Dear Wargamers,
I had the game "Queen Victoria's Navy" on my table for a long time, and I
thought it would be appropriate to discuss it in this venue.
     Queen Victoria's Navy (QVN) is a 2000 copyright from Bone Games
(www.bonegames.com, $9.95).  It was designed by Bruce Biskup and Joshua
Howard.  The game covers tactical ship combat in the time period that we,
and some naval historians, refer to as the "predreadnought era", 1880-1906.
Actually, the British had a battleship named Dreadnought during this period,
and it was nearly as revolutionary as the 1906 ship in many ways too.  But
the name for the period has nevertheless stuck and so I'll use it here too.
The Physical Components.
     The game comes in a 6.5" x 9.5" envelope containing a 22" x 34" white,
featureless, hex field map, an 8.5" x 5.5" reference card, a cardstock sheet
of color counters, and a sixteen page rule book.  The hex field map is
printed on both sides: the hexes are 16 mm from side to side on one side of
the map, and 19 mm on the other side. The 8.5" x 5.5" cardstock counter
sheet is backprinted.  On one side are shown 60 ships from this era printed
in some rather basic colors, along with 36 informational black on white
counters.  The informational counters are the familiar .5" x .5" size, and
they designate items such as turning points for formations, fires, ships
that have been illuminated successfully by searchlights, and so on.  The
ship counters are 19 mm x 12.5 mm (ie, .5"), so they just *barely* fit in
the hexes.  For a while I played with the ship taking up two hexes--I don't
think it changed the game too much and I liked the look of it a little
better.  Later I used this excellent piece of shareware (can't remember the
URL, sorry) to generate some larger hexes which I photocopied onto blue
cardstock.  The counters are not diecut; you cut them out.  The business
side of the counter shows the name of the ship, its designation (Battleship,
Armored Cruiser, etc.), a "directional arrow" so you can tell which way the
ship is moving, and its nationality.  There are ships from six nations:
Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and the US.  The reverse side of
the counter shows just the abbreviation of the ship, and the ship plan in
black on white.  In the optional rules, players can set up their ships with
the noninformative sides showing to simulate fog of war until the ships get
within sighting range of each other.  Given that the game has only four
scenarios, and each player commands only about 6-8 ships in each scenario,
this rule seems like more trouble than it's worth.  The counters show a top
down plan of each ship--they are functional, but they are neither
particularly attractive imo, nor are they particularly accurate.  For
example, the British battleships Inflexible and Devastation (whose name is
not spelled correctly on the counter) are both shown with the identical
plan.  As you may know, Devastation was basically a big overgrown monitor,
with its primary guns located in turrets designed for broadside fire.
Inflexible, on the other hand, was an example of that strangest of all
capital ship types, a masted vessel with the primary guns carried in turrets
sponsoned out amidships for end-on fire in addition to broadsides.
The Design Elements.
     Each hex represents 500 meters, and each turn represents about 5
minutes.  Each ship has been rather exhaustively and painstakingly evaluated
on a number of critical dimensions ranging from the size and strength of its
various gun batteries, and the various firing angles thereof (a seemingly
straightforward evaluation, but one that can change the game dramatically I
believe), the amount and strength of the armored belt and hull, and the
ship's ability to maintain speed in several abstractly depicted sea
conditions, among other things.  To give you an idea of the detail, the
armor has apparently been evaluated both in terms of its thickness and its
material (wrought iron, compound, compound with teak backing, whatever) on
an alphabetic scale.  The result is 26 possible armor grades (27 actually
because there is a "zero" grade, meaning totally unarmored).  The relevant
armored portions of each ship (hull, belt, turret or barbette, conning
tower) are each evaluated separately.  Guns have been similarly evaluated in
terms of size and caliber.  I haven't scanned the stats on all the ships
modeled in the game to see if all these values are used, but conceptually
the game is built around this theoretically
possible 26^2 matrix of gun vs. armor values.  In order to actually
cause damage, the gunfire has to hit in a place where it can defeat the
armor.  In other words a hit by an "E" gun on a place that has "F" armor has
no effect (Similar to the Great War at Sea system, there is a "damage
cascade" provision that provides a sort of damage "trickle-down" effect, but
the gun always has to be able to defeat the armor for the hit to be
effective).
Playing The Game.
     In his review of QVN which appears on Grognards, Pat Collins wrote a
really good synopsis of play--I don't want to simply repeat what he has
already said so well.  So here, I hope briefly, is my take on the game:
Players determine which side is "advantaged" for that turn, and the
advantaged player can decide he wants to move his ships first or second.
