Hi all it's Neil here and today I'm going to look at a new game from Warlord Games, Victory at Sea. Victory at Sea is a WW2 Naval Fleet Combat game where both sizes field ships from destroyers all the way up to battleships and aircraft carriers. It uses 1/1800th scale ships and aircraft as the gaming pieces. It has the feel of a very characterful rules set similar in feel along with some vibes of World of Warships for those that have played. The rules out at the moment are not the full set rather they're basically starter rules so miss out some parts (even though they're referenced in this rulebook). In this post I'm going to take a look at the available rules and at one of the available models from Warlord Games.
The rules available at the moment is called the Battle for the Pacific, which is also the name of the starter set. The book it self is 29 pages, which includes 23 pages of rules for ships, aircraft and scenarios plus 5 pages with some details about ships and aircraft for nations and 1 page of instructions on how to assemble the ships in the starter box.
First off lets look at the ships. Each ship has a card which show everything needed to play the ship from how fast it is, how tough it is, what weapons it has and any special rules such as the ability to launch aircraft or having radar mounted on the ship. The card design has the ability to take some sliders on it to track the damage in game. On the reverse of the card it has the information about taking refits on that ship, which are dependent on the year the game is set in and are cumulative. For example if you're playing a game in 1943 you could take the 1941 refit and the 1943 refit but not any 1944 or 1945 refits plus you're not able to just take the 1943 refit on its own. These refits vary the points, usually adding to the points but not always with some being side grades rather than upgrades and some even being technically downgrades representing un-repaired damage to the ship that takes weapons or other things out of action.
The rules of the game feel like they're well suited to representing naval warfare. Movement incorporates requiring to move forward before turning which feels right with ships rudders not being instant turning like you would get with a land vehicle. Ships also have to keep moving at least 1" in the current set of rules and ships can vary their speed between this and their flank speed each turn.
For gunnery, you have firing arcs of the ships with weapons each being able to fire in certain arcs depending on their turret rotation and placement. Weapons also have range bands that make targets easier or harder to hit as well as showing the maximum engagement range. Weapons fall in general into 4 categories;
- Main Guns, which are the primary armament of ships able to fire long distances with good penetration and damage potential
- Secondary Weapons, which are small caliber guns with lots of low damage shots can split their fire between multiple targets if desired
- Torpedoes, which are devastating weapons able to deliver damage in vulnerable areas of the ship but are often short ranged, inaccurate and have limited ammunition
- Anti-Aircraft Guns, which are fast firing guns designed to shoot down aircraft rather than ships
When shooting you roll d6s looking initially for any 4+ values but this can be modified by range, target size, target speed and whether the target is presenting its broadside to you. These modifiers can make targets impossible to hit as these modifiers are cumulative so for example trying to hit a fast moving destroyer at long range would impose three -1 to hit penalties taking that 4+ to hit up to a 7+ making it impossible to hit. Conversely when targeting the broadside of a stationary target at point blank range (i.e perfect conditions) then that 4+ to hit gets three +1 bonuses going to a guaranteed 1+ to hit (I couldn't see anything that said a natural 1 on the dice always missed).
The game has an alternative activation style in each phase with players taking it in turns to do one ship at a time. In each turn one player will have the initiative meaning they get to move second so they see where their opponent moves first and then shoot first when it gets to the shooting phase, so that its quite an advantage but doesn't feel (with my 0 games played of Victory at Sea) game breaking.
Aircraft differ a bit from ships in that they can move in any direction and only attack when in base contact with enemy ships (or enemy aircraft for fighters). Aircraft come in multiple types; fighters, bombers, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, kamikaze and observation flights, which each have a different role. In game you can launch aircraft from carriers and bring along land based aircraft (in certain scenarios its been stated that you can just bring aircraft as well for your fleet) with carriers being able to recover and rearm aircraft during the battle which is useful as aircraft weapons are one shot so can help to get more out of your aircraft.
The last section in the rules is about missions for playing a game with your warships. This includes asymmetric mission objectives allowing for each players trying to achieve different objectives during the battle. For example one player can have the Destroy! objective which is simply destroy the most ships while their opponent has the Ultimate Enemy objective which means they're gunning for the biggest ship in their opponent's fleet. One of the coolest part of the mission rules is the Scouting mechanics. This works by secretly assigning destroyers, cruisers and observation flights to scouting before deployment. These ships are then not set up at the beginning of the game but rather have chances to turn up at the battle at the end of each turn. Before deploying, for each of these you get to roll a d6 looking for 5s and 6s to get a scouting point. The more scouting points you get the more bonuses you get in game starting with +1 to initiative rolls if you score a single scouting point, all the way to +2 to initiative, deploying all carrier flights rather than the usual 2, getting a superior deployment zone and getting to redeploy any number of ships including deploying any scouting vessels. Scouting can give plenty of bonuses but can be a risk to commit too much to it and favours lighter vessels. A game lasts 8 turns or until one side decides to withdraw at which point you check for who won.
The next part of the book shows the various nations in the game and any special national rules for their fleet. The nation's navies shown in the book are the US Navy, the Imperial Japan Navy (IJN), the Royal Navy of Great Britain, the Kriegsmarine of Germany, the Regia Marina of Italy and the Marine Nationale of France. It doesn't have much in the way of rules for each with only a couple of aircraft stats for each nation plus a single battleship for the US Navy, IJN, Royal Navy and Kriegmarine that were released at the same time as the starter set.
From this starter rulebook, the rules look good, they look to capture the favour but they do seem to be missing somethings such as submarines and weather which I've heard will be coming with a full rulebook release later in the year and there are some rules which need a bit more explanation or an example to confirm how they work exactly. A full fleet book is also been said to be coming as well with all the ships for all nations but in the meantime the models do come with the cards for the ships to get going with the current rulebook.
Moving onto the models now, I have currently only purchased the HMS Warspite to start off my Royal navy fleet. The model itself is resin for the hull, superstructure and base with some metal parts for the turrets and masts. The resin parts were good with no bubbles and supported a good amount of detail. The metal parts were nice as well but a bit of a pain to get the barrels and masts nice and straight.
In the box with the model you get a piece with the build instructions on one side and a painting guide on the other which is a nice extra bit of information so I didn't need to go off searching for the internet (or world of warships) for how to paint it in a historic scheme. Additionally you get the ship card for Warspite with its stats on one side and on the reverse its real world stats, some of its history and its various refits. The card does feel a little flimsy so probably would need laminating before heavy use to prevent wear and tear.
The model is pretty good and ended up being larger than I expected which is nice, and it was good enough that I have since ordered the Royal Navy fleet box to expand my fleet so I could play some reasonable size games when the pandemic is over and my local club reopens.
Overall I would recommend this game if you like the idea of naval combat set in WW2. The rules appear to have a good balance between being simple enough that the game should flow easily but complex enough to capture all the different aspects of naval warfare in WW2. Hopefully some more people in my area will pick up the game as it looks fun so I will be investing, which should mean there will be some hobby posts in the future about my naval armaments race ;) Hope you've found this useful, if you have any thoughts about the game or anything you'd like to see leave a comment below. Check out my Instagram for WIP pictures of my painting projects. See you again soon for some more Victory at Sea content.
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