Victory for Victory at Sea
4/01/2012

The decision has been made. Vx Racing (working title) has been consigned to another round of developmental tweaking until we are happy with it, and our new miniatures game for 2012 will be Victory at Sea, accompanied with a full range of finely detailed models covering just about everything that floated during World War II!

Some of the ships have already had their digital modelling previewed, and we’ll continue to showcase new designs until we have some painted examples ready for you. While Sandrine concentrates on the miniatures, the rest of us have gathered a coven of Naval Boffins (including the Seamaster himself, David Manley), and we have been busy picking apart the old rules set, getting rid of the things we didn’t like and concentrating on playability and historical accuracy both.

A great deal of progress has been made already, though we are far from saying ‘this is definitely how it is going to be.’ However, I can say we have already made the following changes;
•Crew stat has gone (fairly obvious, that one). But then, so has Turning…
•Critical hit system, is now a blend of the old and that of Noble Armada/Star Fleet. Most critical hits will degrade performance but a tiny few will be catastrophic, blasting turrets free, igniting magazines or even destroying a ship completely – for those ‘Hood’ moments.
•Torpedoes are now different according to type, are way more inaccurate but far more devastating. Get hit by one of these, and you’ll know it. Still, now we have proper rules to evade them too.
•Looks like submersibles will not be in the main fleet lists, but instead used for special ‘convoy’ or ‘raid’ scenarios.
•There will be a pre-game scouting phase, though the details of this have not been completely worked out yet.
•Critical hits are now nastier but ships can take more damage overall (well, until the torpedoes start swimming).
•Armament, ranges and damage potential will all be far more accurate.
•Fires have been integrated into the critical hit and Crew Quality system. Your battleship can be on fire on all decks, but you no longer have to track every individual flame.
•AP and Super AP are now gone, replaced by an AP stat for each weapon.
•All ships will have points values.

Lots more work to do, of course. Barely started looking at aircraft, and only the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine lists have thus far been rejigged for the new rules. However, it is shaping up to be a corker and one well worth keeping an eye out for.

We’ll do some more previews on Planet Mongoose in the near future, as well as showcase some of the new minis. Right now, I am off to see if Sandrine has finished off her rendition of the Scharnhorst!