From: Doug Murphy Subject: Re: Pacific Rim Games Questions -Reply Black Sea Fleet 1914-1918 A game on a neglected naval subject, somewhat superceded by the Great War at Sea. From Just Plain Wargames. Lotsa scenarios. Pretty simple. Roll dice to hit for primary, secondary and tertiary weapons, mark off boxes on ship charts for damage. Playable solitaire if you are comfortable playing "open" on the 11x17 map, and doing the bookkeeping on approx. 6 ships per "battle." Very high replayability as varient counters of all sorts are included: Austrian predreadnoughts, Russian never-built CL s, Turk superdreadnoughts... I like it but prefer miniatures for the era. Doug Murphy From: Markus Stumptner Subject: Re: Pacific Rim Games Questions Black Sea Fleet 1914-1918 Major disappointment. The system is basically quite nice (plotting four or so moves ahead to simulate intelligence delays without a need for double-blind play), but the scenario setups typically strongly channel the action, and the sensible limited intelligence aspects are wasted by the fact that the position of Goeben is usually painfully obvious (she and Breslau are the only Turkish ships with a speed of 2). The tactical combat system is based on rolling a die for every gunnery factor and hitting on a certain dieroll range (depending on target and range). Goeben has the range and speed advantage, but the sole important thing in all the battles was the timing of the inevitable critical hit that reduced Goeben's speed to that of the Russian predreadnoughts, which basically meant she could try to withdraw (and lose because the Russians will continue on their mission) or fight on (and eventually be sunk and also lose). We played most of the scenarios (not the massive alt-hist one), hoping to find an interesting one. It was a thoroughly futile exercise. From: Doug Murphy Subject: Re: Pacific Rim Games Questions -Reply MS> Black Sea Fleet 1914-1918 MS> Major disappointment. Markus and I have discussed this previously, especially re the inevitable critical speed hit on Goeben. This really never happened with my playings (must be my lousy die rolling for the Russians.) And it added to the "tenseness" of the situation. Given Goeben's high value as the sole Turk asset with any punch/power, how far and in what format do you go to hinder the Russian missions. In my playings, Goeben would usually and quite easily smash up the Predreadnoughts. Doug Murphy