Broadside Empires of Steel: Blockade of Rabaul (first game)

Broadside Empires of Steel is a print and play game that kickstarted many years ago. I thought it'd be a good entry into naval (which I've been vaguely interested in, but put off by the crunchiness of many rules and the steep learning curve).  

In principle the ships could be printed in FDM, but my original printer (Ender 5) didn't really give me satisfying results. So I waited till I was dabbling in resin, which I don't really like to print with (too stinky for my space and too much post print clean up....with stinky cleansers). 

Doug visited a couple weekends ago and I dragooned him into playing a game with me. There are rules for creating point based fleets and missions, but I don't have that many ships and my space is small. I decided to go for a small scenario based on a kriegspiel the mad padre ran, Swan of the East. 

 In the game I had a command of 2 ships (The HMAS battlecruiser Australia and the HMAS light cruiser Chatham. I was blockading Rabaul to try and catch the german raiders (this was a ww1 game). The Australia was in close blockade with the Chatham over the horizon (or vice versa). Wireless from the base ended up summoning the sister ships (armoured cruisers) Scharnhost and Gneisenau, looking for some easy kills. In the campaign one of the German ships took a critical hit and started to spin, the other one retreated, but not before Australia was sufficiently damaged to sink over a few hours. I wanted to replay the encounter to see what might happen. Amazingly the points values were almost identical. 

 

 Both sides moved on the table at near max speed. Everyone was out of range for the first turn or two. This game us time to learn about assigning special order cards (they give bonuses to tasks, or are necessary for torpedo attacks). 

There is a dice off for initiative and then ships alternate, unless there are uneven numbers of ships in which case the one with lesser numbers can pass a move. 

 

 

The ship bases have lines showing gun angles, and sides, as well as turning angles. I haven't quite figured out how you would use them as I preferred to use the turning template. 

As we began to shoot at each other we learned that target numbers are HIGH. But also missed shots drop splash markers that make things easier to range with continued shooting.  A miss places one marker, a hit 3 markers. Having multiple ships shooting at one target makes everything harder. 

 

Finally a hit! It's pretty impressive how fast things go wrong when you hit. Defender takes a bunch of dice, and roll against the targets evasion (usually 5+ or 6+). Those dice that roll the evasion aren't rolled for the next step, damage. 

 Damage rolls compare the firepower of the battery to the armour rating of the ship. In our case all the ships had a -1 armour which meant that they were more likely to get hurt. 

Each hit causes a hull point of damage (with cruisers having about 6) and a damage card. The cards can be all sorts of problems (fire, flooding, steering gear, optics, etc). Damage control occurs at the end of the turn to try and remove the cards. Flooding tokens functionally lower your hull points until repaired. So if you had 2 points remaining, and 2 flooding markers, then your ship goes down at the end of the turn.  

Amazingly enough, that's exactly what happened to one of the german armoured cruisers! The two german cruisers had been focusing on the Australia, who was pretty hurt by this point (but was also throwing some serious weight of shells, more range, and more firepower, AND more dice). 

Unfortunately for me, the Australia died the following turn. That sacrifice had given time and cover for the Chatham to make it's torpedo run on the last german ship. I wish I could say it was successful....but it wasn't. It did give us a chance to understand 'light batteries'. Light batteries have disappointingly low ranges, but hit automatically at half range. The Chatham, a light cruiser, ONLY has light batteries (and torpedoes). As it charged in the German armoured cruiser managed to avoid the torpedoes, but then both ships ravaged each other with light batteries. Needless to say, a light cruiser is a bad matchup to a armoured cruiser and it was handily sunk. 

 

The german ship, however, had taken both fire AND flooding and was barely holding together with 1 damage point. If it missed EITHER of it's repair rolls it was either going to sink, or burn to the waterline. And so it happened....all 4 ships ended up under the waves. A far less optimal outcome for the royal navy than in the campaign game.....thus justifying the risk the Germans had taken I suppose.  

I'm still unsure about the game. I think I'd want to try it out with a larger force and a larger table. I do like that I can print whichever ship I want/need (although that contributes to analysis paralysis). The sunk costs have been sunken and I have stls of most of the ships of most of the fleets of the era. It was also satisfying when you hit a ship real damage occurs. It seemed historical to have a bunch of misses during ranging.