RPG Play-Through: Flashlight: Tales of Terror - Blood and Spectacles

 

I am trying something new on the blog today.  I have never done this before, so I would love your feedback on this post.  Comment down below if you want to see more Play-Throughs like this one.  

Today's blog post is a play-through and discussion of a game of Flashlight: Tales of Terror using a scenario I wrote called; Sleepers in the City.  I was the GM of the session and I had three players from my weekly RPG group.  We normally play Dungeons and Dragons 5E.  Therefore, this was a departure from the norm, but not the first time that they have played a horror game that I have GMed.  The three players were experienced RPG players.  

As the GM, I wrote the scenario BUT based it on the 1998 movie Dark City. I am sure people here will see the spirals when they read through it. However, adapting a single POV movie into a multi-player game has some of its own challenges even if the plot is mostly being lifted from elsewhere. Since this is a Horror, one-shot based on a movie, I decided on a Trad/Neo-Trad cinematic framing for the design. Railroad ahoy!

First off, the Flashlight system does not set the players up for success and is a bit of a death spiral itself. The players have played before, and the system has a high lethality. Before we started play, I reviewed some of the common ideas in horror and reviewed how the system worked, noting that it is a high lethality system. Thankfully character building only takes about 10-15 minutes and allows for some surprisingly well-rounded characters for role-play.

Make Good Characters

The setting for the game is a post-WWII Noir city. Therefore, everything is in Black and White, there is darkness and long shadows everywhere, and all the Characters had to have a reason to be “on the Outs” of society.

Our Cast of Characters were:

1. A war veteran who suffered from a traumatic-Brain Injury and a limp- so had a hard time recalling things. However, they loved to collect rocks and were the most physically imposing of the characters.

2. A street Preacher for the homeless who had a fall from grace in their past. They ran a soup kitchen and small chapel for the needy, building up a small community of outreach. They were rather social in nature.

3. A female nurse who was also a serial killer/stalker. The other players were unaware of their lethal tendencies. They were the most brains oriented of the group, with a dash of sneakiness thrown in.

The group all knew each other as the Vet was a member of the Preacher’s community, and the Nurse often went there to minister to the poor.

The Game

The players awoke sitting in chairs around a table in a Flop House. They were all sitting around a table with a dead street walker on it, with strange spiral markings carved into her body. They immediately began to try to figure out what was going on!

In the search they found a few clues:

1. The woman had been strangled to death
2. In the woman’s possession was a postcard for a place called Sandy Beach and written to her by someone named Emma Murdoch
3. A newspaper that detailed a recent string of street walker murders that matched the one they were looking at. They immediately noticed no dates on the paper.
4. A receipt for an Automat called “Just Like Ma’s”
5. A small, ornate and broken syringe flung against the wall with an unknown substance in it.

As the Preacher searched the upstairs of the flop house for anyone else, an old-fashion phone rang. The Vet answered it, and a voice urged them to get out as “They are after you!”. At this point, the Preacher heard glass break upstairs and when he checked he found a group of men in dark coats, bowler hats, and round sunglasses, and unnaturally long spindly fingers.

Passing an insanity check he ran downstairs and urged everyone to flee. That combined with the phone call and the situation, and no one argued, they hoofed it fast. They were easily able to escape in a crowd of factory workers just getting off-shift.

They took a moment to decide what to do next. They all shared their last memories from the previous night, which led to some solid RP as none of this was scripted. They talked about what those trench-coated men were, and too their credit none of them jumped straight to Vampires! Because they weren’t, but Nazis did come up; I mean this is post-war.

From there, they found a few clues pointing them to a place called the Silver Dollar Club. They decided to go there. On the way to the club, the clock struck midnight, and suddenly all the people in the city around them slowly fell asleep! Then, it got really weird as buildings began to shift and change shape, and new ones sprung up and old ones fell away and vanished. They tried to play along and managed to pass more insanity checks. Unnerved and unsure what happened they continued to the club when everyone else awoke, seeming to not notice what had happened.

