Victory at Sea (The Game Not the Miniseries)

About 2 years ago, Avalon Hill (Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro) released a collectible miniatures game called "War At Sea".  Being a Naval geek and having wanted to play a Naval Miniatures game in forever, I bought quite a few of the minis (The Complete US Set, the Complete Japanese Set, quite a few Germans and Brits) and played the game hot and heavy for a few months.  The game is fun, but it is lacking.  There isn't quite the depth of strategy that you can get from other games I've played.  My biggest complaint is that Destroyers are pretty much easy pickings almost to the point of uselessness.  Planes are nice but once the carrier gets in gun range of the battleship, it gets chewed up.  Submarines are next to impossible to kill because once the destroyers are gone, they can not be hit by anything else (unless the planes survive).  So while the game is fun, it is hardly a good Naval game.

At Gen Con, one of my friends ended up picking up a copy of "Victory at Sea" because we have been eying this game for a while.  Everything I've read about it seems to indicate that it is closer to what I am looking for (although one of these years I would like to play a game he and another friend have been talking about called "Fletcher Pratt").

So last night, we got a chance to play it.  For our first battle, we did the Graf Spee against a Southampton class Cruiser.  According to the rules these should have been evenly matched which looking at the stats, they should have been.  He had the Graf Spee with better guns and I had the Southampton with better aiming.  It turned out to be a pretty lopsided affair as the Graf Spee sent the Southampton to the bottom.

So then we played the Bismarck vs. the Missouri.  Again according to the rules this should have been a fairly even match.  I had the Missouri and ended up smoking the Bismarck.

Anyways, even though we ended up steaming our ships towards each other, the battles still felt about right.  You could tell the difference in speed between the ships (In Axis and Allies the ships either move 1 or 2 spaces, so there's not really all that much difference between a destroyer and battleship in speed) and I have a feeling had we done one more with destroyers, that would have been even more apparent.  There's also different target numbers depending on the silouette of the ships (battleships have a lower target number than the cruisers, I didn't see destroyers), so smaller ships get harder to hit (although throwing 9 dice at one will hurt it, I think).

I think if we had did a bigger engagement with Destroyers, it would have been a nice donnybrook as the Destroyers could lay smoke (something that not all destroyers can do in Axis and Allies) and I think the differences in the ships would have become even more apparent as the Destroyers would have been able to turn tighter and move faster.  All in all, the game seems pretty fun and I can't wait to play it again.