My first game

[chaos0xomega]

Almost brings a tear to my eye.

Had a 5 point Battle game vs. a friend. I played Americans, he played Japs. His list:
Yamato
2 Takao
2 Sendai
Furutaka
1 Zero Squadron
2 Val Squadrons
1 Kate Squadron

My list:
Iowa
2 Brooklyn
1 Portland
2 Hellcat Squadrons
3 Devestator Squadrons
1 Airacobra Squadron

He RAPED me. Absolutely RAPED me. It was horrible.

But I enjoyed it.

Here's a brief rundown of what happened. I lost initiative EVERY turn, except the last when all what I had left was a Brooklyn and 9 Devestators(and some Hellcats/ Airacobras). First turn, he bombarded me with his lighter ships(Yamato was unable to even hit my Iowa), destroying the Portland. I struck back by destroying his Furutaka with my Iowa, and some lighter damage on the other ships. Our aircraft jockeyed for position etc.

Next turn, I was able to use my kickass fighter-superiority to lock every last airplane he had on the table, they would spend the rest of the game dogfighting. He used all of his available long lances(on his 2 Sendai and and 2 Takao) on my Iowa. I said balls, at least I got another turn to go before I die. Spread out my fire between my remaining three ships between his 2 Takao, managed to cripple one and do a couple points of damage on the other. My Brooklyn was crippled.

Following turn, the airwar went both ways, I managed to destroy all his Kates, although a couple of Vals and one zero slipped through. My crippled Brooklyn bit the dust before it could do anything. My remaining Brooklyn and Iowa opened fire, the Brooklyn doing some light damage to a Sendai, the Iowa destroying a Takao and a Sendai, severely damaging the second Sendai and crippling the second Takao.

The end phase came around, he started in on me with the first Takao's torpedo. Rolled his 4 dice, hit with 3. Rolled his 15(collectively speaking) damage dice, and managed to do combined total of about 50 damage(probably more, I just said you know what, stop counting and took it off the table). Next turn I won priority(for the first and only time in the game) sent my 9 Devs in against his Yamato, he destroyed 4 of them with AA fire(from the Yamato and another ship, I think the Sendai), my Brooklyn managed to cripple the Sendai, his Yamato sunk my Brooklyn, and then took 5 Devestator torpedo's up it's ass, reducing its damage to 28. And then the game ended.

I have a feeling that we did a lot of stuff wrong. The Torpedo's just seemed way to powerful, as did the Yamato. I have some questions that I need to ask, but I'll do that after I eat and whatnot.

Any comments?

 

[vitalis6969]

Sounds like a good, but not so fun game for you... :wink:

One question I have though, would it have been a better tactic maybe to concentrate the Iowa's firepower on one ship at a time rather then spread it out? I don't know the deployment to know if this was possible or not.

From Battletech to ACTA I usually try to use this tactic, hammer something with everything I have to scrap it, then move to the next.

Just wondering and sorry to hear about the stuffing.

-V

 

[Ben2]

It seems like you may have done something odd with torpedo damage, the Iowa should have survived three long lance hits. I'll do a worked example.

You took 12 torps from 2 Takao and 2 Sendai.

Assuming they hit you side on (and thus hit on a 3+), an average of 8 will hit.
They roll 5 damage dice each and are super AP. The Iowa is armour 6, so they will damage on a 4+.
40 damage dice are rolled, and on average half will fail to score damage. This gives 20 points of damage (you only cause one point of daamge for beating the armour).
However the Iowa has a torpedo belt and so forces the opposing player to reroll all successful dice (the torpedo belt is almost a standard feature on war class ships, and is invaluable at keeping them alive).
So your opponent picks up the 20 successful dice and rolls them again, and an average of only 10 score a 4, 5 or 6 and thus cause damage.
This gives 10 damage points against the Iowa.
There is a good chance of further damage from a critical, as natural 6s on damage (after the reroll caused by torpedo belt) will cause a critical on a roll of 4+ (giving an average of one or two for this volley).

Were you rolling the damage dice and adding them together?

Torpedoes are good, especially in Raid level engagements, where a spread of torpedoes from a destroyer or sub had the potential to cripple or sink a cruiser, but against war level ships with 6+ armour and torpedo belts, and even battle level ships with 5+ armour +torpedo belt (ie Iowa, Yamamoto, Nagato, Bismarck, New York, Colorado, North Carolina, South Dakota, King George V, Nelson, Queen Elizabeth, Renown, Hood, Kongo, Scharnhorst, Dunkerque, Richelieu) torpedoes are of limited use. However they are great for clearing away cruiser escorts, and giving an expendable destroyer screen teeth.
The Japanese are the only people with super AP torps, and the effectiveness of their torps leads a lot of japanese players to close with their opponent to use them. This is exploitable, and care taken with your battleships can avoid serious damage from long lance fire.