At the club, they met Emma Murdoch. After some investigation and social activities, Emma greeted the Vet and told him they were engaged to be married, met at Sandy Beach, and had been working with a man named Dr. Franz. The Vet just played along, because they weren’t sure if any of it was true or not. However, Emma seemed to believe it! The Preacher had met Emma before but she seemed to not recall them at all.

After a bit of RP, they decided to go find Dr. Franz. On the way, they experienced another situation where the clock struck midnight and everyone fell asleep. They were very confused. They played along, and this time they observed some of the black coated men flying around and carrying people to various re-formed buildings. They were creeped out but managed to not lose their minds.

At this point, they started to try to recall the date, year, and other details but they could not. They tried to think about things in their backgrounds but they couldn’t! They weren’t even sure what city they were in or what year it was. The players did a great job playing on this via RP.

Concerned they rushed to meet D. Franz. There they met the man who had called them at the flop house. He began to explain how he had been having bad dreams and restless sleep, and a combination of drugs allowed him to stay awake and see “the Others” that the players had seen. The players had been part of Dr. Franz’s clients and had reported the same dreams and sleep problems. He gave them the same drugs, and now they also seemed immune to the Midnight Sleep. Emma thought they were all crazy, so the Nurse knocked her out with chloroform and then dosed her with the same drugs Dr. Franz had used on them.

At this point, a police detective and some cops showed up at Dr. Franz’s door. The players elected to talk their way out of it, and eventually the cops harassed them but went about their business. They wanted to talk to Dr. Franz about the psychology of the street walker killer.

After getting rid of the cops, Dr. Franz told them that he had seen the strange men use a hidden doorway in the industrial district. The Players armed themselves with flashlights and some makeshift weapons from a hardware store and had Dr. Franz lead them to the doorway. After moving through spiralling and maze-like corridors that kept getting smaller, and tighter, they eventually got to a big, sealed bulkhead.

They opened the door and went in, making sure to try and wedge it open after them. Some D&D experience showing through! Inside, they found a huge mural/billboard that looked identical to the Sandy Beach postcard they had found before. They investigated and pulled it away, which revealed a massive window that looked out into the void of space! This was too much for some of them, and they failed some sanity checks.

Just then, they heard a raspy voice and turned around to find several of the strange creatures behind them, brandishing a bronze syringe. They said, “Do not worry, soon this will all be a forgotten memory.” A fight broke out, and it was clear that the Others were not human and could manipulate the world around them in unnatural ways. However, the Flashlights could temporarily blind them.

The Preacher was taken down by a knife wielding Other, but the Nurse got him back up. The Vet managed to knock the syringe away from the lead bad guy, but in a cinematic moment it kept being kicked around the room. Eventually, the Nurse got it but, in the struggle the bad guy managed to wrestle it from her and give her an injection.

Eventually, the Vet managed to use a hammer to smash the glass out to space, and the Others and Dr. Franz were sucked out into the Void. The Preacher barely manages to hold onto Emma! The group managed to get to the bulkhead and seal the room off, however the strain had been too much for the Vet and he started to babble about being turned into a void dragon and flying across space and time. The Preacher succumbed to his wounds shortly after, but Emma was saved.

The end and roll credits.

The Strangers from Dark City

Conclusion

Body Count: Vet went insane, Preacher died, and the Nurse lost her memories and was re-programmed into a different person. Dr. Franz was also sucked into space!  The Others kept running their experiments and everyone in The City was still stuck in their endless experimental loops. 

Notes as the GM

This session lasted about 3 hours including character creation and was completed in one sitting.  Character Generation was about 15 minutes using the system Flashlight: Tales of Terror rules.  This was an in-person gaming experience. 

Initially, there was not going to be a final fight, BUT we had the time so we played it out. I am glad we did as it led to some memorable moments and the players getting some small wins. Ultimately, they “lost” and could never actually escape from their fate BUT at least they felt like they had accomplished something.

The players did an amazing job Role-playing the characters and it really made the whole scenario breathe. Sure, it was an investigative railroad, but they knew it was a one-shot and followed the path. They made decisions about what to investigate, dealing with the cops, and how to handle the Others when they appeared. No one tried to solve all their issues with violence, and they seemed genuinely invested in the outcome and interested in where it all led.

