Every review is read with the question. "should I buy it, is it worth the price?" and at 50 bucks Command at Sea certainly is.
Yet if Naval games are not of much interest to you, then neither will be this simulation (and it is much more a simulation than a game). The research and ensuing data on equipment and in the scenarios make the Boxed Set well merit its cost. You want some idea of when a Radar set began to be issued, an aircraft entered service, what units were involved in a certain battle, quality of Japanese armor versus that used by British? It's all there! This data alone is worth the price and I say that because I've bought much source material to answer the same questions over the years, and it costs a lot more than $50.
Command at Sea (CaS hereafter) will supplant Seapower as the computer assisted miniature simulation for the folks who want to work with details, and know why certain things occur. The designers made great efforts to make CaS a simple playable game with lots of detail - the detail won though, and it is hard to avoid being drawn into this ever more complex simulation. It will take the average player about four to be functional, but 30-40 hours to be conversant with the rules. This game requires you do a fair amount of preparation in advance, so quick games will require that you have the ship forms done beforehand. With scenarios, though, more Players lower the "command load" and allow some bigger scenarios to be played.
The game can be played in a reasonable small area, as they ha e an adjustable scale you can run the game at 2" = 1 Nautical Mile (the smallest recommended scale, although they have a conversion chart that goes all the way down to 1"= 5 NM or all the way up to 10"= 1 NM. Larger scales are just a matter 0f interpolation. The game turns come in Intermediate (Grand Tactical) game turns of 10 minutes of action(s); and a 3 minute Tactical turns.
The Intermediate Turn flow is as follows: (a) 30 minute plotting phase. (b) Movement phase. (c) Detection Check phase. (d) Amphibious combat (if any). (c) Resolution phase (if needed).
Intermediate turns are used to bring units into combat quickly; If needed, an intermediate turn can be inserted every 10 tactical turns to bring in additional forces without having to move ships in tiny increments.
The Tactical turn flow is: (a) Three minute plotting phase. (b) Movement phase (includes air movement). (c) Planned fires phase. (d) Detection check phase. (e) Second air movement phase. (0 Reaction fire phase. (c) Resolution phase (for torps, bombs and -light AA).
You can play a gunnery game (no aircraft and no submarines) with six ships on a side in 3 to 4 hours - even faster as you become accustomed to the rules. A spotter aircraft will cause only minor additional time, but if there are two float planes and one wants to fight the other, things will get complex.
Ships in tactical combat move once in three minutes, but aircraft can (optionally) move up to six times, three impulses during two phases in that same period. AA comes in two types, Area AA [those guns that fire time fused shells in a barrage to protect the formation] and light AA of the ship's own guns, generally 75 mm or smaller).
Aircraft engaging aircraft becomes a game within a game, having a distinct and accurate system using attack and maneuver values with a variety of tactical modifiers, much like the Harpoon system. Adding aircraft make for a much more complex turn sequence. I briefly discussed this with Ed Kettler, CaS developer, and he agreed that in any action using more than one or two flights of aircraft (two to four planes) per side, an Air Boss was desirable to manage the action(s).
This simulation does allow you to game the Air Battles of this period with considerable accuracy, so if you enjoyed games like Dauntless and Air Force this will have some appeal, although the simulation is more generalized. Aircraft in a dog fight are fought by drawing an opponent's counters from a cup and making a die roll against that type of aircraft. The designer has also provided a Cumulative Probability Table to case and speed up the resolution of very large air to air battles without the loss of accuracy.
Submarine / Anti-Submarine is even more of a game unto itself and hard to explain in a short review, Suffice to say that the sub's rules include varying depth charge patterns, sink (diving) rates, effectiveness values, AS Detector abilities and sub maneuvering. All this fits fight in the normal turn sequence.
The game also covers Amphibious Operations simply in the Intermediate 30 minute turn that provide a result based on a much modified die roll. This can be made into a more complex operation if wished, as the rules have procedures for running three minute turns and attacking shore batteries with ships fire. They also give values for typical ground units, so a ground combat could be simply resolved in a campaign.
Gunnery is simplified to four range bands with varying penetration and damage. Penetration decreases from band 1 (short range) to band 3 (long range and then improves in the fourth band (extreme) to reflect the increased velocity of the plunging projectile. Damage is calculated per gun mount and accuracy decline as range increases. Attacks in bands 1 and 2 are againist the vertical (or side) armor while in bands 3 and 4, the attack is against the horizontal (deck) armor.
But is this system accurate?
