We held our first VAS tourney down at the store this past Saturday. Had some no-shows so we only had 6 players but we're hoping for more next time as we want to make this at least a monthly event.
We played 5pts Raid level, drawn from 8pt fleets once we drew opponents so we could tailor our fleets against our foes. I listed the rules a week or so ago here but basically we doubled all aircraft to make carriers more effective and any unit sunk was gone from the tourney with repairs to damaged units rolled for between rounds.
Player-1, Kriegsmarine, pure surface fleet with no subs or aircraft, Scharnhorst flagship.
Player-2, Kriegsmarine/Italian (me), surface fleet + subs, Scharnhorst flagship w/old Casio Diao(?) Italian BB
Player-3, USA, Aircraft heavy with mixed carriers + cruisers + land-based airceaft, CV Enterprise flagship
Player-4, British, very heavy carrier group with 4 carriers and 2 battleships, HMS Hood flagship
Player-5, Japanese, Yamato flagship (4 pts) supported by subs, carrier, surface ships
Player-6, French, surface fleet w/Dunkirk BB flagship
round-1:
I got to face the Yamato + carrier and escaped with Scharnhorst almost crippled and lost all 6 of my DDs.
Did 21 damage to Yamato in return which was nothing, except I criticalled it's rudder so it would be unable to turn at all for remainder of tourney.
USA carrier force butchered the French fleet, 100% sunk with little damage in return.
British carrier force + HMS Hood sank half the Kriegsmarine fleet opposing it.
round-2:
Faced the USA carrier force after replacing my combat losses with my old Italian BB. Sank 2 USA DDs and crippled a cruiser, damaged 2 more before narrowly escaping w/crippled Scharnhorst and my subs. My Italian BB vanished under massive carrier + submarine attack and I had no DDs to chase subs with.
British fleet led by HMD Hood and QE/Warspite butchered the Japanese fleet and sank Yamato because it couldn't turn to engage effectively.
Kriegsmarine fleet and French fleet trade mostly ineffectual shots with each other for a very forgettable engagement. Pathetic gunnery rolls all around.
round-3(last):
Kriegsmarine-1 and French players had to depart for home so we juggled final matchup slightly.
USA and British carrier fleets finally faced equitable air opposition and hammered each other pretty bad. British was far ahead on VPs from first 2 rounds and USA couldn't catch up.
My heavily damaged Scharnhorst and 3 subs, reinforced by 2 shiny undamaged Italian CAs faced the last Japanese carrier and it's DD and sub escorts. He only got 1 airstrike off against Scharnhorst as my luckily positioned subs crippled his carrier turn-1 and sank it turn-2. Once I nailed his DDs it was game over as he had no surface ships left but he got 1/2 pts for crippling Scharnhorst (again).
Very fun tourney and our rules tweaks to aircraft (doubling their numbers) seemed to work great as mostly unopposed airstrikes were clearly decisive and the two carrier based fleets finished #1 and #2. The last round where the carriers finally faced off against each other went quite slow and there were lots of planes on the board to dogfight with and the fighters definitely blunted their strike power just as they should have. I think we have stumbled over just about the right balance for them for now and we'll see if we'll tweak them further once OOB releases.
BTW- the carrier boys had a great idea to reduce clutter and used counters stacked beneath stands of aircraft to show additional flights. Example- 8 flights of Swordfish were represented by 1 Swordfish aircraft w/7 counters undereath it. Worked great and saved them all trying to desperately borrow more aircraft for the tourney.
If curious, I think I still have the full 8pt fleet lists at the store.
