goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
By the middle of the game, I had scored the top Objective, my opponent took the bottom Objective with his carrier. I had made a major blunder by risking my Stukas against the damaged Ark Royal, only to find that his Wildcats - with special ability bonuses and a great roll of the dice - shot me out of the sky!
Most types of combat in War at Sea work the same way: the stat card for the attacking unit tells how many dice it rolls when making various types of attacks at different ranges (0 to 3 spaces away). You roll that many dice, with each 4 or 5 scoring one Success, and each 6 scoring two Successes.
The defending unit has two threshold numbers on its stat card: Armor and Vital Armor. If the attacker's Successes equal the defender's Armor, the defending unit takes a damage point; if the Successes equal the defender's Vital Armor, the unit is destroyed.
A ship's Hull Points determine how much damage it can take. If a ship is down to one point, it is Crippled (reduction in stats); when it is out of points, it sinks.
There are two major exceptions:
- Airplanes don't take damage. Instead, scoring enough Successes to equal their Armor drives them off for this turn (they abort their mission).
- When rolling for a torpedo attack, only 6's count. A successful torpedo attack results in hull point damage, ignoring the target's Armor values.
In the center of the map, I concentrated my ships to try to knock out the Fletcher, but the Allied player chose to dodge away and go after the Maru instead. Also, with my airpower gone, the Allies started using their Wildcats to strafe my ships.
In this photo, the Fletcher and the Maru have both taken damage - and since they are small ships, it is also enough to Cripple them.