Well, it is a simplified system to make the game playable, so it has some faults, but they aren't going to cause any major discrepancies in the outcome of a battle. Adding the additional accuracy to the simulation may not be worth all the trouble. The designers found that 67% of hits are against the deck armor at long and extreme ranges (defined as roughly the last 2/3rds of the weapons range), while at short and medium ranges, 2/3rds of the hits would be on the belt armor this coupled with the angle and thickness of the armor means that only shells that are striking with only a small angle from the perpendicular or those much bigger than what the armor is designed to withstand will penetrate . . . the damage they do will tend to even-out any discrepancy, while the smaller shells nonpenetrating hits have been factored out, this little convention greatly simplifies the gunnery computations.
When the Italian navy is covered in the follow on module "SUPERMARINA" due out this summer, (Yes it's one of those unending module designs), there will need to be some modifications to the system. The simplest solution may be just to use a slightly higher constant for computing penetration (this is in Annex J- I of the Data Annexes Booklet) and if you are concerned about the historical accuracy, you can adjust on your own. This is fine timing for the enthusiast, and will not affect the play for those who aren't sticklers for accuracy.
The components are of very good quality, with dice some excellent counters that allow you to play without having to buy miniatures and the reverse side has useful silhouettes that to include unit designations and information on ship / aircraft configuration at that point in the war. Also there are all the things you will be surprised to find provided (lots of information on the British, eight and a half pages of Japanese merchant Ship names) the only thing I could find missing were a few rare Dutch aircraft. The Fokker C-XIW catapult float plane for the Dutch cruisers and the Fokker T- IVa Float Sea Plane and torpedo bomber arc missing. We are talking about 12 C-Ms and maybe 20 T-IVs. So it's hardly critical.
The remainder of the aircraft that were available to the Dutch were P-36s (provided), Brewster Buffaloes rovided) and Martin B-10s (missing). Somehow in a simulation that provides so much detail, this minor oversight seems odd, but it is minor. This is hard to find stuff.
The scenario booklet and the Data Annexes are valuable source material for ANY Naval Game. The scenarios vary from easy and small (four US 4-players shooting up a Japanese Landing force off Balikpapan) through larger things like the Japanese carrier air raid on Trincomalee. Very large battles like Coral Sea and Midway are broken into 6-8 separate scenarios.
The rule's booklet also has some very interesting information in the sidebars with explanations on how and why certain procedures were used.
Do yourself a favor, do not scrimp, buy the boxed set even if you plan to play another set of rules. If you buy CoS piecemeal, the parts cost $60; skip the nice counters and it's still $45. I recommend the boxed set. I have as much Naval paraphernalia as anyone I know, including the 1:700 scale plastic airplanes the Japanese model makers put out years ago, and I still think the set is the way to go.
And Now the Bad
So much for the good information, regrettably there are some bad points too.
The designers left out players aids, there are no sheets with all the charts you need to refresh your memory! Thumbing through the book gets old pretty quick. I am told this is being corrected, and the sheets will be available soon, these will cost about $5, since providing them free would cost the game producers more than they are making as profit on the set. There are some typo's, but that is expected in so large a piece of work, [not really, Ed.] and an errata sheet is now available from Clash of Arms.
Important! There is no campaign system.
According to the rules, that will be in a later module. Still there is a fair amount of data included to allow one to run a campaign if they are willing to do some outside research and make up a few rules. [I can see Chuck Duggie hard at work already, Ed.]
The rules seem to cover most anything you could want in a naval game. Unless it's a rapid quick overview of what happens in a naval battle. If this is the case you'll want a different set of rules. I also would like to point out that this is a very well supported simulation, with questions and comments being answered in hours for those folks with Internet / Compuserve / AOL / GEnie access, a bit longer if you work through the US Mail.
This is the set for the fellow who wants to do it all - prove he could fire his torpedoes and extricate his submarine from the convoy's escorts - have his flight of dive bombers hit that CV This is the set makes you the fellow in the hot seat, be that the admiral or even the Lt. Comdr. leading the Combat Air Patrol. It's a great simulation if you can keep up with whom you are and what you arc doing in each situation. If you really like Naval Action Naval War games and enjoy knowing how and why things were done - buy it. It'll give you what you want.
[Jim receives this month's know-prize for having as much useless knowledge as yours truly. The Fokker CXI was catapult float plane for the Dutch cruisers and the Fokker T-IVa Float Sea Plane are missing? Hell, I didn't know they even existed! Nice job, I'm very impressed Jim and Chuck should get together and refight War Duce in 1-1 scale. It appears they have the ability to do so. Awed Ed.]
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