THE GREAT WAR

Command & Colours

After my successful venture into the clouds and, for me, the less familiar realm of aerial warfare with Phantom Leader, this next game brings me back to a period which I am much more versed in, namely WWI.  Not so many years ago in terms of board games, the period was still comparatively unrepresented and, though Ted Raicer's ground breaking Paths of Glory in 1999 stimulated the interest of designers and gamers alike, the period of The great War remains very much the poor relation in comparison with the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War and WWII.

When it has been gamed, the level has been predominantly strategic or operational, with only a rare few treating the tactical sphere.  Step in the doyen of tactical systems, Command & Colours, created by Richard Borg [and there's a system I am totally at home with].  First I marched with Lee & Grant on the ACW battlefields in the original BattleCry and its more recent excellent remake and upgrade.  Then came Memoir 44 and here I fought from the hell of Stalingrad and the burning sands of North Africa to Normandy and beyond with add-on after add-on, including the immense 9 maps of the Normandy beaches and the paratroop landing sites.  Most recently Samurai Battles took me to the exotic conflicts of Japan, perhaps best known from the films of Kurosawa.

While stepping out with the many plastic soldiers of these games, I was equally involved with marshalling the wooden blocks for the GMT treatment of the same system.  I began with Romans & Carthaginians and quickly acquired the first expansion Greece & Eastern Kingdoms, if only to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great.  I've fought the Barbarians and the Civil Wars of Caesar and Pompey.  This time I wasn't quite so all-embracing in my need to own everything - and so never acquired the Imperial Romans or Spartans.

Then the Napoleonic Wars beckoned and the drum and fife led me over the hills and far away to Spain in the first expansion and later to Russia and Austria, though not yet to the Prussian expansion and more recent additions.  Once again poor old WWI lagged behind, but eventually in 2015, there arrived The Great War.

Perhaps it's no surprise for the war that is so linked in our minds with WWII that the physical treatment has followed the path of Memoir 44 and given us plastic figures rather then wooden blocks - especially as the publisher is PSC [the Plastic Soldier Company].  Also considering the latter producers, it does mean that the figures come in six sprues and so need detaching. 

What a furore that stirred up!  There have been many complaints about this and the quality of the figures and I must admit that, despite care and the use of the appropriate clippers, a few of my figures did end up sporting what look more like shotguns than rifles with bayonets.  If you aren't familiar with using the right tools then the number of shortened guns may rise, but comments indicating the loss of all or part of a limb suggest to me that totally the wrong sort of cutting tool has been pressed into service!  In particular, I wouldn't recommend any sort of knife, however sharp.  Once set up, it has been hard for me to spot any of my slightly shortened rifles.

Here you should be able to notice, but later on the map I think you'll find it more difficult.

The other feature is that the machine gun figures do need assembling and gluing - again a very minor job that took little time and effort, though I'd suggest using tweezers to hold one part as you glue it to another [there are only three separate bits!]  Once put together they look very effective, though storing them separately is to be recommended both for ease of finding and to avoid any damage. 

Having said that, if you are at all familiar with Zvesda plastic figures which were used in Samurai Battles which really do need tricky assembly and have very fine and easily broken weapons, these PSG figures are sturdy and moulded as a single unit, except for the machine gunners.  A single storage box contains all my models, allowing the three sets of four figures that make up each machine gun unit and mortar unit to be kept separate from the bulk of the infantry and so very easy to identify for set up purposes.

A final point about these models is the variety of poses; unlike Memoir 44's identical infantry, there is a good range of different stances, as well as the special Bomber figure [an infantry man throwing a hand grenade] that acts like markers do in some of the other C&C games to identify a special unit.

A gloriously well-filled box!