After secretly determining how fast your ships will move that turn, there is
torpedo combat for any torpedoes that may be in the water.  Then the player
moving first moves his ships half of the their current movement rate, then
the player moving second moves his ships their full allowance, then the
first player moves his ships the rest of their allowance.  Ramming attacks
or accidential collisions may occur at the end of the movement phase, or
perhaps during it. Ships then go to a simultaneous gunnery combat phase, and
then there are some end-turn activities such as trying to reduce level 2
shipboard Fires to level 1, or putting out level 1 Fires.  With regard to
gunnery combat, the firing player determines which level of battery is
firing and then goes through a computational process involving a series of
modifiers that begin with an entry on the "0" column of the CRT.  The
modifiers raise or lower the column from "0", to "+1", "+2", or going the
other way, "-1", depending on their effect.  The modifiers are categorized
in terms of range, the "number of batteries" firing (which I think must
actually mean the number of operational gun tubes remaining in the battery,
but I was never quite sure), and "gun situational modifiers" such as the
relative speed of the firing ship vs. the target, the number of ships firing
on the same target (too many splashes make it hard to aim your weapons) and
so on.  You roll 2 D6s on the CRT for a standard 2-12 based table.  The
results are expressed in terms of "hits".  Each hit is multiplied by the
"firepower" of the battery (but I think they really mean the size of the
battery, again in terms of operational gun tubes), to get the number of
damage points.  You then roll on a damage allocation chart (also 2-12) for
each damage point inflicted.  The kinds of damage inflicted are not
surprising:  Ships may have primary or other batteries damaged, torpedo
tubes may be knocked out, shells can crash through the hull or belt.
Sometimes a critical hit is called for on the damage table, and you roll yet
again on 2-12 critical damage table to find out what happened.  The critical
hits always inflict some damage to the belt in addition to whatever else
they do.  There is the possiblity of a magzine hit which, again if the gun
causing the hit can defeat the ship's belt armor, causes the ship to explode
and sink immediately.  The gunnery combat CRT deserves some commentary.
Bruce Biskup describes the combat table as a "bell curve with no die
modifiers". Essentially, what happens is that, with each column shift up,
the "to hit"
number sneaks in from the edges of the CRT.   So on the "0" column, you hit
by rolling a 2, 3, 4, 11, or 12 (25%).  On the "1" column, you hit by
rolling any of these numbers plus a 10 (33.3%).  The effect of this is that
the probability of hitting is not a linear function of the number of column
shifts.  Given that the column shifts up or down are cumulative, it also
means you *really* want to maximize all your shifts up, because going from
let's say +1 to +2 is a whole lot more destructive than going from "0" to
+1.  I'm not offering any criticism of the CRT; it may be a very accurate
model of the events in question.  I thought it was a very interesting idea,
and it seemed like it worked ok in the context of the game.  As we say in
the Midwest, it's different.
Evaluating The Game And The Experience Of Playing.
The design philosophy of BoneGames can perhaps be summed up from the quote
that appears on the back of the rules booklet for QVN:  "We at BoneGames
wondered why wargames had gotten so "big": big by requiring too much time to
play and big by costing more and more money....[W]e set out to design
high-quality wargames that could be played in a reasonable amount of time,
and that could be purchased for a surprisingly small sum."  I certainly feel
that I received at least $9.95 worth of value, and it's very clear that
Bruce Biskup
has done a remarkable amount of work in preparing this product for the
marketplace.  Still, there are some other points that I think should also be
made.  First, as I stated above, the basic game comes with only four
scenarios, and none of them are historical.  There are some who might
suggest it could hardly be otherwise: Unless I'm mistaken, Queen Victoria's
navy did not actually fire a shot in anger from 1866 to 1914 with the
exception of the bombardment of Alexandria (and at least some of the ships
engaged were at anchor during that event--it wouldn't make much of
scenario).  The scenarios actually here include a British vs. Franco-Italian
squadron in the Med, circa 1886, a French vs. Italian battle in the mid
1890s,
a Russian vs German battle set in 1905 (no Tsushima here), and British vs.
US scenario in 1899 (The British support Spain in the Spanish/American
war!).  So the scenarios included do indeed cover the time span, and you get
to see and fight quite a few interesting ships, but not against their
"historical" adversaries.  There are no Japanese ships present to fight the
Russians, nor the Chinese as the Japanese did at Yalu River, 1894.  Neither
are there any Spanish ships present, so your American battlewagons are left
to slug it out with a division of British "Majestics", supported by some
protected cruisers.  I think the problem here is the design criterion to
bring the game in for under $10.  Inevitably, that decision has consequences
for the overall size of the package you get.  Imo, the specific problem is
that
sixty counters are just not enough ships is to get a good look at all the
types of vessels afloat during this epoch.  However, I feel it is only fair
to point out that Bruce Biskup seems to have recognized the issue.