The idea of being trapped on a spaceship or station did not seem to impact them as much as the idea that their memories were constantly being reprogrammed and re-written over and over for some unknown reason by an unknown other. Some of them made some comments about how it was a meta-commentary on RPGs in general, which amused me to no end.

The players were very gracious and gave kudos all around to the game. They “hated” the system because it was hard to succeed at any test, but when you did succeed you felt amazing! However, dice rolls were not a common occurrence and often having a score above a certain level or the right occupation/interest in an Attribute granted progress.

Otherwise, they enjoyed the departure from our usual game and it felt suitably different from what we had been doing. One of the players even talked about trying to run a Horror themed mini-campaign after our D&D session ends. Therefore, I guess they like the genre a bit.

There you go.  I did not detail every dice roll or game mechanic and just did an overview of the game session.  I can get more detailed on mechanics or process if you want but to me the focus of RPGs is not the "can you do this" to "why are you doing it".  

Until next time.

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Random: How Much Is Enough

You know, I was not sure what category this should go into on the Blog.  It is going to be some of my ramblings and musings about the Wargame hobby; but it is not going to be about Wargame Design.  This post is not about painting either.  It for sure is not going to be about RPG Design.  I could stretch and say it is about Wargaming on a Budget but it really isn't about that either.  I guess Random it is! 

This post was spurred by recent events in my life.  I am now officially an empty-nester.  My Skumgrod is off to college 300+ miles away.  Therefore, we spent a lot of time packing and moving their things to their new place.  Always a bittersweet moment.  

However, this also seemed like a good time to organize my war game space, tidy up the area, and make sure everything was stored and had a place.  I decided it was time for a few reasons as maybe I would move my hobby space indoors, downsize my house, move across country; who knows!  During this process I realized, that I had a lot of miniatures! 

This makes sense.  I mean, I can't paint 100+ miniatures a year for the last 7 years or so without accumulating a few painted miniatures.  You can't have rules for Ancient Greeks, Ancient Romans, Flying Battle Ships, the Korean War. Space Mecha, and play a variety of other games without acquiring a few of the little toy soldiers.  Plus, my Wargaming and RPG Library and tool box had grown a lot.  That happens when you have a wargaming site that does reviews too!  The final piece was that I also had a variety of play mats, terrain, and other bits-and-bobs to play games with.  All of this meant..... I had a lot of stuff.  

These are my miniatures, some older than my Skumgrod

The good thing was that I really do not have a large pile of potential.  Pretty much everything I have is painted, except for some very recent Heroquest expansions.  That would just be more stuff to pack up then.  

I have rules, minis, and terrain to play 3 different scales; 6mm, 15mm, and 28mm.  I have miniatures, rules, and terrain to play Sci-fi, Fantasy, Ancients of various flavors, Dark Age, Korean War, Supers, and Pulp, on Land, Sea and Air.  I have rules for even more periods than I have miniatures for.   Then, I have a variety of RPG books to play a variety of different genres and settings as well.  There are games I have rules for that I have never played and probably will never play.  I almost never get rid of a miniature or rule set.   

All this leads me to the question..... is this enough? 

These are my physical rulebooks

The Creator's Paradox

Only one thing has justified this vast collection and library.  I call it the Creator's Paradox.  I frequently state that as a Designer, you have to be familiar with the tools of the trade.  Those tools can only come from a vast familiarity with the sources.  I don't mean Herodotus or Livy this time.  What I mean is, you need to know a variety of games, their mechanics, how they play, and how those tools impact the game.  

Sadly, there is only one way to do this and that is to have read and played A LOT of games!  

What is worse, I often go back to my library of rulebooks and reference them for the particulars about Line-of-Sight, Terrain, Scenarios, Unit Creation, and other core mechanics.  This is a living library that I reference regularly to spur my design choices.  These works are my reference library just as much as the Primary Historical sources I reference to generate my POV on a setting.   

Therefore, the Creator's Paradox is that you can never have enough games!  This is your living toolbox.  A mechanic can not be a "car guy" without his toolbox.  A carpenter can not practice his trade without his hammer, saw and other goodies.  Game Designers can not create without their own "tool box".  That toolbox is made up of other games.  Those are the building blocks that you use to create from.       

