Subject: Tsushima review From: paulha@sonic.net Dicey Business: "Tsushima" (S&T 130) "Tsushima," the game in Strategy & Tactics 130, simulates the epic 1905 sea battle that helped end the Russo-Japanese Japanese War and usher in the era of all big-gun battleships. Perhaps all that need be said of "Tsushima" is, it’s a Jack Greene naval game. This means a loving mix of boardgame and miniatures: fascinating sheets describing the gun layout and other key features of each major ship, delightfully arcane and random tables to determine hits and damage in battle, scale (1000 yards per hex, 7.5 minutes per turn) suited to a tabletop rather than a gymnasium floor, and lots of dice rolling. Lots and lots of dice rolling. Some like Greene’s approach, which he has used in different forms to cover WW I and WW II clashes as well; some don’t. Put me in the middle. As I understand, "Tsushima" itself bombed among the S&T readership when it appeared in the late 1980s. Part of the low ranking was that "Tsushima" is, of course, a naval game, and rarely have naval games pleased S&T subscribers. Another factor probably was the presentation, which saw pages and pages of awkwardly laid-out game tables and ship sheets inserted not-quite in the middle of a set of loose and folksy (but pretty much complete) rules. But my guess as to what sent this game to the bottom among the magazine-game crowd is all the dice-rolling and chart-flipping required to play it. For example I ran through the training scenario, which initially pits three big and clumsy Russian armored cruisers against four trim, speedy Japanese ones. The Japanese have a significant advantage at a distance, but the odds even up if the Russians can close in. Historically the Japanese stayed at extended range, sunk the weakest Russian cruiser and drove off the others. So it began in my replay, but things changed when the Russians scored a lucky hit and stopped the Japanese flagship dead in the water. They closed to 2-3 hex range and both sides pounded on each other for some turns. At close range these seven ships combined do 100 or more hits each turn, which means 100-plus dice rolls on a dozen tables per turn, some using percentile dice and some 2d6. A few turns of this reduced most of the ships to scrap and the number of rolls to just 20 or 30, but it all seemed excessive for only a few cruisers. And it put me off playing the main event, the battle of Tsushima itself where there are dozens of capital ships on each side. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun or informative. It was fun to bash away and knock out individual gun positions and boilers and watertight compartments on each ship, bit by bit. It was fun to maneuver and try to make the best of the mismatched, oddball vessels of an experimental era. I learned, as did captains of the day, of the advantages of turret ships over casement designs, of the benefits of superior speed and big guns, the impact of range and orientation and other factors. But it took a long time and a lot of rolling. To be fair Greene considered the grand Tsushima scenario to be a multi-player game, with 2-3 admirals on each side. As such, the game probably takes on an entirely different flavor and minimizes the dice rolling duties on any one player. But for solitaire or even one-on-one play, "Tsushima" is a tough proposition, one that barely returns enough to balance the work involved. Ultimately I find it more rewarding to study than to play. Paul Haase Next time, the fruits of my study: additional Russo-Japanese War scenarios for "Tsushima" and a 'to hit' table adapted for two six-sided dice (11-66) rather than ten-sided percentile dice.