Read through the the 2.0 version of the rules and did a quick run through last night... so far so good. I plan to set down and spend some time with this over the extended weekend and maybe B-19. There are a couple of items I feel are worded weird, but so far I do not see any glaring problems. I know many do not like the narrative style of these type of games, but I really like how the story unfolds where you play just on part of the action that happens around you.
PE
Definitely curious to hear your opinion, PE, especially how improved the 2.0 rules are over the original. I might crack it open this weekend myself.
I'll report back... playing with Advanced rules.
PE
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 23, 2014, 10:03:55 AM
Definitely curious to hear your opinion, PE, especially how improved the 2.0 rules are over the original. I might crack it open this weekend myself.
I glanced over the v2 rules, after printing them off.
Having played a 'short' campaign with the original rules, I don't see much being different regarding game mechanics. Which is just fine. The rules only needed to be cleaned up and clarified, for the most part. It's another narrative style game like B-17/29 so if you enjoy those you will likely enjoy this one.
I'm still not sure about the shootdown rates or whether the game needs more difficulty. My short campaign only resulted in a couple game days with some minor damage to my DD, the latter of which sent me back to port with some engine damage IIRC. Otherwise I wasn't too worried about survival. It also seemed like I was shooting down quite a few kamikazes every day and wasn't quite sure how close to historical that was.
Looks like they added some optional stuff to make it more threatening but both subjects could be easily adjusted by a simple DRM adjustment or two. I'll finger it out after my next campaign playthrough, although I have a few other solitaire games also vying for the next table time spot.
Quote from: Nefaro on May 24, 2014, 08:05:11 PM
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 23, 2014, 10:03:55 AM
Definitely curious to hear your opinion, PE, especially how improved the 2.0 rules are over the original. I might crack it open this weekend myself.
I glanced over the v2 rules, after printing them off.
Having played a 'short' campaign with the original rules, I don't see much being different regarding game mechanics. Which is just fine. The rules only needed to be cleaned up and clarified, for the most part. It's another narrative style game like B-17/29 so if you enjoy those you will likely enjoy this one.
I'm still not sure about the shootdown rates or whether the game needs more difficulty. My short campaign only resulted in a couple game days with some minor damage to my DD, the latter of which sent me back to port with some engine damage IIRC. Otherwise I wasn't too worried about survival. It also seemed like I was shooting down quite a few kamikazes every day and wasn't quite sure how close to historical that was.
Looks like they added some optional stuff to make it more threatening but both subjects could be easily adjusted by a simple DRM adjustment or two. I'll finger it out after my next campaign playthrough, although I have a few other solitaire games also vying for the next table time spot.
I was planning to do a write up/ mini AAR, however after day on of my short campaign I am waiting to see more action.... so far I have had my rudder damaged, but other than that the repair crews have been playing cards and shooting dice.
PE
Admittedly, the single Kikusui attack I experienced in my short campaign ended up being a lucky roll for kamikaze generation. So I got off pretty easy that day without an unusually large amount targeting me. I get the impression that those are the tough days.
If I want to make things a bit more difficult, I'll just use a small negative hit modifier on the 5" guns. They seem to be quite accurate, whether under Mk37 director control or not, so that may do it.
While the nature of a suicide plane attack would mean that they're flying directly at your ship, and thus far easier to hit, I still have some reservation about how many kills my 5" guns get with the vanilla tables. Specifically those in the 'High' altitude attack profile, IIRC.
I finished a 3-Day mini-campaign and after that time I lost 1 40mm and 5" gun and my rudder was damaged as well as a secondary compartment. Overall I feel like if this was a prolonged campaign and was assigned to a different duty station, I could have been in a lot more trouble...... I may do a brief AAR on a long campaign.
PE
Did you grab a few photos of the board and pieces in action? I'm curious to see how the game looks during play.
Quote from: Staggerwing on May 27, 2014, 08:34:06 AM
Did you grab a few photos of the board and pieces in action? I'm curious to see how the game looks during play.
I did not... I will probably use Gamebox when doing the AAR because it is easier to snag screen shots and post.
PE
I just downloaded and read through the 2.0 rules, and it's cool they had noted where rules were moved/merged. I had only glanced at the 1.0 rules,e specially when everyone was reporting how confusing they were (well, not everyone, but some). The rules seem fairly straightforward but it reminds me a lot of Queen of the Skies with roll on this table to get this result to plug into the next table to get the final result kind of thing. I actually like that kind of fiddlyness...I hope to give this a shot this weekend once I get through a few outstanding articles.
