Gobs of Naval Games

By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
June 27, 2004

In the past month, we have published two new releases, both dealing with naval topics. You can blame the first of these, (Free Game has been discontinued it is in development as a box game - February 1, 2006) BATTLESHIPS IN ACTION on moi and the newest one, the BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS Expansion Deck, on Bruce Kohrn, the designer of BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS . The fact that both are naval games can be explained as coincidence—or, can it? Well, yes, it can, as a matter of fact. We didn’t set out to provide a feast for the anchor clankers among you but that is how it turned out.

The first release, BATTLESHIPS IN ACTION goes back to that obscure period not so very long after we founded Lost Battalion Games. We are a company that sells many of its products ?cold? to people who stub their toe on our web site while surfing the net. Many of these people are interested in our games but, let’s face it, $25 or $30 seems like a lot to spend sight unseen with some unknown game company. In our discussions, deliberations and shouting matches, we determined that we needed a “low threshold” game in our line; something that new customers could order that would be both cheap and fast to learn and play. Of course, it also had to be fun - after making a game that accessible, we really didn’t want it to be the occasion for an unhappy lynch mob, faces frozen in a screaming rictus of rage, to descend on our happy little bunker.

One obstacle we encountered was that even an inexpensive game requires shipping and handling and we ship all over the world. This necessitated about a $5 price point, which, quite frankly, was an unavoidably higher threshold than we originally anticipated or wanted. So, we decided to market the game as a “free game.” You can just visualize the bleary-eyed bunch that came up with this idea. Combined with another order, BATTLESHIPS IN ACTION adds next to nothing to the shipping weight, so we’re basically just out the production costs as a discount on the other order and the customer does get it for free. To soften the price shock, if a buyer insists on ordering just the game (you know who you are), we decided to offer a discount coupon equal to the cost of the game on a future order. That makes the game free if something else is ordered later. After further chats, this was felt to be a bit unfair to those who ordered something else to get the free game, so the discount coupon goes out the door with every BATTLESHIPS IN ACTION . Then, Jeff insisted on including the dice instead of telling players to find their own (which was my original idea), to further increase our costs. Hooray, hooray, hooray! By gosh and by golly, our original low threshold game has turned into an entire marketing campaign!

Games don’t just design themselves and there are always some necessities and limitations that influence the final product. I tried a number of different topics and approaches in designing and developing the game. The possibilities of a sailing ship or tank battle game were considered but World War II naval was selected as a topic that was well-known and could be presented in the format needed. It was obvious that a fairly small and simple “beer and pretzels” type game was required by the parameters but it also needed a modicum of “reality” to give a feel for the topic. There was more research to the factors on those ship units than many people realize. Experienced war gamers prefer a hex grid but can live with something else and more traditional gamers tend to be put off by a hex grid, so it was decided to go with a square grid for the Game Map. The grid is numbered to allow play-by-mail or other remote systems of play. We also wanted a game that was self-packaging, so that requirement determined the game’s basic format; a folder with two pages of rules with a Game Map on page three. Originally, the Game Map was a bit smaller and the units were to be printed above it but they got moved off to a separate sheet to be inserted. This freed up the whole back page for a tacky advertisement, instead of containing my diatribe about the game’s scale, which was removed thanks to everyone else’s infinite wisdom (see below—I hate to be edited).

SCALE: Curiosity being the human trait which it is, someone always asks about a game’s scale. The true answer here is, in a game as simplified and abstracted as this, scale has no real meaning. The game was designed for effect; to give a certain feel in a limited battle area. If you held me down and poked burning bamboo shoots under my fingernails and demanded a more specific answer, I might supply the numbers 15 to 30 minutes per Game Turn and 5,000 to 9,000 yards per square (yes, each ship has an amazingly roomy area in which to maneuver) but that is about as accurate as I can get. No more questions, please!

I also wanted to include a short version of the rules on the back page:

SHORT VERSION OF THE RULES 1) THE RULES: The rules are unimportant. What is important is how you play the game. 2) HOW TO PLAY THE GAME: Play to win!

I’m just not appreciated around here.

So what do you get in your (free) game? All the two-sided unit counters are either individual battleships or destroyer flotillas. Representative squadrons of equal value are provided for the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Japan. The game, of course, allows the ships to maneuver over a patch of open ocean while blazing merrily away at each other. The Sequence of Play for a Turn is roughly: I move, you shoot, I shoot, you move, I shoot and you shoot. Lots of shooting - that’s what I like in a game! Damage is determined by comparing gun factors to defense factors but first you have to “straddle” a target, which is more difficult at longer ranges. When a ship is damaged, a hit unit is placed on it. After the next hit, a ship is flipped over to its reduced strength side, then another hit unit is placed and a fourth hit sinks a battleship or destroyer flotilla. To many of you, the least used markers will be the “done” units for marking ships that have already moved or fired but players new to war games find the ability to move more than one counter per Turn to be confusing and a bit upsetting, so those units are for them. They’re also useful if your opponent is cheating shamelessly.

The second release, the BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS Expansion Deck was always a gleam somewhere in Bruce Kohrn’s eye and it is only because of other projects using up our time and resources that the game took seven months to produce after the parent game was released (see Publisher’s Corner - Catch My Drift Wood ). Weeding out cards that did not make the final cut was one of the more interesting design aspects. Sixteen new dreadnought cards were added just because we could and because we wanted to get Liz to draw some neat new ship pictures. The 40 new playing cards fall into the same categories as the playing cards in the parent game but a new rule requires some to be randomly discarded at the start of each hand, so the players are never quite sure of the exact composition of the Playing Deck. With the Expansion Deck shuffled into the parent game, the game can still be played the same way; any new rules are spelled out on the cards with a few others included for clarification on the small sheet of paper included in the box. Personally, I’m really enthusiastic about this product; I think that if you enjoyed the original game, you’ll love it with the Expansion Deck included—this is a definite keeper.

A frequently-noted aspect of BRAWLING BATTLESHIPS is that the nature of the game changes depending on the number of players and teams involved in a hand. Since the new dreadnought cards carry gun sizes in different proportions from the original game, the gun sizes in the open fire section of the Expansion Deck’s dual use cards were also changed, but not in an exact direct proportion to the new gun sizes. The nature of the game still changes depending on the number of players and teams involved in a hand but differently from games using the parent game alone. The reinforcement cards just expand on the number included in the basic Playing Deck, to allow players to exploit the larger number of dreadnought cards available. There are also a number of new cards that require new reaction cards. For example, the new straddle and rapid fire cards are not blocked by confusion or dud cards but only by chasing salvos and evasive maneuver cards, respectively. Among many other new cards, there are also convoy, monitor and q-ship cards that all offer new and expanded play opportunities. For your edification, a few samples of these new cards are shown below: