Steven Bucey - 09:37am Aug 9, 1998 PST (#1955 of 1972) Visit the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society homepage at http://web.jadeinc.com/spqr Actually, it is not a bad design. It just doesn't feel finished. Each ship is rated for gunnery, defense, and movement. You've got gunboats, sidewheeling gunboats, Sloops, a couple of Firgates and a single sidewheeling frigates, and, near the very end, a few ironclads. Esentially, the south tries to break out and go a vikinging. Early on, this is very easy, as the North doesn't have the ships to stop those coming out of the South, which then ply up and down the atlantic coast creating havoc. It is easy for the South to rack up 50+ points each turn in sunk Union mechant shipping. On the other hand, one sunk GB is worth -30 points. The South plots his moves, then the Union moves his ships, trying to anticipate where the south might move. If a Confederate ship enteres a federal patroled area, he rolls a search die, with a 1/12 th chance per Federal "stack" to find it (maximum chance is 4/12). If it is spotted, the Conferate can try to outrun them, which is usually very easy. Thus, it is almost impossible to catch a Confederate ship in open water. Realistic, I believe. Combat, when it happens, is easy. Each ship rolls on the gunnery table and scores a number of hits. If a hit is achieved it is marked against the target's total. Once combat starts, you can't break off, so it is do or die. The one real combat we had resulted in mutual destruction for both ships -- all other combats were one sided affairs when he tried to run the blockade in England and got caught. For the south, the big deployment worry is world opinion. He depends upon foreign ports for coaling, so he needs them. Trouble is, as the war goes on this foreign good will tends to dry up. For the North, he has to worry about his ships availability. Most are available 3-5 turns, and once used are required elsewhere and difficult to get. Added to that is that each turn he has to roll on a table to determine the number of ships he can deploy that turn, and choose from those that have available points. Its easier than what I'm descibing, and I'm sure I could do a better job had I the game rules in front of me, but it makes life hard for the North as he never knows exacly what he'll have to work with each turn. Troubles: It appears that at least two or three Southern ships never see the sea. The ironclad Stonewall is pointless. According to the rules, it is built in England and has not gunnery (for lack of supplies), and is automactly spotted by the North when they enter the area it occupies, so there is no way it'll ever see the sea. The Stonewall Pursiut fleet which the Union gets the turn after (the last turn) is also thus pointless, as they can't catch anything else (though for some stange reason I noticed that they could help search and such). There is a strange ship called the Niagra (?), a Federal Frigate which has a gunnery rating more than twice any other ship on the map (46 compared to 18 for the next closest competator). The Pacific is almost never used, as far as we can see. Most Confederate ships can't reach it easily, and as the game goes on and ports dry up it becomes almost wasted space. I'd have rather seen an abstract system for the Pacific and concentrated more map space on the Atlantic. But then, maybe that was just our game. This is an interesting design, but I'm sure the execution is lacking. Someone with patience (such as Joe) can fill in the gaps and make it work, though I'd love to hear how the South can win. Steve