This three day weekend was a bust as my wife had me cleaning most of the weekend...needed to be done, but it pretty much left me f*ck all time to get anything done I wanted to get done besides listing a few games on eBay, lol.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 27, 2014, 12:58:22 PM
I just downloaded and read through the 2.0 rules, and it's cool they had noted where rules were moved/merged. I had only glanced at the 1.0 rules,e specially when everyone was reporting how confusing they were (well, not everyone, but some). The rules seem fairly straightforward but it reminds me a lot of Queen of the Skies with roll on this table to get this result to plug into the next table to get the final result kind of thing. I actually like that kind of fiddlyness...I hope to give this a shot this weekend once I get through a few outstanding articles.
This three day weekend was a bust as my wife had me cleaning most of the weekend...needed to be done, but it pretty much left me f*ck all time to get anything done I wanted to get done besides listing a few games on eBay, lol.
Yep, this game is reminiscence of Queen of the Skies as it is narrative in nature.... the flow of the game is not bad, however there are a fair amount of tables to reference and the repair portion of the game can get a little finicky. You can dive down pretty deep with the listing and then flood to counter balance the effect of the list and then their are the modifiers......
I had one special attack from a Zero carrying a bomb that took out my 5' gun. The special attack planes are just a oh #&$&% hang on role of the dice. Some of the advanced rules allow for fire control systems for the 5' guns where you can only target one plane for the 2 forward and aft guns, secondary compartment repair and containment etc.... You can also give yourself +1 rolling on planes that have 2 engines counting for the larger body frame and slower speed.
The first 2 days the action was persistent, however not threatening. Once the special attack broke hit and then one plane broke through to take out a 40, things began to get interesting but the mini-campaign ended. My rudder was damaged on the very first wave of the campaign nullifying any attempts at emergency maneuvers.
PE
I'm not understanding the "long campaign" - the section states you win as the US player if seven or less destroyers are sunk (and it's a draw if eight are sunk and a Japanese victory if nine or more are sunk).
Does that mean destroyers you, as the player, command throughout the long campaign? I can't imagine it could be anything else.
Also couldn't imagine losing eight-plus destroyers but it is over four months or so...guess it could happen. >:D
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 27, 2014, 01:28:54 PM
I'm not understanding the "long campaign" - the section states you win as the US player if seven or less destroyers are sunk (and it's a draw if eight are sunk and a Japanese victory if nine or more are sunk).
Does that mean destroyers you, as the player, command throughout the long campaign? I can't imagine it could be anything else.
Also couldn't imagine losing eight-plus destroyers but it is over four months or so...guess it could happen. >:D
Not sure either, but you have roughly 3 months of patrolling so that would mean 93 (days) x 3 (phases) = 279 phases total..... also, if you have to return anchorage for repairs, it can cost as much as 4 weeks time... so I would consider a ship to be out of action and should count against you winning the campaign.... but, it maybe harder than I think to keep ships from not being destroyed.
PE
I can't wait to see if you get a catastrophic loss like you could in B-17. One of my first campaigns, I was on the 12th mission or so, and a damned 109 scored walking hits on my fuselage...one burst in the bomb bay, where there were bombs as we were on the way to our target...BOOM, no more Boxcar Butt, all 10 crew dead (snap) jus' like that. I guess that's what I get for naming by B-17 something stupid. The next one I was more serious, named House Of Seven Betty Grable's Boobs, a Wheel Of Fortune puzzle if there ever was one. That bomber lasted 25 missions, but the crew, not one lived through all 25...the pilot was the last to go, bought it in mission 24, to flak. Of all things.
Now I want to pull out B17 again...sigh.
Anyway. I like what I've seen in the rules so far. I just need a half acre of space in the house to lay out the map and charts and markers and everything, and I'll give it a shot later.
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on May 27, 2014, 01:28:54 PM
I'm not understanding the "long campaign" - the section states you win as the US player if seven or less destroyers are sunk (and it's a draw if eight are sunk and a Japanese victory if nine or more are sunk).
Does that mean destroyers you, as the player, command throughout the long campaign? I can't imagine it could be anything else.
Also couldn't imagine losing eight-plus destroyers but it is over four months or so...guess it could happen. >:D
You just get a new destroyer if one is a write-off and continue on until you've made it through all the calendar days. So your campaign losses are a measure of your success.