I have games I never intend to play in my collection.  That does not mean they are not useful to me.  They are in my tool box for a different reason.  They are there to fuel ideas and help me meet the design goals for games I am working on right now.  I have never read a game that had nothing to offer me or that I did not learn something from.  

This is my basic terrain collection

Games Plus

To make matters worse, I am not making card games; I am making miniature wargames.  That means, the Creator's Paradox means I need the components to play the games too.  I have found that games do not always reveal their secrets until the dice have been rolled, the cards flipped, and the figures have been moved.  Reading the rules gives you a flavor or sense of the game play; but for a nuanced understanding it really needs to be played.  

Sometimes, I can understand the basics with simple paper counters or moving boxes around in PowerPoint.  Sometimes, it takes something more.  You have to see the interaction of rules in the true 3D space of the tabletop.  That means miniatures and terrain.  

Post-Production  

The final reason I will probably keep expanding my collection is simple.  Post-production.  No matter if I am writing for a magazine article, game rules, or other published works; the editors like you to be able to provide images.  There are two ways to go about this; first you can find someone else to provide them for you, or you can provide them yourself.  Therefore, if you want to provide them yourself you will need to paint up your own miniatures and put them on terrain.  

In order to do that effectively, you need the miniatures, and you need the terrain.  Also, in order to market and promote games after launch it is very helpful to have 1-3 playable forces for demos, posting online, and actually playing games with folks.  When introducing folks to new games it is best if you provide everything needed to reduce the barrier of entry and that means a decent looking game board that will accentuate the rules.   

That means, as long as I am designing games I will need to grow my collections as I expand into different genres and periods.  As part of the Creator's Paradox you will never have enough.  

Diadochi in 6mm

Sell It Off!

Many gamers would recommend selling parts of the collection off.  Once you are done with Post-Production for an Ancient Greek game, then sell it off to finance the next game's post-production.  This is a good idea.  In theory this is also a way to recoup some of the costs of the game early on so you can move to profitability on any title much quicker.  

There is one small issue.  Games that have miniatures and terrain in your inventory jump the Queue to be finished much faster.  In order to be a Game Designer, you need games that people are playing.  The fastest way to get a game from concept to player's hands is if you all ready have the components for post-production handy.  

A great example of this is my collection of Viking Age models.  I made and released Fury of the Northman a unit vs unit historical Viking game around 2020 or so?  I could have sold on my Victrix Vikings after that and called it a day.  However, a few years later in 2025 I used those Victrix Vikings to fast-track post-production on Odin's Ravens: Viking Age Bad Boys.  If I had sold on the models, Odin's Ravens would still be in post-production hell and not available for players.  Therefore, games with miniatures and terrain get fast tracked, and a large number of available minis for various periods helps expand my offerings quicker.  The Creator's Paradox.   

Korean Air War

Final Thoughts

Well, that all sounded like the demented justifications of some sort of plastic crack addict!  If that rationale helps me sleep at night, I guess they will have to do!  

As a Game Designer, the question is How Much is Enough?  Sadly, the answer (for me) is the Creator's Paradox.  As long as you are still creating games than it might never be enough.  Sadly, I have found that I can not help myself.  I can not stop making games, because it is just something I do.  It doesn't matter if no one buys them and it doesn't matter if I never publish anything again.  I have to make games!  

Until that urge leaves me (and I will be dead or seriously ill for that to happen) than I will be subject to the twisted logic of the Creator's Paradox.  

Until next time! 

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Review: Voidfighter- Osprey Games

 Osprey Games latest is a starfighter game.  This should be right up my alley as I love a good dogfighting game of air or space combat.  I have some experience with playing and designing this type of game so I am really looking forward to this one.  

My pedigree in flying games goes way back to Aeronautica Imperialis (V1) from Forgeworld and Warwick Kinrade.  I was a bit late to the party but have many fun games since.  I spent a lot of time hand-making planes, making modifications to the rules, new aircraft, and new missions.  On the old Airspace Forums I even ran several annual narrative campaigns.  Since then, I tried several other aircraft and starfighter games with varying degrees of success/interest.  I still have those PDFs somewhere, I should make them available somewhere.  Maybe for Patreon Patrons?      

