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The basic premise of this game imagines First World War naval warfare as it might happen in the aftermath of a War of the Worlds type Marsian invasion, in which alien technology has been adapted to allow for flying warships.
The game is set in a world in which the First World War itself hasn’t happened, and instead an uneasy peace is in place, but with constant skirmishes between the major powers. A nice campaign system is provided, with a range of interesting random scenarios.
The average scenario won’t involve many ships – some scenaries allow 20-25 points of ships, others a fleet of 25 points of more, but most battleships cost 11-12 points, cruisers 4-6 points and destroyers 4 points, so you could fill a 25 point list with a battleship and two cruisers!
Individual vessels can carry an impressive array of weapons – the Scharnhorst class armoured cruisers probably peak at nine! Different types of weapons perform different rolls, so this includes point defence weapons, torpedoes and bombs as well as the normal guns. Guns fall into three catagories – heavy, medium and light, designed to hit battleships, cruisers and destroyers, and are less effective against the wrong targets. The Scharnhorst class carry a mix of medium and light guns, so are effective against cruisers and destroyers, but less so against battleships. Dreadnought battleships and Pre-Dreadnought battleships tend to have the same number of heavy batteries, but with more firepower on the Dreadnought, while the pre-Dreadnoughts get a secondary battery. Medium guns can hit battleships, but in most cases can only cause damage to an already damaged ship. Even most main guns need to roll a 6 on their damage roll to get through the armour of a battleship.
Combat uses D6, with 4+ to hit. Modifiers reduce the number of dice rolled rather than altering the target number, which makes things nice and simple. Long range shots at a ship that is at a different altitude will thus give you far fewer chances to hit. Combat runs quite quickly -
One key concept is Friction. Friction points can be gained very easily – every time you are fired on, successfully use your point defences, collide or ram another ship, are boarded or when other rules specify so. Friction slows down ships, reduces their firepower, prevents you using certain types of weapons and makes damage control harder. At the end of each turn you roll your command dice – normally 2D6 to 4D6, and can remove that many friction points. One unusual twist is that you have to remove that many points, even if that means you have to start removing friction from your opponent. This may seem odd, but it does reduce the impact of a poor command roll.
There are one or two moments where the rules need some clarifying. One example is movement, where ships have to move two movement units before a turn and another two units afterwards, and only one turn can be used at a time. However some ships have two turn but only seven move, when a literal interpretation of the rule would suggest that eight move was needed. Presumably the two move after a turn also counts as the two move before a move, but it isn’t quite written that way.
One minor quibble is that the photographs show many examples of Imperial German ships based on Zeppelins, but the rules only include ships based on surface ships – it would have been nice if at least one had been replaced with an airship type.
The game needs quite a bit of record keeping. I’d recommend developing a ‘character sheet’ for each of your warships to record its current status, similar to the Titan cards used in the Games Workshop’s Adeptus Titanicus. You’ll need to keep an active track of friction, of damage suffered in the round (as it only applied in the end phase), speed etc. Quite a few counters will also be useful – especially for altitude and speed, which both have a direct impact on attack rolls.
I notice that the author has produced these on his blog (Blood and Spectacles: Wargame Design: Castles in the Sky- New Ship Types!) – along with some extra rules for the game. Indeed I can generally recommend this blog for more resources for the game.
The damage system is interesting. In the end phase you roll 2D6 for each damage point suffered, and consult the damage table. The mid-table results just do a point of armour damage, but at either end we get the more interesting results – such as bridge damaged, weapon destroyed or for a double six Ship Explodes! Critical Damage such as ‘Fire’ remains in place until it is repaired, so a burning ship will keep burning, triggering more damage roles in turn. Armour damage can’t be repaired, so once a ship has been damaged once it becomes more vulnerable. Once you start to suffer damage things can go down hill very quickly.
The result is a fun game that flows nicely, while also giving you the feeling for the difference between your massive battleships, capable of absorbing quite a lot of damage before being knocked out and fragile destroyers. There are dedicated flying warship models, but any normal small scale warship models would be fine (eliminate the altitude rules and you’ve also got a fine surface naval warfare game).
Chapters
The World After the Martians
Basic Principles
Airship Basics
The Rules of Engagement
Movement Phase
Battle Phase
End Phase
Commands
Air Navies
Terrain
Scenarios
Campaigns