Oly - Details?

[Soulmage]

Oly - Can you spill some details about VaS since you already have it??

Here are a few starter questions:

- How exactly do torpedoes work?

- What can you tell us about the fleet lists for each nation so that we can buy more miniatures in advance?

- Anything in the rules you have questions on, or that seems unclear?

- How many and what scenarios are included in the book?

- How does turning work now? I know Matt had said that he didn't like the turn marker they had before.

That's just for starters. I can't believe you have the book and nobody has been drilling you! LOL!!

 

[Oly]

Hi,

OK well the first thing I should point out is that I haven't played the game outside of that first demo game...

There are counters for torpedoes. When you fire them you place them against the target ship in the attack phase but you don't actually resolve the attack. In the end phase you roll the attack dice and actually carry out the attack.

I guess it could get complicated if there are many ships or submarines firing them off.

In the demo game the guy running it handled them in a slightly different way. The arcs were different, ships were firing them forwards, and after they would only go in a straight line up to their range. If they didn't hit anything then they would continue in a straight line for another turn possibly hitting something on the way. I've got no idea if that was how an early version of the rules worked but it's not in the book, which to me seems to be a good thing. Too many torps running all over the place and having to track how many rounds they'd been out there for would be quite a fair bit of work in my opinion.

Not sure what I can really say about the fleet lists. The book's got lists for the British, German, Italian, American, Japanese and French fleets along with a few generic merchant vessels. About the only thing I can see about them is that the Italian Navy doesn't have any aircraft but other than that they seem OK.

Being as how I've not played the game from the book yet I can't say what seems unclear other than the turning template. The book describes putting it alongside the ship and turning the bow a number of notches as shown on the template. I kind of feel that a ship should turn around it's middle point as that's where the ship really is. I need to play it again to suss out if this really is an issue or not. In the demo game it felt a bit weird but it all seemed to work OK and the game kept clipping along.

The included historical scenarios are:
Battle of the River Plate
Battle of the Denmark Straight
The Final Battle (end of the Bismarck) (Just noticed that in the book they spell it Bismark missing out the C, the counter sheet has the C on it)
Clash of the Giants (HMS Renown vs. Gneisenau and Scharnhorst)
Arctic Skirmish (Scharnhorst vs. HMS Belfast, Norfolk & Sheffield)
Death of a Giant (Scharnhorst vs. HMS Duke of York, Jamaica, Belfast, Norfolk & Sheffield)

The following battles include a number of destroyers on both sides as well as the named ships.
Prelude to Matapan: Part One (Trento, Bolzana & Trieste vs. HMS Gloucester, Ajax, Perth and Orion))
Prelude to Matapan: Part Two (Trieste, Bolzano, Trento & Vittori Veneto vs. HMS Orion, Ajax, Gloucester & Perth)
Battle of Cape Matapan (Fiume, Zara & Pola vs. HMS Warspite, Barham and Valiant)
Cruiser Action off Guadalcanal (Furutaka, Aoba & Kinugasa vs. San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Helena and Boise)
Bombardment of Guadalcanal (Kirishima, Hiei and Nagara vs. San Francisco, Portland, Helena, Atlanta and Juneau)
Guadalcanal Final (Takao, Sendai, Kirishima, Atago & Nagara vs. Washington and South Dakota).

There are also 6 "generic" scenarios that give set up guides, victory conditions and fleet limits that are then used to fight your own battles.

So that's about it.

About the only other thing that I want to say is that this game feels remarkably "complete" yet remains simple and I'm confident that as with the demo game I can get my friends picking this up very quickly. It doesn't come over as one of those games that lots of additional rules will be published for, something that's going to hook you into having to buy a load of different books to cover it all.

I guess it does feel a bit like a small book for the £20 but as said above I do feel that the book is it. Mongoose won't be making any more money from me buying up their miniatures or supplements. This seems to be their only real source of income for the game and given that I feel happy with the price. Plus I've paid more in the past for games that while "bigger" didn't feel complete and would have cost me a fortune to build up any reasonable miniature collection for. Hell you don't even need miniatures, the counters are great.

 

[Soulmage]

Thanks!!

How many ships are on each of the lists? Would it be possible to list them so that we could start buying miniatures? I wouldn't think they would care since there are no stats or anything. But it does allow us to get a head start on our minis.

I agree. The rule book doesn't have to be hefty for it to be a great game, and worth what it costs! In fact, a less hefty rulebook that is still fun and engaging is even better!

 

[E Nicely]

Hi,

I guess it could get complicated if there are many ships or submarines firing them off.

(since the book was sold I guess it's ok to comment)

Pretty simple actually. Torpedoes from subs work like any others, torp attacks resolve in the end phase, surface ships can't target subs until they detect them (made easier with the Sub Hunter trait). The sub rules are something that can be way too complicated in other games but are really playable in VaS. Very fun to play them.