As an added bonus the writer of Voidfighter, Casey Garske; is a fellow Minnesotan.  For those who do not know, Minnesota is a frozen wasteland just south of Canada in the top middle of the United States.  If you have seen the movie or TV show Fargo it is that area.  The motel scene at the very end of the film was filmed right outside the town I grew up in.  White Bear Lake, "Go Bears" was just south of my hometown.  I wonder if he and I have ever crossed paths over a gaming table or in a FLGS?  If so, it would have been some time ago as I no longer live in the area. 

Final note, this game is 80 pages long.  Since Castles in the Sky I think Osprey has increased the length of their Blue Books from 62 to 80 pages.  I think this is a good idea as it allows the games to breath a bit more and add in some of the stuff that allows a designer to go beyond the 4Ms. I like to think my work helped pave the way for this change. 

Anyway, enough waffling about.  It is time to kick the tires and light the fires! 

Things I Liked

I always love a model and scale agnostic game, and this fits the bill.  I was also happy to see the game uses facings for various rules which helps add to the tactical game play.  Even though there is no real basing or scale, the rules do have three sizes of ships from Snub Fighters, to Gunships, to Corvettes.  There is no real need to base or even use minis, as flats would work just fine too.  If you have old X-wing, Aeronautica Imperialis, Battlestar Galactica, Micro Machine toys, or Armored Clash aircraft you should be just fine to play.  The typical game is between 4 to 16 per side. 

This game uses stander RPG polyhedrons with dice shifting.  I.e. instead of adding or subtracting modifiers, you move from one type of dice to roll to the higher or lower dice rolling. In addition, all dice rolls are 2dX.  You roll two dice and add them together.  This makes a nice curve of results that savvy players can use to their advantage and allows a bit of predictability in dice results that single dice do not have.   

The heart of the game is opposed rolls, but there are unopposed rolls for certain actions and pilot checks.  Opposed rolls are a nice feature as it keeps both players in the game and rolling simultaneously for speed of resolution.  In a dogfight game you want to keep things moving quickly to keep the speed of the game up to match the action. Unusually, in the Unopposed rolls your opponent also rolls to represent the "Uncaring Universe".  This allows players to avoid looking up target numbers for speed of game play, but means that the Player has more randomness in their calculation.    

I am very happy to see so many modern games using command points to perform special actions.  This game is no exception.  You get a set amount per round, with limitations if you lose your flight leader.  These allow you to perform special actions like the famous Cobra Maneuver, fire torpedoes, Re-group, etc.  It can also be used to modify rolls.  It you have seen it in a movie you will find it here.   

There are a decent amount of movement and gunnery actions that you can take, even before you go into using command points.  Unlike most Osprey books, the extra size allows a roster and Quick Reference sheet in the back.  However, it doesn't really cover these maneuvers.  Ships can do a Manuever or Medium move once per speed of the Voidfighter, so a Voidfighter with a speed of 3 can do any combination of Moves or Maneuvers up to 3.   

       

Things I Did Not Like

Measuring sticks.  Not a huge fan of these, but I know several game systems that make use of them.  To me they are just another barrier to entry, similar to templates.  They should be 2.5 inches, 5 inches, and 10 inches respectively.  Seeing these stick reminded me a bit the rules for Of Gods and Mortals also from the Osprey Wargaming Series.  These sizes are referred to as Short, Medium, and Long in the rules.        

In addition to dice shifting, there are the occasional actual modifiers.  I am not a fan of this as it goes against the Universal Mechanics established earlier for the game.  However, it does add a bit of granularity where it maybe needed that dice shifting does not allow. 

Interestingly, in a sci-fi game there is NO pre-measuring allowed.  This promotes mistakes in gameplay and also keeps the speed up as players have to commit to an action instead of hee-hawing around.  However, I am not 100% sure it fits a far future sci-fi setting where such technology would be easy to acquire.    