From plastic we move to cardboard.  The double-sided board is excellent.  First of all the title The Great War is discreetly placed at each opposing edge and not splashed across the centre of the board in large letters, as the word ANCIENTS was!  Secondly, one side is a strong green and the other an all too appropriate brown that conveys those deadly muddy landscapes.  It is also deeper than the typical C&C board with 12 hexes by 11 hexes, making for an almost square board, but divided as is essential by the familiar dotted lines into the usual three sections: Left Flank, Centre and Right Flank.

Additional terrain pieces are more limited in variety than usual with a few building hexes, eight hill and nine forest hex overlays and then a plethora of trench hexes that you will certainly be placing a good number of in all scenarios.  Added to these are oblong pieces that have wire on one side and shell craters on the other.  Most scenarios begin with a preliminary round that will turn quite a number of hexes in the No-Man's-Land between the two armies into such shell holes.  All are of very thick, strong card and my single wish is that the wire/crater terrain had also been hex-shaped, as inevitably the four figures that make up each infantry unit tend to be slightly more difficult to move onto the oblong pieces and also tend to fall off the edges.

With all my C&C games, I prefer to lay a sheet of plexi-glass on top of the board once terrain tiles have been set up to avoid them shifting during the game play.  With The Great War, I'd very strongly recommend this practice or you will almost certainly find your trench lines regularly shifting and needing readjusting unless you have a very light and dexterous touch.  [Stop muttering that I must have ten thumbs!]  Added to that, the overlays for wire and the inevitable craters then sit comfortably on top of the plexi-glass, as seen below - hence the slightly blurred effect from the reflection.

Scenario 4 Loos

The British Advance on the Hohenzollern redoubt

Above you can see a small section of what is a typical lay-out.  As a brief aside, before I continue with the description of the contents of the game.  That image of  a solid line of British infantry advancing on a thinly held sector is very deceptive.  It is one you will repeatedly see in most of the scenarios, but what happened in this particular game in question is also one you will encounter frequently.  Some of those units will make it to the enemy trenches.  The ones that do will have taken losses and several won't get there at all.  Those two German units plus one of those hurrying from the back lines actually held on until the end of the game!

Rounding out these substantial terrain pieces are the circular Victory medals familiar to all the C&C games [Ok, I know that in some of them they are square shaped], two hexagonal artillery templates, lots of square HQ markers and several Reserve Artillery markers.  The need for these latter items and their use constitute some of the features that give The Great War its distinctive flavour, especially when compared with its big brother, Memoir 44.

Victory Medals - round not square!

As always there are packs of essential cards.  In this case, a Command deck and a Combat deck.  the former will be familiar to anyone who has played any other C&C game.  The Command deck is the engine that drives the whole game, containing the standard Section cards that designate how many units and in which section[s] they can be activated. and the Tactics cards that allow for special circumstances, such as a number of units in adjacent/linked hexes to be activated, imitating the card that your opponent has just played or the rare replacement card that allows you to gain back a soldier or two.

However, the Combat deck introduces a new element that I think is essential to the successful simulation of this war.  You are allowed a maximum of five Combat cards in your hand and each scenario will determine how many you start with and the basic rules explain how you gain more during the course of the game.  A single Combat card may be played in each Player turn, most often in conjunction with your Command card. 

Most of all, these Combat cards add so much to the feel of the game, as just a few titles will show:  Butt & Bayonet, Gas Attack and Trench Raid.  But none could be more evocative of those early jerky film footages we have once more become so familiar with this year or the last few moments of Blackadder Goes Forth than the card Advance Over The Top.

Even the rather sombre colouring of the cards both back and front with the slightly faded sepia images and small, thin lettering play their part in getting the atmosphere right.

The key twist to using these cards is that generally you have to pay for the cost of playing a card with HQ tokens and, like any good innovative rule, it presents tense decisions, as HQ tokens are also the essential element to calling in Reserve Artillery.  Which is the most pressing need at the moment?  Pay for a Combat card to hopefully tip the balance at a crucial moment or pay one HQ token per artillery die and it's rarely worth rolling less than 3 dice for artillery?  Such difficult choices are a prime element for me in most successful games.