In his designer's notes for the game, which are also available at the
website listed above, Bruce discussed the fact that, in general, the
counters are the most costly component of a game, and he was motivated to
keep the number of counters down, while still showing some of the more
interesting ships of the period.  Somewhat parenthetically, I would
especially like to mention here that Bruce's design notes are *very
worthwile*--in fact I think they are a model of how design notes should be
written.  In them, Bruce describes the challenges he faced as a designer,
and his answers to those challenges are very thoughtful--in my judgment
right now, reading them during and after playing the game was my favorite
part of the QVN experience.
     Back to the game and some other possible consequences of the cost
issue: The product that you get from BoneGames is not really ready to play
right out of the envelope. Let me explain why.  Basically each ship requires
a "control log", in which you mark off hull and battery hits--that's typical
naval wargaming.  The problem is that in the rules some ships share the same
control log.  For example, in  the scenario that I played (over and over),
the Italian vessels Duilio and Dandalo are basically identical and there's
only one control log to depict them.  I photocopied the scenario pages from
the rules book and then literally cut and pasted little strips of paper to
end up with two complete sheets so that each ship had its own control log.
I've looked the rule book over pretty carefully and I'm pretty sure this
problem exists for every fleet in every
scenario.  It looks to me like they wanted to keep the rule book down to a
manageable length.  I have another beef with the control logs:  They really
don't give you a place to write down each vessel's current speed either.  As
long as all the ships are part of the same formation (I'll come back to this
term later), it might not be too hard to put a single D6 with different pips
up at the head of the column of ships to show speed (that's what I did).
But if ships leave the formation, or if they try to change formation (an
optional rule), it becomes a real pain to notate which ship is traveling at
which speed.  There is something very important that I should note in
registering these criticisms.  If you go to the BoneGames website, you can
download, at absolutely no cost, improved ship control logs for each
scenario, with each ship possessing it's own log.  And they print out in
bigger text than those in the rule book too, which is kindly on our aging
eyes.  That's a nice feature, which countervails to some extent the
criticism of what you get in the envelope (still no separate speed
indicators though).
    I also believe there's a little bit of confusion around the term
"formation" as it is used in the rules.  In rule 11.4 it says, "Three or
more ships may be arranged in formations by the scenario instructions" and
then the rule goes on to list the acceptable formations such as line ahead,
line abreast, echelon, and so on.  Rule 11.4 suggests that you have a choice
about putting your ships in a particular formation, and this interpretation
seems to be supported by Rule 11.6 which states that ships that are not in a
formation suffer an additional -1 column shift on gunnery and everything
else, unless the ship started the scenario "not within a formation".
Further rule 11.7 states that players cannot "reorganize vessels into
different formations once the scenario begins unless the optional Command
and Control rules are used"  I took 11.7 to mean that if you, as "admiral"
of your little squadron started the scenario with your ships in line ahead,
your were committed to that and only that formation.  I also thought that
the optional C&C rule (Rule 19.) sounded like a good idea.  Rule 19 starts
out with this: "Formations normally cannot make more than one formation
change *per turn* (my emphasis).  That seems different to me than what the
basic rules imply, but whatever.  In any case, Rule 19.2 goes on to state:
"Ships can reorganize into new formations during the game.  The ships trying
to join an existing formation must meet the speed and direction requirements
to be considered part of the formation."  If the ship *trying* to join meets
these requirements, it becomes part of the existing formation on a die roll.
I think the expression "formation" is being confusingly used in the rules to
describe two distinct things:  (1) A functional group of ships nominally
under the command of a single leader for purposes of tactical cohesion, and
(2) the arrangement or deployment on the water of such a functional group.
That would seem like a minor point, except that, based on the penalties in
the rules, the underlying design concept implies that all the navies of the
world agreed that it was good to keep ships "under command" and also that it
was a bad idea to redeploy once the engagement had started.  My take is
that, all during the 1880s at least, neither of these points could be
assumed to be part of the strategic, tactical, or architectural conceptual
furniture of any of the world's major navalists.  I'll come back to that
point in just a minute, but first I'd like to discuss the ships themselves.