It looks like Initiative for this game is all or nothing.  The winner moves second and shoots first.  Activation is in groups, with a quarter moving at a time and then the opponent moving.  This is not an intuitive approach as there is a chart to help you figure our how many ships to activate.  I think it would have been better to use a Frostgrave style approach where the Flight Leader activates with 3 others, then the XO Activates with up to three others, and then everyone else.  That is if you wanted alternate group activation.  The easiest solution may have simply been a wingman/Squadron system where they have alternate activations for movement. 

There is a hit location table for each fighter, and I am not sure I like this level of detail for snubfighters.  I think I prefer a 1 or 2 hit removal rather than the attritional type of fighting we see here.  The level of detail maybe too much for the scale of the game?    

Loved the artwork in the book, but I was less thrilled with the miniature images.  It was not that the miniatures looked bad, but it was hard to see them on the space backdrops.  A hazard of space games.  In addition, the miniature photos had to be made smaller to fit all the text for the game into 80 pages.   

Meh and Other Uncertainties

Of note, this is designed to be a "kitchen table" game.  Therefore, it can play on a 3 x4 or even slightly smaller space.  These have become popular as the hobby of wargaming has grown.  Space and time seem to be in limited supply, so it makes sense that players would gravitate into games that can fit in smaller spaces and quicker matches.  There is nothing that would keep this game from being playable on a larger space either.     

There is a nice selection of space terrain for the game from asteroids, to turrets, to gravity anomalies, to space creatures.  Enough to keep any board interesting.  

There is also some pre-made factions and ships for the built-in setting of the game.  However, this game also has about 4 and a half pages on designing your own ships.  I am torn because there is no system of designing that someone can not break, but players love to have this feature to make their own corner of the universe or fit some existing sci-fi franchise.  Here you can have it both ways.  

There are rules for recruiting your squadrons and giving them Traits as well.  Again, this allows players to customize their experience with the game.  However, there are a lot of moving parts in this game with maneuvers, traits, command points, etc.  This may lead to some cognitive load, so it might be best to decide what you are going to use or not use with your opponent before play.  

There are 12 scenarios and rules for campaigns.  This helps with the replayability of the game.  

Final Thoughts

For those real old timers, this made me want to track down and get some Wing Commander themed 3D prints.  If you know where a guy can get some, please, please, please leave a comment. I would be very happy!  

If you have a ton of starship/future/alternate history aircraft sitting around, this would be a nice little pick-up.  Since it is miniature agnostic you could even make die cast or film licensed themed toys work if you really wanted to.  

This is a solid set of core rules with all the things you need for a good old fashioned space dogfighting game.  There are also enough bells and whistles to keep it engaging.  I am probably in the minority when I say I would love a 3D layer added to the rules to add to the tactical play.  Most games of this type do not get that ambitious and this is no exception.  Adding a 3rd dimension can make game play much more cumbersome, increase the cognitive load, and just add something else to track.  However, it adds such a great layer of tactical play to the game.  The game all ready probably has too many options and maneuvers as is, so a 3D element would be too much.   

This would make a fine club night game or even a campaign game.  I could see really inventive players tying this in with large land and space campaigns as well.  You can see the core inspirations on the tin, and that is just fine! Innovation is over-rated.  This game gets the right mix of new mechanics in with solid and familiar aircraft flying game rules.  Most of my complaints are simply quibbles and preferences.     

Hopefully I will have this out on the table soon.  Until next time!

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Review: Victory at Sea - Warlord Games

 

I think getting these rules have been on my "To-Do" Goal list for the last 3, maybe 4 years or so.  I like Naval wargames but I am more Jutland than Midway.  Therefore, I was hesitant to pull the trigger.  Plus, I was not a huge fan of the Starter Set focusing on the Pacific Theatre, i.e. US vs Japan.  However, I heard good things about the rules and it seemed to have a pretty comprehensive list of ships from all the major nations in it.  

With the tariffs impacting Warlord imports into the US, I decided I better get a copy of the rules before "Tariff-Pricing" went into effect.  I pulled the trigger and picked up a copy from The Miniature Market out of St. Louis.  I opted to just stick with the rules for now for a couple of reasons: 

1. I wanted to see if anyone else at the True Crit Gaming Guild was interested before I dove in with two fleets. 

2. I like GHQ as they were a "local" manufacturer of Naval miniatures and I might want to build my fleets with their range instead.  Also, no "Tariff-pricing" on them either.

