From: "Patrick R. Collins" Subject: MINI Battlefleet I played Battle Fleet last night, a mini game of 1890~1905 era naval warfare. It may be downloaded (for free) at http://www.wtj.com Move sequence is command, movement, gunnery, torps, damage effects & damage control. Each step is simultaneous Command Only flagships can give commands, and must in at the head of a division for the effects to be made that turn. If somewhere else (say, due to combat) then it happens next turn. There are rules for another ship to take command, if the flag gets hit or sunk. Movement Ships have a six "boxes" for propulsion, each box has a different, lower speed. Battle damage reduces speed when a box is crossed off, and it may be repaired. The boxes also are your limits on speeding up, or slowing down. Turning wheels are supplied, to assist in turning. Ship size affects turn radius, as smaller ships have a much smaller circle. Gunnery The game uses range guessing to inflict hits. Once a hit is made, you roll on a table for damage. it has a penetrating/non penetrating matrix, with shells that penetrate generating a lot more damage. The game uses a 12 sided dice. And, you roll one dice for each gun firing. So, a typical 4 gun main and six gun secondary generates 10 die rolls! You are supposed to roll them in groups of 4 and 6, but I don't have that many 12 sided dice, and I'm not sure that many people do. Torpedoes Torpedoes are handled a bit differently. If a ship could have intersected a path, you roll on a table for converging, diverging, and stationary courses. there is even a column for a ship at stop, with nets out. The rules are unclear as to what happens when a torpedo hits. I chose to roll on the flooding matrix, as it seemed most likely. There is a lot to like about this game, namely the easy way they handle differing gun calibers and armor. The table for penetrating/non handles this much more easily than does Queen Victoria's Navy. The torpedo hit table is also easy to use. And they certainly give you a large selection of fleets. Spanish, American, Russian, Japanese, British, and French are currently available, letting you fight pretty much any actual, or hypothetical battle you want. Damage is handled well. You actually have a reason to counterflood in this game! Fires can also be progressive, and may even blow your magazine. I usually don't like this type of progressive damage, preferring a simple approach, but this system makes it easy to use. If they only had a matrix for "to hit" on gunfire as they do for torpedoes, and reworked their tables to eliminate so many 12 sided die, this would be an excellent system. As it is, it's very good. Regards, Pat pcollins@prairienet.org http://www.prairienet.org/~pcollins