The new and significant HQ counters

What else is new? 

To be expected is the machine gun unit, already mentioned in connection with assembling figures.  What was unexpected was that its range is only one hex more than that of an ordinary infantryman!  But, fire two machine guns at the same target and you add the dice together, a simple and effective way of achieving the benefit of cross-fire.

Perhaps, even more unexpected is the lack of on-board artillery units [though there are still a few mortar units]. Instead, the Reserve Artillery is an off-board token with a designated maximum fire power for the scenario and, as explained, each point of power equals one die and has to be paid for with an HQ token.  Another clever feature is the accompanying artillery template, a satisfyingly chunky piece, the size of a map board hex. 

Off-board Reserve Artillery Tokens

and Artillery templates

In a very simple mechanic, it achieves the effect of accuracy, scatter and intensity at one go.  Place the template [whose hex sides are numbered 1 to 6] on, or rather hold it above, your target hex and roll the dice.  Each die roll achieves a hit on the corresponding adjacent hex, but any doubles or more also add that number of hits on the target hex.  Achieve 3 hits on the target hex in this way by rolling the same number three times and any terrain defence modifier is negated and, after resolving fire, a crater marker is placed.

However, those hits do not mean automatic kills.  You still need to roll the ordinary Combat dice for each hit to see what the shelling has achieved.  Obviously some will have fallen into empty hexes and it's just possible that the Combat dice aren't smiling on you today either.  But, be warned: close your infantry units up for the Push and you can guarantee that those artillery shells will come raining down on their plastic heads!

On to those same Combat dice - something old, something new here:

Old : an infantry symbol kills an infantry figure [but also New, as you then deduct a number of infantry kills for the hex's terrain modifier], a flag symbol causes a push back [retreat a unit one hex, for any of you who are experiencing the Command & Colours system for the first time!].

New: a Burst symbol [looks like an explosion] immediately kills a figure, a Skull symbol only kills in certain circumstances and a Star symbol earns you one of those crucial HQ tokens.

Victory remains the same as in all C&C games: each Scenario tells you how many Victory medals win the game and the first to reach that number is the immediate winner.  Each unit killed earns you a Victory medal and many Scenarios award them for taking and holding geographical objectives as well. 

Inevitably, for a set of scenarios that focus entirely on trench warfare, one side is always going to have more units and be on the attack while the other has fewer and is on the defence.  What then stops the player on the attack from sitting back and pounding the enemy with his Reserve Artillery power, until a portion of the line is weak enough to be assaulted? 

The Great War has taken the decision to force the pace by allowing the Defender [in 13 Scenarios, the Germans and in only one Scenario, the British!] to play a Reconnaissance card and instead of the normal ability to take two cards and choose one, the player can simply take the normal single replacement card and a Victory medal as well.

This I accepted and adapted to fairly quickly, but my friend and opponent in all things wargaming was far less sanguine about the rule and felt it was an artificial solution.  So far, I haven't encountered any complaints on the main internet sites I frequent, such as Consimworld or Boardgamegeek.

Of more concern to me has been the similarity of the Scenarios, as indicated above.  As yet, I haven't tired of playing what are very similar situations, because they've all provided tense situations with a very effective feel of the WWI trenches and, of course, there is the expansion that provides TANKS!!!! 

But, in discussing the Scenarios, I'm rushing on rather to the last part of the rule book.  In total, cover to cover, it runs to 52 pages of A4 and is a handsome, glossy  production.  But, don't be worried by the length.  18 pages cover the 16 scenarios and another 10 explain terrain, Command cards, Tactic cards and Combat cards - all with a great deal of elegant white space!  4 pages describe the components and 2 the Set-Up.  In all, a mere 10 pages cover the rules themselves, with an additional 5 focusing on all the new elements.

