"Grand Admiral: Castles of Steel - WW1 Naval Game " Topic

"We played Grand Admiral: Castles of Steel last night. I have been looking for a fast-playing naval wargames rules set for WW1 for some years now and found this to be interesting, so I bought and downloaded it. Previously I have played a lot of General Quarters 2. GQ2 is a fine game but it does not play quickly enough for the size of game I want to play, i.e. Jutland.

Anyway, it all began many years ago, when I bought a Conflict Miniatures (formerly Knight Designs) 1:5000 fleet set with all of the ships required for Jutland. These tiny beauties ranged in size from approximately 10mm in length for a destroyer to 20mm for a battleship and I have always thought that they must be 1:10000 and not 1:5000 scale. For their size they are brilliant. Individual classes of ship are recognisable with the larger models and I was quite taken with them, but I always found naval wargaming to be a bit sterile. Still, I painted them all and they languished in the cupboard for years awaiting a willing opponent. Then last night I finally persuaded Steve to play. Yay!…"

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Armand

I've played Castles of Steel and it's a simple, fun game. Majestic 12 also makes Grand Admiral: Flashpoint Orange, which posits war between the US and Japan in 1922 and Starmada: Fleet Operations, which is the science-fiction version. These are not games for people who think Star Fleet Battles is over-simplified but they're quick and enjoyable.

I have no connection to Majestic 12 Games. I just enjoy their products.

LT

I picked up Castles of Steel not so long ago. Its on the top of my list to play next. I unfortunately don't have a set of WWI minis yet (some coming in the mail), but fortunately Castles of Steel comes with nice looking counters. I just have to get these together and I'll be good to go.

Thanks for posting the battle report. Nice to see some people playing it. Looks like a smooth game to play. I can also see some solo-play opportunities here by just drawing straight from the deck and activating accordingly.

Certainly the game is made for larger battles. Book-keeping is at an absolute minimum (just track damage on the sheet records), with no statuses/criticals/splashes/who moved etc to worry about.

Interestingly enough MJ12 is working on a Grand Fleets 3 that is looking just like a more detailed version of Grand Admiral. So it might be a nice duo of rules – one for fleet on fleet and the other for squadron on squadron.

For now I'm using Stations Manned and Ready 2 for my squadron level combat.

Actually, it's the other way around; Grand Fleets was published first (it's already on its second edition) and the Grand Admiral games are the more abstract fleet-level games derived from it.

LT

Oh I know. I have GF2, but GF3 is coming out. GF3 is going to be a lot different than GF2. It will be very much the way Starmada Nova is to Starmada Fleet ops. GF3 is going to look more like GA than GF2.

-Tim