"anyone play Battlestations Battlestations?" Topic

while thinking about all the suggestions I received in my previous post, I've been rereading the rules for battle stations battle stations. when I first read them I wasn't particularly impressed but upon a reread I'm really starting to want to buy miniatures for it. my current thought is to try to incorporate some sort of blind mechanism like two fat lardies has in their sets and combine it with using 1/6000 miniatures. no leaning across the table or asking what ship is that will be allowed, but players will be provided with toy binoculars, lol. our table is about 10 feet long so I think that could be a kind of interesting fog of war, the same type of thing we do with 3 millimeter.

does anyone actively play this system? Thoughts?
and what do you think of my silly fog of war?

I do although I think WW1 would be actually the best era for the system.

1/6000 and binoculars sound fun.

Is there a ww1 mod for it out there anywhere?

I like these rules and played in a few playtest games, but it took so long for them to come to print, I settled on General Quarters instead. A friend of mine prefers them, so he we still play them once in a while. They're fun, nicely streamlined without excessive mechanics, and very easy to explain to new gamers and non-naval gamers.

I think the "step loss" method of damage tracking is excellent for large fleet battles in eras of reasonably standardized designs (the World Wars), but be forewarned that it lacks the granularity that many naval gamers expect. This is a deliberate design decision (the rules are intended to play big battles quickly), but it does feel a bit "board gamey" in operation.

I once intended to use these rules for the tactical battles in multi-day WWII map campaign battles such as Midway, Santa Cruz, Coral Sea, etc. I should revisit that idea….

I do although I think WW1 would be actually the best era for the system

For perfectly selfish reasons, I wanted a WWI version too (most of my lead was WWI). I briefly discussed this idea with the original author (Paul Cooper) but he was too busy just trying to get the rules playtested and published and said "maybe later". I've been told he lost the rights during the push to publish, which would explain why there's been no further development. :-(

what do you think of my silly fog of war?

I've found that just playing with 1/6000 miniatures introduces fog of war, even with the miniatures based and labeled. I've seen players spend a couple turns maneuvering against a newly arrived force before discovering they were friends. That's fun. As usual with miniatures games, fog of war results naturally from multi-player games.

If you base the miniatures in a way that blends into the playing surface (or don't base them at all) and have a nice looking sea surface, binoculars (and probably periscopes?) are a nice atmospheric addition to the game play. However, they aren't very useful for any real game purpose. Forcing people to use them might also be forcing people to go home with headaches.

And nevermind toy binoculars. Real binoculars work just fine.

- Ix

I just cobbled together my own WW1 version using some of the older WW2 BB's as a base for relative stats.

I played some battles with them when they were first released. They worked well IMO.

I do wish the air rules had been added at some point.

WWI would be a better fit as it is.

Still a fun game although I feel the higher end damage control ratings are a bit hard to play with.

Bob

MC, to which air rules are you referring? My copy had air rules.

Nice set of rules, thought they were more suited to WWI, though. Like Mckinstry, my group reverse engineered the stats for WWI and have played that off and on. Pity the publisher provided zero support and essentially let it die.

Dobber,

Od's Fish I must apologize for my addled brain.

Looking at my copy and my notes it would seem I combined the images of aircraft counters on the Decision Games website with the lack of ground based ac in the game and came up with a lack of air rules.

Of course they are really there for naval ac.

I do stand by capping damage control at about 12 though. Certainly at the 16 level play became tedious, and not particularly accurate as regards outcomes.

okay I see what you getting at now. I would have to agree with you that leaving those out is slightly odd especially when they included shore batteries…

and now some questions. I understand that a turn as opposed to represent an hour but from a gaming standpoint, isn't it a bit odd that you can run through gun range in about two turns?

also in regards to aircraft movement, the movement disted is listed as fractions of 25 miles an hour, so a movement 8 is 200 miles an hour that for example. still complains just move wherever they bloody wish or is that the rate in inches? because if it's their rate in inches then my battlecruiser can outrun most bombers. I don't really feel like doing a conversion based on inches and knots and mph

Daylight turns are 30 minutes, so that Spitfire would move 16"? Maybe?

Not really sure why the speeds are listed unless its for movement between two fleets X miles apart from one another.

EDIT As the top speed of a Spit was around 600mph* IIRC (and probably do not!) that would make the 200mph 1/3 speed which might be an attempt at listing a cruising speed.

It does seem from the rules that on table speed is irrelevant as only the ships move and 12.1 says "Movement is still conducted normally though it is not necessary unless ships receive damage or are moving slower than surrounding ships…"

Implying the ac do not actually "move" in the traditional sense.

Maybe others can chime in.

Bob
*According to wiki the ailerons responded poorly above 400mph.

I suppose I'll hazard a guess and say maybe it goes something like this?
turn 1 launch get shot at shoot stuff
turn 2 fly back land
turn 3 refuel rearm
turn 4 repeat process
sound about right?

also that number I gave was just the example from the book each plane has its own number. I could be wrong about this, as yellow Admiral will attest I am a landlubber, but I know even less about planes then I do boats

also I think I'm going to try it using centimetres for movement and inches for shooting. I know that sounds like a pain but all of our tape measures have both on them so we use one side for moving one for shooting. I could probably put highlighter on each side orange for shooting green from moving or blue for moving or something like that. I think this will give the game a better look and feel

It might be easier to just play each battle as a series of attacks based on the number of carriers and a/c available.

For example:

Game one: Both sides launch full strikes.
Between games: Fleets can redeploy and cap can be adjusted.
Game two: Surviving carriers launch strikes
Repeat until one side is left or may be roll dice after each wave to see if another exchange can be fit in that day.

Bob