Your fleet selection surprised me, and while it convincingly neutralised the Japanese air power I think you should have dropped enough aircraft to take 3 fletchers. The fletcher is one of the best destroyers in the game, and their torpedo batteries would have been a serious threat to the Japanese cruisers.
You also spent a battle point on two raid level cruisers. If you were determined to have aircraft I would have made one of these points a Yorktown class carrier, giving you 3 fighter flights, 6 dive bomber flights and 3 torpedo bomber flights plus a free carrier. I'm not too sure as to the worth of the Brooklyn, and think three Portland or Pensecola class cruisers or a New York class battleship would have been a better selection.
To be fair though your opponent would have been better off ditching the aircraft for a flotilla of Fubuki class fleet destroyers and trading a Takao for a Shokaku and getting a similar number of aircraft.
Getting two Sendai was a mistake on his part when he could have taken two Aoba 8" gun cruisers. The Sendai is an escort cruiser useful for giving some additional AA to a battleship under air attack, but even then a Furutaka or Aoba can contribute half as many dice and has much better guns.

When constructing a fleet do it around a solid core. For battle or war level engagements you are ok to take an Iowa or Yamamoto, but a New York or Nagato would also be a valid choice. Consider what you field them with though. A raid level aircraft carrier and a large cruiser (Brooklyn, Moganami or Takao) is a valid use of a point. But the two points you have left should be split, one on an escorting destroyer flotilla and one on skirmish level cruisers, preferably 8" gun cruisers. Take a good look at the cruisers available to the fleet you are fielding, particularly in smaller engagements, and if you have 8" gun cruisers use some.
8" vs 6" gun cruisers is an interesting argument. 8" shells can cause criticals, whereas 6" shells are weak and so cannot cause crits and also give your opponent a +1 to their armour, so 3+ cruiser armour becomes 4+ to damage. As a compensation 6" gun cruisers generally have more turrets or are twin linked, meaning you are more likely to get some damage.
I would however always build my cruiser contingent around some 8" cruisers.

Hopefully this has been helpful.

Ben

 

[chaos0xomega]

One question I have though, would it have been a better tactic maybe to concentrate the Iowa's firepower on one ship at a time rather then spread it out? I don't know the deployment to know if this was possible or not.

-V

Well, my original intention was to go after the Yamato with all guns blazing, but when my opponent demonstrated what happened when he opened up against my Iowa, I realized that it takes a lot of firepower to put a ship like Iowa or Yamato out of action. So, then my plan was to try to take out everything else, and then focus whatever was left on the Yamato. The Yamato opened up at full force against one of my fleet in another turn and did horrible amounts of damage to it, and I was scared shitless, so then the general tactic was "kill everything except Yamato as fast as possible" so then I started spreading out my firepower and whatnot in a futile attempt to take out the other threats to me so I could focus whatever else was left on the Yamato and hopefully sink her. So the game became "Dont shoot Yamato". etc. etc.

Another big problem I encountered was my deployment, I deployed my ships rather close to eachother, one behind the other. I failed to remember to turn and whatnot, so I wasn't able to unleash a full broadside from Iowa until late in the game when her fate was sealed.

Assuming they hit you side on (and thus hit on a 3+), an average of 8 will hit.

Hit me dead on the front.

(you only cause one point of daamge for beating the armour).

Huh? I thought you caused one point of damage for every point you beat the armor by?

(the torpedo belt is almost a standard feature on war class ships, and is invaluable at keeping them alive).

What happens if they roll better the second time around?

Were you rolling the damage dice and adding them together?

I thought that was how you were supposed to do it. I thought it was if a ship had 3 AD and 3 DD, you would roll the 3 AD, and then for each one that hit, you would roll 3 DD adding (those three) dice together, and then you subtracted the armor score from the resulting number to generate the number of hull points done?

The fletcher is one of the best destroyers in the game, and their torpedo batteries would have been a serious threat to the Japanese cruisers.

I felt like i took to much aircraft, but thanks to my (mis)understanding of the rules, I expected the Kates and Vals to do SERIOUS damage to my fleet, thus prompting me to go airpower heavy(even though I know aircraft are considered weak by many on the forums). I was thinking about Destroyers, but because neither of us were using submarines, I found it hard to justify and couldn't really figure out their use.

I'm not too sure as to the worth of the Brooklyn

I thought it was pretty good. My opening salvo with it apparently did enough damage to one of my opponents ships to cause him to focus firepower on it instead of on Iowa.