Initially, I found it slightly more difficult to grasp everything and the first game did involve quite a lot of checking and referring back to the rules.  In part, I think that was as much due to the extensive knowledge I have of so many other C&C games getting in the way of mastering the new ideas.  After a few sessions, I soon found that The Great War is easier to play and remember than virtually any of my other many C&C games, with rarely any need  to turn to the rule book.

Having hesitated from buying the game, because I wondered whether I really did need another C&C game, I can safely say that I'm glad my craving for just one more got the better of me.  Add it to your collection too.  I don't think you'll be disappointed.

U-BOAT LEADER

from DAN VERSSEN GAMES

As hoped for, having soared to great heights gaining my pilot's wings over Vietnam in Phantom Leader, I have been allowed to sound the chilling depths of the North Sea and Mid-Atlantic with U-Boat Leader.  Having surprised myself with the amount of enjoyment I gained from an air war simulation, I had little doubt that a topic I have always liked, namely submarine warfare, would immediately appeal.  Being part of a series, I was not surprised to find that there are many similar features to both games.  But would that make for disappointment or would two totally different environments be capable of being successfully simulated by similar mechanics?  Before solving that key question, let's take the traditional peak inside the box at the physical components.

Once again quality stands high on the agenda ranging from the same deep strong box with its beautiful artwork, counters of even greater richness and thickness and visually first-class cards.  For me, the sombre brown, shading to sepia of the illustrations of ships seen through the periscope lens and the faded writing are perfect for conjuring up the period and ambiance of the game, but they may evoke different responses, especially if striking colour is more to your taste. 

What has definitely caused a degree of concern and complaint has been a number of significant production errors.  None of them prevent you from playing the game, but they do raise questions.  Above all, virtually all the cards depicting the surface ships [Merchants, Escorts and Naval] have been printed on the front as Merchants.  DVG has an excellent record on customer care  and they have been swift to reassure buyers that complete new decks will be supplied, but this will take at least a couple of months.

In the meantime, in practical terms of playing the game, this can swiftly be sorted out by comparing the ship counters with the cards and the correct three decks created.  But to save you time, the Escort cards are those numbered from 86 -100 and the Naval cards are those numbered 101-112.  The simple process of using sleeves with different coloured backs is a further quick way to make sure that you don't have to go through the process of sorting at the beginning of each game.  Having been a gamer since 1976, it's no big deal for me, but I can quite understand and sympathise with those for whom this is a very off-putting factor.

The problem seems to stem from the printers, but even more disconcerting is that the main play aid [labelled Help Sheet], which contains important rule sequences, wrongly contains the old Combat routine instead of the new 2nd edition ones.  Again the mistake can be easily overcome by referring to the rule book, but as one of the main criticisms of the 1st edition was the simplistic and unsatisfying Combat rules, there must have been considerable focus on this element.  So, this mistake really should not have been allowed to get through.  I'm hoping that like the cards this will be corrected for those who have already received the game, though so far I am unaware of any pronouncement from the company on this.

[This is the mounted board Help Sheet.  The incorrect Combat Sequence is in the bottom left corner and as you can see the central pile contains all the Escort cards wrongly printed as Merchant cards and to their right are the Naval cards, again, apart from the two I've put on top of the pile, wrongly printed as Merchant cards.]

These drawbacks will sadly deter some from ever buying the game and will cause many to justifiably wait until they are sure all has been put right.  However, my personal major disappointment is the Tactical Display Board on which all the direct action between submarines and the vessels that they encounter is performed.  As it stands, it looks the part, but small is definitely not to be considered good here.  This central focus of the game takes the form of a sonar display and the quadrants are barely large enough to hold more than two ship/submarine counters, as the picture below shows. 

the Tactical Display Board contained in the 2nd edition

Considering that in Phantom Leader [PH from now on] the equivalent board is twice the size and excellent in every respect, I was puzzled about this reduction.  Fortunately, I received, along with my review copy of the game, the U-Boat Leader and Gato Leader Ship Miniatures and Battle Board package.  As the Tactical Display Board in this expansion is exactly the size of the board referred to above in PH, I strongly feel that this should have been a basic part of the 2nd edition production.  It certainly transforms the whole experience - as the identical set up on the larger board [shown below] reveals.