     To arrive at the ship data for gunpower and armor resistance, Bruce
apparently ran a spreadsheet in which the properties of the known data
points were entered, and then some extrapolation was done to come up with
the alphabetic evaluations of the rest of the ships.  So for armor for
example, this works out to be about 1-2 inches of armor for each letter.  I
don't have a beef with this approach and I don't have any better ideas about
how it would be done.  However, I do have some concerns about the firing
arcs given on some of the ships, and what that does to the game.  Let's
consider the French battleship Redoutable (laid down 1873, completed 1878).
Redoutable carried a powerful primary battery of some eight 10.8 in.
guns--each of which was carried in position alone.  The French were perhaps
the champions of the "lozenge" arrangement--basically laying out the big
guns in a diamond with at least one big gun mounted on the forecastle deck
(as a "chaser" gun), some guns on either beam, and a final big gun laid out
on the afterdeck.  Redoutable was designed as an attempt to achieve all
round arcs of fire (but not necessarily *equal* fire), with one chaser, one
stern gun, two guns laid on the corners of the central battery amidships,
and one gun mounted one deck higher amidships.  Here's how this is notated
in QVN:
E1M3   *1M3     E3M3
The first letter is the defensive strength of the turret or barbette.  The
asterisk indicates there is no armor.  The first number is the number of
guns in the battery.  The second letter (M in each case) shows the strength
of the gun, as in an "M" could defeat anything armored with * through "L",
and the final number shows the number of damage points inflicted each time
such a gun hits. The first grouping refers to the bow chaser, the second
grouping shows the stern gun (I think it actually was mounted on a barbette
too, but in the pictures the gun does look pretty naked out there.  The
third grouping shows the cluster of 3 guns amidships.  the bow gun has only
a forward arc of fire; the stern gun has an "astern" arc and port and
starboard arcs.  The main grouping of three guns has port or starboard arcs
only.  How would you use Redoutable?  Based on what I've told you, you might
say, in a line ahead formation so that you could get a broadside of four
guns to bear on either the port or starboard side--that's what the game is
telling you to do.   But actually, according to Conway's All the World's
Fighting Ships, 1860-1905 (available from the US Naval Institute
Press--pricey, but it will provide you with months of reading), anyway, two
of the three amidships guns (the ones mounted on the main deck) had very
limited beam fire; it was only the single gun on the upper deck that
actually had a good arc of fire across the whole beam.   So in fact instead
of four guns, you might have only two guns bearing on the beam.  On the
other hand, each of the guns mounted on the forward corner of the main
battery could bear forward, as could each gun amidships on the upper deck,
as could the chaser gun obviously.  So you could have five of the eight big
guns firing on a forward arc.  And then if you "missed your target", you
could pivot the upper deck guns around and have five guns bearing astern!
So how should you use Redoutable?  The design intent was for Redoutable to
blast her way forward with as many guns as she could get blazing away, hit
her target with gunfire and slow him down, and then sink her big ram bow
into the side of the enemy vessel.  If she missed and careened on by, then
it was time to pivot the upper deck guns and continue firing until you
turned around for another pass.  I think the implication is that French
naval architects of the 1880s understood the concept of a battleship to be a
capital ship that would fight in a line abreast formation, but only until
the battle was joined, at which point a fleet action would devolve into, not
a long range gunnery duel, but rather a bunch of big ships playing "chicken"
with each other.  This wasn't just a French theory (and it wasn't the only
French theory either)--the British also had capital ships like Hero or
Conqueror that had only a single turret mounted forward.  The idea was to
keep  them out of harm's way until the enemy was shot up and not going very
fast, then whistle them into the fight where they could pick off the
stragglers by ram.   Well, there's a sketch of naval battle theory in the
1880s--we'll never know if that's how it would have turned out.  But my
point here is that QVN doesn't really acknowledge the incredible richness
and uncertainty of what a fleet action would look like early on in the
predreadnought period.  By the time the Battle of the Yalu River was fought
(1894), thinking had perhaps settled down into the contours we now
recognize, and the Japanese fought that battle basically in a line ahead
fashion.  It's still significant to note that the Japanese had basically
only a cruiser fleet at Yalu River, and it might not have profited them to
engage in a mass vs. mass ramming contest.
     Well, that brings me to the end of my discussion of QVN.  Overall, it's
pretty quick compared to other systems, playable, reasonably accurate, and
maybe fun.  For me, there's a kind of Jules Verne aspect to the early
predreadnought period that  does not come through--I think the game has its
20th century blinders on.  I had some fun describing the game; as always,
thanks for reading.
John Best
jlbest@advancenet.com