You can take catastrophic hits.. notably if one of your magazines (and some other areas like the fuel bunker) are hit, don't get emergency flooded in time, and explodes. I think runaway deck fires can also end in similar nastiness if they get out of hand. There may be some other stuff but those are the notables.
Ah, okay, that makes sense. I didn't read through the damage sections entirely, figuring it would make sense once I played.
Seems funny that the player is something of a 'spirit' guiding the ship...I would think a player is more the Captain, and if the Captain token gets killed, that would be the end of the game/campaign with a Japanese victory. Can't imagine a real-world DD skipper getting his ship shot out from under him and being rewarded with a new one...not once, but upwards of eight or more times.
Yeah. But I think you have to re-pick the crew skill ratings when you get a new ship, so you're essentially switching to a different ship and Captain IIRC. The built-up crew experience is also nixed, of course.
Besides, a single DD wasn't constantly on station the whole time. I believe they switched them out fairly regularly too. I ended up taking specific damage that sent me back to port once or twice in my last session, and ended up advancing the calendar to the end of the short campaign while still under repairs.
Quote from: Nefaro on May 27, 2014, 07:02:46 PM
Yeah. But I think you have to re-pick the crew skill ratings when you get a new ship, so you're essentially switching to a different ship and Captain IIRC. The built-up crew experience is also nixed, of course.
Besides, a single DD wasn't constantly on station the whole time. I believe they switched them out fairly regularly too. I ended up taking specific damage that sent me back to port once or twice in my last session, and ended up advancing the calendar to the end of the short campaign while still under repairs.
Yea, but the USS Beale for example and others were on station during the Okinawa campaign... however with Picket Duty it is a -historical with constant Kamikaze attacks.... so I think I will start a long campaign and see how long I can remain on station and participate in the campaign with just the one DD.
I wish they would expand your role as the DD where you were escorting ships, providing fire support, anti-submarine etc.... that would make for a exciting campaign.
PE
I had assumed the game would have some kind of allowance for crew survival and experience gain. I thought I saw a rule somewhere that mentioned a +1 bonus to hit that alluded to experience but I can't recall where that was.
And if your ship sinks, I guess that's that as far as crew is concerned, which kinda blows. I liked in B17 that had allowances for bailing out and surviving to the next mission. Granted of course B17 covered a year or more of time whereas PD is much shorter, but still, playing the Long Campaign, there's not much of an 'emotional' tie to the crew beyond naming them on the Ship's Log. Would have been nice to have additional rules for surviving a sinking ship and possibly continuing to the next tin can.
And as you said, PE, this game has potential to be much bigger by allowing the DDs to do more, in different missions...maybe even start early in the war, have short campaigns, or even one long, grand, war-spanning campaign, with crew experience and survivability part of the fun.
There was an (optional?) rule in the original rulebook about gun crew experience. Something like 5 kills = +1 bonus. With so many gun mounts, it would probably take awhile before any of them made it. My kills were often spread out a bit between different mounts, although the 5" guns certainly had some steady rates (the ones using the director).
Edit: I am losing my mind.
Problems?
I didn't think Picket Duty was terribly difficult, compared to something like B-29 anyway. The original rules needed a few clarifications but I was able to get on even then. The revised rules fixed that didn't they?
I couldn't find the chart that showed the weapon mount firing arcs. The 1.0 rules said they're on the map (of course that's inaccurate), and the 2.0 rules just said to refer to it, but didn't say it was a separate sheet. I was flipping and flipping and flipping through the Charts and Tables 2.0 book but could not find anything except what was near the end; it was driving me crazy.
Finally I found the chart; I had put it under some other stuff. :uglystupid2:
I only played one round with four Kamikazes coming in; I still have it set up and plan on trying some more here this week I hope.
Getting ready to play this, are we?
Been playing it. Wrote a review for it. :P
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on July 22, 2014, 01:28:58 PM
Been playing it. Wrote a review for it. :P
Oh? I just saw the pic on the front page, but no review.
I don't think it's going to hit publication until next month.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 23, 2014, 07:01:31 AM
Quote from: Banzai_Cat on July 22, 2014, 01:28:58 PM
Been playing it. Wrote a review for it. :P
Oh? I just saw the pic on the front page, but no review.
That was just a Tuesday Screenshot - the review is coming in a few weeks. We've got other articles stacked up before it in the queue :)
You guys are keeping busy. :)