the Tactical Display Board contained in 

the U-Boat Leader and Gato Leader

Ship Miniatures and Battle Board package

All that now follows establishes that both PH and U-Boat Leader follow similar effective paths in all other respects.  4 Campaign cards take us from the early years in The Battle Begins [Sept 1939 - May 1940] on into the Axis domination of The Happy Times [June 1940 - May 1941] and up to the period of parity and then the gradual British upturn in The Hunted [June 1942 - June 1943]. The fourth Campaign is, for me, something of an unknown sideshow taking us to the Caribbean and the American coast in Operation Drumbeat [Feb 1942 - June 1942].  I'm not sure whether this was an eye to the American market, though Gato Leader which takes us to the Pacific war with American submarines will certainly satisfy that desire.

My first four submarines set up ready to start

 a Short version of The Happy Times Campaign

Each Campaign contains the ability to play at Short, Medium and Long length.  The length of campaign determines the number of SOs [Special Operation] points that you receive and the number of patrols each submarine must make.  SOs are mainly used to buy your submarines.  In PH your aircraft was designated by its call sign [e.g. Digger]: in U-Boat Leader, each submarine has an historical U-boat commander's name on the card.  I liked the call signs and feel that being able to sally out with such characters as Gunther Prien makes play even more immersive.  You can buy each submarine card at one of four levels, Green to Ace, as against the six levels of pilot in PH.

Above are the cards for those first four submarines.

If you have your own copy of PH or have read my review of that game, you will quickly see that U-Boat Leader is marginally simpler and easier to play at each stage that I'm now going to take you through.

The Strategic Segment especially is much quicker than the equivalent procedures in PH.  Choose your submarines and spend the few SOs you may have kept back after putting your submarine group together on such things as Special Missions such as Raider or Air Searches and Supply ships.  That's more or less it.  There is none of the lengthy deliberation on what types of ammunition and missiles you need, as each sub card tells you how many torpedoes you have in store and ready loaded and whether it has a gun capacity for surface firing.  Torpedo capacity may vary, but all subs with guns get 6 potential shots!  Place your subs in whatever ports are available and you're ready to sail on to the Operational Segment.

Close up of the submarines in port ready to sail

in the Operational Segment on the Campaign map.

To my surprise I rather missed the more complex decision making of PH.  On the other hand, I did like being able to get down to the action quicker and here there is a major difference, as your U-boats have an Operations Segment where each moves individually on the Campaign map from sea area to sea area drawing and resolving Event cards as they do so.  Though a simple process, I like the extra dimension of deciding how far you're going to move and finding out what happens as you keep pressing on.

When you have moved all your subs, you then change to the Tactical Segment and once more sub by sub roll to see if you make contact with the enemy.  The possibility is from zero to three contacts, with each contact giving you the opportunity to draw a Convoy card.   When you have drawn a Convoy card reduce the Contact marker by one.  The size and composition of the convoy may vary and, if you don't like what you see you can always decide to abort that encounter.

A close up of the Tactical Display with two Merchants identified.

One has taken damage, the other so far is unscathed.

If you do decide to tackle the convoy, then in some cases you may be able to form a wolfpack, if you have chosen to move more than one sub to the same sea area and the pickings look particularly rich.

With the Convoy card accepted, you set out the enemy ship markers according to their positions on the Convoy card.   Often there will be a number of merchant ships with one or two escorts, on the Tactical Display.  As yet your targets are unidentified and so their markers are those with question marks on.  Then you  place your sub/s on the outer most ring of the display.

You move your subs one space if submerged and two on the surface, while very simple and easy mechanics govern the movement of enemy ships.  As these come within range, you'll draw an appropriate card which will identify the ship and you will place its named marker on the display.  This whole part of the game is engrossing with all relevant features taken into account through very accessible rules.