Getting two Sendai was a mistake on his part when he could have taken two Aoba 8" gun cruisers. The Sendai is an escort cruiser useful for giving some additional AA to a battleship under air attack, but even then a Furutaka or Aoba can contribute half as many dice and has much better guns.

It was his first game as well. He had never even seen the rules until today.

Oh, and question on Observation aircraft. The bonus that is given for having one within 6" of an enemy vessel. Does that allow you to roll an extra die, or add +1 to your result? The wording on it kind of confused us.
Another one, how many Spotters can a ship launch per turn?

Oh and dogfighting, what happens if one plane has to dogfight against more than one enemy?

And another one. Do normal hits/damage reduce crew? It seems kind of redundant to have a crew rating when the crew score is so rarely effected(unless we were doing something wrong).

Well, now that some of this info has come to light I can begin to understand how I lost.

And I just realized that criticals are caused for DD 6's, not AD 6's.

 

[Ben2]

Right - damage.

Page 7 of the rulebook=

"When damage dice are rolled, the resulting number is compared to the targets armour score. For every damage die that equals or beats the armour score, one point of damage is deducted from the target's damage score."

Example - I hit the Exeter three times with 11" shots from the Graf spee, and the Exeter has armour 3 +. I roll a 2, 3 and 5. I score two points of damage on the Exeter as the 3 equals the armour and the 5 beats it.

I'm not sure where you got the total the damage die and subtract the armour idea from, though standard and piercing damage is handled that way in B5W.

Torpedo belt

With the torpedo belt your opponent is forced to reroll only his successful damage dice. All the dice that failed to damage first time round are discarded, so he can only do as well as he previously rolled if all the dice that did beat your ships armour score still beat it after being rerolled. In the example given 40 damage dice are rolled from Japanese long lance torpedoes against the Iowa. 20 cause damage. The torpedo belt means your opponent rerolls those 20 successful dice only, and statistically some of those will fail to damage. Only those that are successful after being rerolled count in order to damage the ship.

Destroyers in VaS are virtually compulsory, much as they are in real life. In ActA frigates and low priority craft can be safely ignored, as they are generally barely able to scratch big Omega or Warlock class destroyers.
However in Vas the torpedo armament detroyers have gives them serious bite, and they are generally faster and more maneuverable than bigger ships. They can also come in handy for generating smoke screens to protect vulnerable ships or to block enemy fire. They form an important screening and fast attack element in a naval force, and with their torps are great for surrounding and pummeling isolated ships or finishing off cripples.

I've been playing with DMs aircraft charnges, and these involve changing the AD number on dive bombers and torpedo bomnbers o three instead of one) This makes aircraft attacks a bit more brutal, but even then modern battleships throw out a lot of dice in defence. With the changes aircraft are worth taking, but for finalised rules we will have to see the supplement.

Observation aircraft

Observation aircraft add +1 to hit an enemy within six inches for the ship that launched it only.
Any ships without the carrier trait can launch one observation aircraft per turn.

Dogfighting is handled on page 15. The wording of the rule suggests the following - that all flights in contact with the enemy fight must fight. For exampe two flights of Airacobras attack one flght of Zeros. Both fighters would get a change to fight the zero, one after the other.
Hopefully dogfighting will be clarified at some point soon.

Normal hits do kill crew. For every point of normal damage inflicted on the ship, one point is deducted from the crew. Crew are also killed by fires and criticals.

 

[chaos0xomega]

I'm not sure where you got the total the damage die and subtract the armour idea from, though standard and piercing damage is handled that way in B5W.

I read ACTA right before VAS, and Warmachine right after VAS, so prolly somwhere between the three my mind got confuzzled.

And as for the rest of your post, thanks for clarifying it all. i think that resolves most if not all my confusion.

 

[DM]

Quite frankly I'm appalled that you didn't field a fleet of surrogate Surcoufs. After all the effort I put in generating the stats for you

 

[chaos0xomega]

I wanted to, but decided that might have been a bit to much for a first game. The submersible rules make the game a tad bit harder than a 'first game' experience can handl. If people show up at the store this sunday(despite it being Mother' Day) I will gladly test out the surcouf then.

 

[juggler69uk]

And I just realized that criticals are caused for DD 6's, not AD 6's.

Yes currently If a DD comes up 6 it is re-rolled and on a 4+ it is a crit

 

[juggler69uk]

All without a Surcouf too ????

 

[chaos0xomega]

scroll up until you see DM's last post. He beat you to it, and my reply details why I didn't.

 

[juggler69uk]

scroll up until you see DM's last post. He beat you to it, and my reply details why I didn't.

Oddly enough DM's posts were not there when i typed mine, I have no idea why, otherwise I would not hav added the extra one

 

[chaos0xomega]

Thats odd, he posted it like 4 hours before you to!