 

[Oly]

How many ships are on each of the lists? Would it be possible to list them so that we could start buying miniatures? I wouldn't think they would care since there are no stats or anything. But it does allow us to get a head start on our minis.

There's a lot for each nation, the list given for the battles above is probably a good place to start if you're collecting things.

I guess it could get complicated if there are many ships or submarines firing them off.

(since the book was sold I guess it's ok to comment)

Pretty simple actually. Torpedoes from subs work like any others, torp attacks resolve in the end phase, surface ships can't target subs until they detect them (made easier with the Sub Hunter trait). The sub rules are something that can be way too complicated in other games but are really playable in VaS. Very fun to play them.

What I was thinking was that with many torpedo counters on the table knowing the stats for each one could be tricky. However a quick flip through seems to have shown that the stats for all torpedoes of a nation are the same. Thus if a counters against an enemy ship there's no doubt about what it's statistics are. Note that the stats for different countries torpedoes are different.

As for subs one thing that I have noticed is that only a few ships have depth charges, most don't. I've seen photos of bigger ships that prove that they had them. What concerns me is the possibility of a fleet being unable to attack the subs of the enemies fleet if they remain submerged.

Sure using destroyers makes things a lot easier, they've got the speed and turning ability to get into position to use the depth charges as well as the sub hunter trait to help them detect their target, but I do worry that it should be possible for battleships to defend themselves.

 

[E Nicely]

It looks like DDs are going to be a must in pick up games. The flip side is that a sub can't catch up to anything. If a ship moves out of a sub's torp range it's easy to stay out of range.

Japanese players will need to differentiate whether torpedoes are fired in Long Lance or regular mode. I have some numbered counters I use to keep it straight.

 

[DM]

I've seen photos of bigger ships that prove that they had them.

I'd be very surprised if you have more than a few very isolated examples. I have design drawings and access to design histories that prove in most cases for CL sized ships and larger that they didn't (another killer is that in general cruisers and larger ships didn't have sonar or asdic and thus were incapable of detecting submarines. Thats what destroyers were for.

You may have been confusing other upper deck fittings such as floats and paravanes for depth charges.

 

[Oly]

I'd be very surprised if you have more than a few very isolated examples. I have design drawings and access to design histories that prove in most cases for CL sized ships and larger that they didn't (another killer is that in general cruisers and larger ships didn't have sonar or asdic and thus were incapable of detecting submarines. Thats what destroyers were for.

You may have been confusing other upper deck fittings such as floats and paravanes for depth charges.

The photos I'm immediately thinking of are here:
http://www.bismarck-class.dk/bismarck/gallery/gallbismdenmarkstrait.html

They show, or claim to show, Prinz Eugen with a depth charge launcher at it's stern. The stats for the ship in the book don't have any DCs listed.

Maybe it is an isolated or unusual example though, I'm not a huge expert so I can't make any strong claims.

 

[DM]

Some German were indeed completed with DC launchers (IIRC two racks of three, one each side). PE was one of the rare examples. IIRC the DCs were removed or rarely if ever embarked because cruisers generally made very poor ASW platforms and also because the DCs themselves were probably much more of a hazard to the carrying ship than the enemy (the idea of several hundred pounds of unprotected explosive sitting above one's shafts, propellers and steering gear was not, I suepct, an attractive proposition for a ship's CO). Certainly most reference books on cruisers don't even menton their fitting (you have to go to some of the more detailed ones like Whitley's excelent book on German cruisers to even see them mentioned). I suspect the reasons why the Germans in particular looked at ASW fits on cruisers was their relative paucity in ASW platforms. IIRC this came up in playtesting but the decision was made to chop them for reasons along the lines above.

 

[Oly]

Cheers for that DM. It's nice to know that it was considered during play-testing and discarded, increases my confidence that it will all work out.

 

[E Nicely]

There was a LOT of discussion about what should or shouldn't have gone in.

 

[DM]

I have a sneaking suspicion that much of the material and suggestions that didn't go in will appear in some form over the next year or so

 

[E Nicely]

You might be right about that. We didn't really discuss the Kitikami and the Oi during playtets but they will be coming up in S&P (shameless plug).

 

[Soulmage]

Help me out. . .

The Kitikami and the Oi are? And they are significant because??

 

[E Nicely]

Converted Kuma class cruisers. With 40 torpedo tubes each. Long Lance's. Will make opposing players cringe. They did have fire control issues though.

 

[Soulmage]

Wow!! That will leave a mark!!!

 

[DM]

Not that FC would ave been much of an issue if they had been employed as intended

 

[E Nicely]

It would have been ugly for us. Lots of night attacks with those nasty torpedoes...

 

[Dalinore]

Hey Oly,

How are the aircraft rules in the game? Do they list alot of aircraft? Anything on Carriers with distance or any rules for campaign game in WWII?

 

[DM]

Yes there are abstract campaign rules - more detailed operational rules being developed, hopefully for an S&P article.