At HURRICON 2001, a beta version of the long-awaited successor to SEEKRIEG 4 was first revealed to the general public. The three scenarios presented by authors Rich Sartore and Jack Joyner illustrated the game's ability to accurately portray naval warfare across the entire battleship era (1880 to 1945) with a single set of rules. Jay Bellman (helping to measure ranges), while Mark Merritt and Jack Joyner confer on the game during Battle of Crete at HURRICON 03. Now, two years later at HURRICON 2003, Sartore, Joyner and SEEKRIEG Admiralty members Jay Bellman and Mark Merritt presented the prerelease version of SEEKRIEG 5. In two single-session games and one two-session game, participants enjoyed a hypothetical battle between British and French predreadnought battleships and cruisers in 1896, a recreation of the Battle Of The Kommondorski Islands (March 1943) and a historically-based 1918 what-if battle with German battlecruisers and cruisers righting American dreadnoughts supported by British cruisers. As with the other two SEEKRIEG 5 games, the semi-historical "Final Sortie 1918" scenario was full-up. Regardless of their individual command responsibilities, all the players were completely absorbed in the game to the very end. Of course, thanks to wise decisions on the part of the American and German admirals, the game did not result in a "fight-to-the-death" engagement between capital ships. The German admiral (Paul Risner) attempted to lure the US battlewagons away from the convoy but the Yankee admiral (Rick Frazier) fully understood his primary mission and didn't take the bait. On the other hand, it was a fierce and deadly confrontation between the screening light cruisers with both sides being supported by their capital ships. PENELOPE, PHAETON and CARYSFORT managed to hold up well under the pounding but all three were either sunk or abandoned by the end of them game and none of the four German cruisers returned home from the operation. History books would doubtless record that the actions of the plucky British cruisers saved the convoy. SEEKRIEG 5 is a complete rewrite of the earlier edition and features a very detailed ship log sheet. The new Ship Log replaces the old Ship Data volumes and does away with players having to fill out new log sheets every time they play. Each log sheet has been created for a specific ship and can be printed right from the CD-ROM. The ship log now serves a dual purpose; in addition to showing the ship's game specs and recording damage, it now provides key information used throughout the turn sequences. Layouts of the primary, secondary, tertiary and torpedo batteries are shown and much of the other information is specific to the individual ship, including penetration, fire control, acceleration, propulsion units (boiler rooms, engine rooms and shafts), turning ability, radar and aircraft and torpedo specs. Yes, at first glance the log sheets are intimidating. But much of this information used to be located on separate game charts (penetration, rate of fire by range and fire control, etc.) and most players are surprised at how quickly they become accustomed to the layout. One HURRICON 2003 attendee who had never played any version of SEEKRIEG decided to play in both a SEEKRIEG 5 and SEEKRIEG 4 game. He later remarked that from his perspective, SEEKRIEG 5 was much easier to play than SEEKRIEG 4. Details regarding the SEEKRIEG rules are available at the official web site: www.seekrieg.com. Back to Rebel Yell No. 24 Table of Contents Back to Rebel Yell List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2003 by HMGS South This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com