"Grand Admiral - Pursuit of Goeben and Breslau" Topic

We played our first two games of Grand Admiral – Castles of Steel last night. I decided to take things easy with a relatively small battle and played the "what if" Troubridge's Armoured Cruiser Squadron decided to engage Goeben and Breslau.

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The UK force of Warrior, Defense, Black Prince and Duke of Edinburgh came in at 66VPs and the Germans at 40VPs. Based on the points ratio and the actual situation, we went with the "Patrol" scenario. UK would get VPs for sinking enemy ships. Germany would also get VPs for sinking enemy ships, but after sinking one of the AC's, they would be allowed to retreat off their board edge and also receive VPs for getting the ships off the table.

In game one [sorry for no pictures :( ] Goeben advanced and managed to keep the AC's outside of range 3 for most of the game. At this range Goeben could slowly wear down the ACs and take almost no damage herself. The UK surrendered in the first game after losing 2 AC's and having a third crippled, with Breslau sunk but Goeben down only a point of damage.

Game two the Brits were more aggressive and managed to cross Goeben's T at range 2. With Breslau at the bottom of the sea (again) and only one AC sunk, Goeben was heavily damaged with only one more point needed to cripple her. With some luck of the cards Goeben was able to retreat off the table before the AC's could coordinate their fire again (i.e. I had both red face cards in my hand and held onto them for the entire turn).

So in the end we agreed that Troubridge made the right call not to engage Goeben. Goeben's guns cut through the AC's belt armour like hot knife through butter. The AC's guns need to really close quickly onto Goeben to have any reasonable chance to get through her armour. I think if we play this again we might let the UK at least score a draw if they can manage to cripple Goeben – because she would have had a lot of difficulty completing her journey crippled (to say the least).

First game took about half an hour as it was our first game – second one was only 20 minutes. We will play something larger (maybe Dogger Bank) next game.

We really like the playing card game mechanic of Grand Admiral for the activation sequence. Its a great way to reflect the difficulties of communication of the era, and makes for a really fun game too. It also builds in a segmented movement system without the typical pain.

-Tim

I'd be interested to know more about the card mechanic. Would it be suitable for solo play?

@Samsonov

Yes I think it would.

For regular play, here is how it works:

Get one red and one black suit. Remove everything except aces, number cards 2-6 and two face cards from the two suits.

Determine which force is represented by which colour (we did Brits Red and Germans Black). Shuffle the deck. Each player draws 3 cards. Roll initiative. The player that wins MUST play a card first. If a number card is played (aces count as 1's) then any ship of that colour with a top speed equal to or greater than the card value may move (but its not compulsory). If a Face card is played, then all ships on that side attack.

After you play a card you draw another. It doesn't matter which player plays a card, the colour indicates which side gets to do something.

So its very fun to force the other side to shoot when they are our of range – and needless to say its great when you draw your own face cards as it lets you wait until the right moment to attack.

I think if you wanted to play solo you could just shuffle the deck and play each card as its drawn – making the best choices at that instant for the side that is activating.

-Tim

Where can one buy this game?

Here's the link to MJ12's website.

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I think you can buy direct from there, if not you can get it at Wargame Vault:

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I bought the PDF version and ninja printed everything at work. I glued the ship counters onto a file folder and cut them out after the glue had dried. Makes them tougher and easier to pick up.

I have no idea if its available in printed format.

-Tim

That card system sounds good for solo. I'll give the rule book a read but probably will port it over for Fleet Action Imminent.

What are the card counters like? My 1/6000 collection is mainly Mediterranean so either Grand Fleet or Flashpoint Orange counters would give me something else to play.

See my first link above. It has images of the ship counters.

The game itself it quite rules light, but still provides an interesting range of armor and gun penetrating power.