And so the heart of the game is under way.  Decisions, decisions!  The element I always appreciate in a game.  Attack on the surface, so that you can use your gunnery as well as torpedoes and become a more easily identified target by any Escorts.  How many torpedoes to launch at one target to improve your chance of hitting?  How do you react to being attacked?  Always loved Silent Running and Crash Dives in warfare?  They're both simple options that you can go for.

At this point the following familiar and in most cases identical elements from PH kick in.  Your subs indicated on their card as aggressive fire first, then the enemy and then cautious subs. OK and Shaken status play their part as does Stress.  The different hit numbers on the enemy ships determine the amount of damage your die roll inflicts on them, up to and including sinking them outright.

What has greatly improved the game is the introduction of damage chits to be drawn randomly for the enemy attacks on your subs.  Overall, this works very, very well, with only one slight concern on my part and that is the almost nil chance of Merchant ships inflicting damage and the seeming lethality of Escorts. 

It does mean, of course, that you try to keep the Merchant ships between you and the Escorts, but as the Escorts can both sail through and fire through the Merchant ships, this isn't too easy.  I must admit that here I feel that a house rule might come into being for me, limiting the ability of Escorts simply ploughing straight through the Merchant ships.  As things stand at the moment, once the Escorts start firing, it's time for my subs to cut and run to fight another day.

Once your subs are off the display, that particular encounter is finished and there is the opportunity to reload torpedoes and attend to other housekeeping elements.  However, it does not necessarily mean that your current sub is finished with.  If you still have a Contact level remaining you may draw another Convoy card and the Tactical cycle begins again or if you have an enemy ship on the verge of sinking you can spend a Contact point, fire off a torpedo or gun if on the surface to guarantee that it does settle beneath the waves and add to your VP and Experience point tally.  These ideas get another thumbs up from me. 

Just some of the high quality counters contained in the game.

This continues until all your subs have been activated or you do not want to activate any more.  However, all is still not quite done, as you still have to return to a port passing through the sea areas necessary to do so and drawing Event cards as you do so.  This constitutes one Patrol.  Finally, you reach the Refit Segment with such items as promotion of U-boats if gained, Stress recovery and torpedo reloads.   If playing a Short Campaign, you'll now determine the success level, as your subs only undertake one Patrol; if a Medium or Long Campaign, you will prepare for another Patrol and off you go again. 

All these elements are handled in the rule book with excellent clarity and in the appropriate logical progression familiar from DVG's solitaire games.   Components are clearly explained, as are all the different cards, followed by the Set Up instructions.  Next come the rules for the various Segments I've talked you through, a short historical section on different types of U-boats and a very helpful three page example of play.  This latter part is standard in all the DVG games I've played and is thankfully becoming a feature of other companies' rulebooks.

In terms of game play, I can thoroughly recommend the experience of playing U-Boat Leader and would suggest that it is an easier starting point than the many solitaire air warfare games produced by DVG.  For those of you who are hesitant because of the production problems needing to be rectified, you could always move straight to Gato Leader, which covers the Pacific war from the periscope lens of the American subs.  Hence the title. 

Obviously, the appeal is solidly aimed at the US market, but everything in the box is spot one with none of the slip-ups to be corrected in U-Boat Leader.

As the only difference in the rules are very, very minor, a separate review would be a pointless repetition and so, I hope, in a few weeks' time to take you instead through a detailed AAR of a Short length Campaign from play of Gato Leader.  Until then, beware the enemy above!



  

Rule   The   Waves

By

Naval Warfare Simulations 

Editor Comment: No idea why but this review isn't showing when you browse the review section. So added it to the Intel section aswell

 Okay, I played Steam and Iron with the campaign expansion, and I thought that anything a warship enthusiast could want was in it. Boy, was I wrong. I think I just saw a kitchen sink float by. Rule The Waves is not a game, it is a lifestyle. If you want it to be, that is. You can go as deep into this game as you want to. It is almost intimidating when opening up the game. Where to start and what to do? Thankfully NWS has thrown in a lot of help for the budding Tirpitz in you. The start of the game is still a few years before the advent of the Dreadnaught changed the entire naval race. The ships you start with resemble those in the Russo-Japanese War, not WWI. 