3. You don't need miniatures for Naval wargaming.  You can start off with top-side looking paper templates easily enough.  That is what I used to play-test Castles in the Sky and it worked great!       

4. I was not 100% sold on the scale or the basing of the Warlord range.

With all that being said I figured that a copy of the rules would be a good place to start on my journey before I dropped too much money, time, and effort into the game.  I had done a Black Seas demo back in the day and ultimately decided not to follow up on it.  I was unsure if that would be the same with this game.  

Now, let's get the Diesel's powered up, site in the guns, and raise the battle flag!  Off we go, diving into Victory at Sea.....

Things I Liked

The core rules of the game take up a brisk 18 or so pages!  That includes all segments of the Turn, Orders, Aircraft, etc.  There is plenty of white space and pictures too.  There are another 11 or so pages about setting up a game and some advanced rules for Coastal actions and Submarines too.  Therefore, it is an easy read.  The bulk of the book is very detailed ship profiles for the game and by Nation.

The game uses an alternate activation by phase.  Therefore, the player who lost initiative chooses to move a ship, then the opponent, back and forth until all ships move.  Then, you go the shooting phase with the player who won initiative shooting first and alternate shooting with all damage being resolved right away.  The game uses the following phases, Initiative, Movement, Gunnery, and End Phase. 

Light guns and AA guns are able to split their fire between targets based on the number of attack dice they have.  An interesting idea to represent their quick-fire abilities.  You do not have to fire all Torpedoes in an attack, but I am unsure of the advantage of not doing so.  There is a disadvantage in re-loading if you don't.   

Attacking is pretty straight forward.  All weapons have an attack dice.  You roll a d6 for each and look for a 4+ to hit.  However, there are modifiers for shooting such as target size, speed, and other factors that modify the dice roll result up and down.  For each hit, you roll a Damage Dice of d6 to try and equal or exceed the armor rating.  Every hit that does causes damage right away.  A Damage Dice of Nat 1 always is deflected and a Nat 6 you cause a Critical Hit. Re-roll the dice and score a 4+.  A bit clunky with a lot of dice rolling since the sample Northhampton Class- Heavy Cruiser has a broadside with 15 dice, and a closing attack dice of 12.  Then, it has an armor of 2+ so a lot of hits when it takes fire too.  However, it gets the job done and is easy to recall.     

There is a special rule for Plunging Fire that means shots at Long or Extreme range get a +1 damage for armor penetration on their dice.  The Damage Dice incentivizes staying at range, but the to hit dice incentivize getting up close and personal.  Not sure which trumps which without really getting a lot of games in!     

In the End Phase, you can try to repair Critical Damage with a Damage Control check.  Interesting, as ships take Crits in vital areas, the effects multiply upwards.  Therefore, a Crit hit in the Engine reduces speed to -1", a second hit means that a ship needs to go 3" before turning, and a third Crit in engines is another -1" speed and a +1 to Crew Crit rating.  This is a nice attritional effect to Crits.  Damage Control can reduce the number of hits in these areas by 1.  

Each ship can also issue a single Order to augment their abilities in a turn.  Each ship can do this once per turn.  I like the ability to give orders but I do not like that they are infinite.  Most of the orders have an advantage and a disadvantage for performing them.  They are declared before moving a ship.  Therefore, some counters/tracking is helpful to recall which ship has which order

There are some interesting rules for scouting that can then lean into advantages in the early game.  You secretly set aside ships and flights for scouting.  Before deploying you reveal which ships/flights are scouting.  They can not deploy with your fleet, but may rejoin in a later phase.  Each ship/flight you dedicate gives you a Scouting Point, the more Scouting Points the more potential benefits for deployment type and Initiative dice.  Clever and something I will have to think about using at some point.    

