs me -1 on my shots but everyone that shoots on my ship gets to reroll their attack dice… while i think this quite helpful for the small cruisers, it is very annoying for the Battleships. For the size of them it would just be plausible to me if the dodge order wont help vs short and point blank shots. Maybe just point blank shots. Just to note: i play the Royal Navy and my opponents have until now played all the fraktions but the French and Italian.

[Nat]

Well dont forget that you also half your avalible flank speed* when you do an evade order (so a ship with flank 5 drops to 3) & it also means you are limited to 1 45deg turn (unless agile or you start at speed 7).  It alsom means that unless the ship is a destroyer it cant gain the -1 for speed, so yes you are forcing a re-roll…. but whats better -1 to hit or re-roll hits?  plus  you have the rule Twin linked gives a re-roll & dice can only be re-rolled once (like kamikaze attaks they effectively cancell each other out…or you re-roll every dice).
You’ve halved your speed but you’ve got to get off my board edge…or stop me steaming off yours… how about sailing round the Islands?

plus that -1 to hit means you now cant hit my speed 7 destroyers at short range!

You also cant do another order which means no smoke, no launching /recovering 2 flights on a carrier,  or attempt to extra damage control…

So yes its powerful in a straight up brawl, but it has serious downsides tactically. – try putting some Islands & sand banks on the table, try the different objectives (breakout)

*so after critical effects have been applied

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Nat.

[Finn]

Hey, thanks for the response.

The speed may be a problem for destroyers and the Japanese Navy but i am asking for the Battleships.
We have most of the Time about 4-5 Ilands on the Table and never had anything like a run aground ship. For those Battleships to be able to just stay on long or short range and dodge every turn. They wont need the other orders. The dmg control might be possible but when one ship does not do the dodge, everyone will just swoop around for the other targets are just so much worse to hit. Smoke on Battleships  is by no means an option to consider. The Destroyers might be a point for the short range 7+ hit but there will be always another boat to get the destroyer into the flank, thats 6+ again or my own destroyers to keep them busy for the big ones to get in close.

And for the missions, in some constellations its just silly with slow ships (as example royalnavy) to disengage on the opponents table edge while the other player just may drive into your path and block your way while shooting you into the heavens because he just needs to sink as many ships as could be. While we are at that point: the rules say, no ships shall overlap, what happens with submarines? I can just put them in play running deep in front of a ship and then the ship cant move but with the come about order?

This is not intended as a rant but i cant see why Battleships should do anything else…

Thanks for your time.

[Nat]

On the note about submarines… they are a class of ship + its a trait.  So the same overlap rules apply to everything with a base….

My point about the objectives is change it up and make it so that going evade all the time puts you at a tactical dis-advantage
maybe  insteand of 3 or 4  Islands put a fair sized land mass in one quarter and an archapelio /sand banks diaganoly across the table with 3-4″ between the inslands /sand banks…

get 10+ scouting points… then deploy your fleet in one corner – and after they’ve deployed move them all the big targets other side of the table so they have to steam towards you!
try some scenarios

There is a …lets say a few…. assumptions made with the writing of the book & one of those is that both players will play with the same mind set and intent.  So if (as you are) you are finding that everyone in your group is just going Evade! order all the time then change it from an automatic order to a Crew Quality check BUT apply the -1 to the ships shooting irrespective of if it passes the CQC.  So if you declear you’re doing an evade order you’ll get the -1 to shooting, but you’ll only get the re-rolls on hits if you pass.

This game was written with some serious limitation on scope of play by the author (I’ve had a couple of disagreements on FB with him over this….) it reads  as if it was written for people who just want to push ships round with a historical mind set going Y is cool i’m taking it NOT the modern type of gamer who will look at the rules and go X is better than Y 90% of the time so why take Y?
Its why there is an 11 page FAQ that doesnt cover 100% of the issues….and needs 5 or 6 of the answeres being fixed!  So because of that you have to use* the rulebook as a framework to tweek to your preferance rather than a proper full on rulebook.

 

*over in the wardroom we’re putting together a consistent points system so you dont have things like 2 Destroyers with the same stats in the same nation with 2 massively different costs… there is also likely to be a competative play document that will have more missions / map idea, rules & stat tweeks etc etc

 

[Finn]

Hi,
thank you for your response. I will get them to try those options, especially the crewqualitycheck seems reasonable. I was already thinking on something like defending or attacking a piece of land with maybe an airfield. Or games with the night or bad weather rules.

Another idea of mine was the activation sequence, for example if the Battleships have to activate first, then the cruisers and so on.

Since i have a lot of history with tabletop games and was always thinking of rules and how those would improve the balance of games it seems pretty impossible to get to a 100%. But i have already read through the point rebalance/sheets and i think that is great work there. We are right now just playing for fun and thats totally ok with the point rebalance but for the future of the game to get real competitive and challenge players, i think there needs to be some scenarios that work differently for the playstyles. I am looking forward for the wardroom system and the competative document.

Thank you for your time.

[Author]

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