 You can start the game as one of eight countries. These are:

England, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Japan and the US. You can also click on 'Custom nation'; this allows you to also pick CSA, CSA2, Spain, Spain2.

  Each country has its own research advantages, and it also has some disadvantages listed. One of the disadvantages is the size of the naval guns your country can build compared to others. 

  You can choose to use the historical fleets of each nation and its resources, or make it more of a sandbox game and manually build your existing fleet. This doesn't mean you will be able to start churning out Yamatos immediately, though. All of your ship's designs will have to be researched, including tonnage and gun size etc. You will also have to make sure that your docks are capable of holding the behemoths you plan to build.

  The next screen will show you the fleet you built or the historic legacy fleet you own.

  For the warfare part of the game, it plays out in the same way as their earlier games: Steam and Iron, and the Russo-Japanese War. One thing about the warfare aspect, it does not play out historically. You are leading your country and its naval forces to an all new alternative history. So don't think that you have X numbers of years until World War I starts. You will be dealing with all sorts of provocations and problems that show up on the international political scene. You might have planned to have your navy ready for a war in 1908, and it breaks out in 1906. Just as in your home finances, there is always a price to pay. You have a naval budget to work with. That leads to all sorts of quandaries. Do you spend your money on your fleet facilities to finally build that battleship you always wanted, or just build more of the ships that you already have the research for?

 

This is the ship design screen where all of us budding Tirpitzes and Fishers will run rampant.  

  Building your ships is also a game of one or the other. Do you build an armored giant with pea shooters or do you build a gun platform made of paper? It's all up to you what ships your navy has to use in its wars. You will also have to build your fleets of submarines and forts.

  A massive fleet is only as good as the sailors that man it. Training is another piece that fits under the wide brim of your admiral's hat. It's also expensive and needs to be budgeted for.
 

   This screen shot shows that I am getting really close to ending up in a war with the US. The 'tension' bars are in yellow, green, and possibly a color you would see in a diaper.

  Naval actions can take place all over the world. You can end up at war with a nation on the other side of the globe. As naval chief of staff you will also have to direct your countries intelligence efforts against the other powers.  You do not want to find out about Britain's game changing battlecruiser as it slides down the slip. This game has made the naval world of 1900 yours to conquer. How far into the future do plan for your navy? Is it only until the next war breaks out or are you actively searching out the newest torpedoes, and what about the crazy Wright brothers? Do they actually have something that a navy could use at some point in time? The game has endless possibilities for replay. You can try every build or size, and shape navy and ships that you have ever imagined. Some of the ships you start out with will be equipped with rams, and by the time your game is nearing its end, planes will be flying over your forces.

  For the actual game mechanics of the warfare you will wage, please see my review of Steam and Iron. I wanted to focus on all of the new elements that Rule the Waves brings to the table. Just as a quick rundown: big gun battles, mines, torpedoes, submarine, and antisubmarine warfare etc. are included.

  So the game is everything that Steam and Iron was and so much more. For me, whose knees buckle at the site of a triple turret, it is heaven brought to earth in zeroes and ones. We can only hope that NWS can bring WWII naval warfare to life, and to make it as manageable a game as this one.
 
  For all of you budding naval enthusiasts out there, here is a question. As a child you saw the 'Sound of Music', and watched a family escape the Nazis. What does that family have to do with this game?


  Robert


Game: Rule The Waves
Developer: Naval Warfare Simulations 
Review Date: 8/27/2016
 

Wargame Design Studio

 

 

 

A new wargame studio has been set up by the folks behind the recent Panzer Battles games.

 

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