Things I Did Not Like

This game uses a turning gauge for movement.  Sadly, I have never been a fan of such things, but I see the necessity in Naval wargaming.  I just do not like them at all.  In truth, the gauge is not really needed as the ship moves forward 2 inches and can then turn up to 45 degrees.  A ship can only turn after every 2 inches movement forward.  There are no turn limits other than the Flank Speed of the ship.  There are no collisions in this game.      

During the Gunnery Phase, when a ship shoots, all damage is resolved immediately.  Therefore the impacts of shooting take effect via alternating activations instead of simultaneously.  This can lead to some gamesmanship with your shooting choices.  

Other ships do not block line of sight, so positioning of your ships does not matter all that much compared to other ships.  The maximum attack distance is 30 inches, everything beyond is considered over the horizon.  This is an interesting idea, and I wish they would have done more with it in the deployment or other parts of the game.  They do have some special rules for using observer aircraft to try to make attacks beyond the horizon, which is cool!     

Big ships can have a lot of hits in this game.  The example Northampton Class Heavy Cruiser has 23!  It can lose up to 16 before being crippled.  

I like the critical hit table except that it uses a d10 instead of a d6.  That means you need a different dice type to deal with the Crits.  Honestly, looking at the crit list, it could have been done with a d6 as well. 

There are a decent amount of special traits to try and capture the uniqueness of various ships and navy doctrines.  You will want to note this on the ship cards.      

Meh and Other Uncertainties

One of the big challenges of Naval Wargaming to me is that.... well.... not much of it actually happened.  Warships are big, expensive, and take a long time to build and man.  They are a huge investment in National resources.  Therefore, you just don't get nearly as much Naval activity as you would expect, because everyone is reluctant to be the Admiral that loses 50 year worth of work in an afternoon!  Therefore, the opening of Victory at Sea spends times talking about Naval activity in WWII and helps set the scene for your games.  I found the couple pages on French efforts to be of particular interest, as I had not heard or read much on the topic.  Of course, the bit of history they give is just a taste as whole sets of books have been written on this topic.   

There are rules for aircraft in this game, and they can play a big part of it.  They can turn as much as they wish but can never perform an order.  In addition, all aircraft are moved at the same time in the fleet.  AA guns automatically fire at any aircraft that come into range of their AA.  They come with about 4 extra pages of rules and add a lot of depth but are almost a different game from the rest of Victory at Sea.  However, that was true in the real-life application of aircraft in Naval battles too!  

Submarines are also practically a different game but are included for completeness' sake.  They have about 4 pages of added rules with three special and unique entire game scenarios for using them as well.  MTBs also have about 3 pages of rules for how to use them.  However, these are much closer to normal rules with some tweaks.  Finally, there are 4 pages of rules on shore batteries and how they work in games too.  

Unsurprisingly, in a Naval wargame they allow Pre-measuring.  That is as it should be as most ships had sophisticated ways to judge distance.  

In the pre-game, both fleets role for their Objectives.  They might not align with each other.  High Priority objectives give a bonus to total mission points, while low priority ones give a deduction to total points played.  These Objectives have different victory conditions.  In addition to these "generic" missions there are 26 historical scenarios in the book too.  

The remaining 145 pages are dedicated to fleet lists that are very detailed.  This includes the Royal Navy, The US Navy, The Marine Nationale, Kriegsmarine, The Imperial Japanese Navy, and the Regia Marina.  These lists includes ships, aircraft, Motor Boat flotillas, auxiliary ships, submarines, and national traits.  These are very well researched, detailed and complete.  I am sure there is some completionist out there that would quibble about this score or that but..... wow..... very detailed.  This is the highlight of these rules.   

Final Thoughts

The basics rules are simple enough and allow for a relatively fast-paced and thorough game.  Of course, the more points the longer to play.  Once you add in all the advanced rules and special rules then you have a very complete look at WWII Naval wargaming.  You should be able to recreate almost any action you can conceive of and use the Fleet lists, rules, and scenarios as a good guide to play it.  

There are a few minor quibbles about some of the design choices here and there, but those are edge cases more than anything else.  Overall, I can see why this is a popular set of rules for Naval wargaming the period. It covers everything you need rules-wise and stays fairly close to is Universal Mechanics throughout the game.  

Until next time!

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