Players 2
Average 8 hours playing time
Period WWII
Scale Strategic Turn 3 months
Map 112 km per hex
Unit Individual vessels or groups of vessels, aircraft groups, and land combat units

Components

1 Thin bookcase sized plastic box
1 22"x28" unmounted mapsheet
1 12 page rule book
200 Die cut counters

Counter Manifest

59 England (red)
52 Italy (brown)
31 Russia (green)
23 Germany (grey)
23 France (blue-grey)
12 USA (blue)

SimCan says:

“La Regia Marina is a complex strategic study of naval and air conflict in the Mediterranean and Black Seas during the Second World War. The players are placed in the positions of the Axis and Allied theatre commanders. Aircraft carriers and battleships are represented by individual unit counters while smaller vessels and aircraft are depicted in groups. Turns represent the activities of three months and map hexes are scaled to 112 kilometers (70 miles). Rules are included so that the game may be played interactively with D.A.K., our game of the land war in North Africa.”

The Reviewer says:

“La Regia Marina would probably stand up pretty well even if there was significant competition with which to compare it.” --Jay Selover in F&M 38.

Comments

Playing La Regia Marina, the Axis player must focus on just trying to survive, and shipping logistics. Though victory points are awarded for sinking ships, the Axis player will probably gain the most points from safely offloading cargoes to the front lines over the perilous shipping lanes. The Allied player gets points not only for sinking ships, but also big points for any of three different convoys reaching their destination. These should the be the main Axis target of attack. For play all units are placed front side down for limited intelligence. Before movement, shipping points are secretly assigned to a choice of shipping routes. The guessing game involved here can add some suspense and tension, unless your opponent happens to be Kreskin. After movement, naval units try to spot each other for combat using their combined search values. Successful searches will reveal some or all of the units, taken at random from the turned over stack. Combat uses a CRT that will sink only one ship of the opposing force but can damage several others. Damaged ships are removed from the game for a number of turns equal to damage received.

Careful planning will be needed throughout for Axis operations as the Italian navy has limited fuel resources for the whole game. There will be some players who would use all that fuel up in a big death or glory sortie, but anything goes as long as you keep the Allies guessing. The Axis does get to get back some at the Allies by attacking Russian shipping in the Black Sea.

In all this game looks like a good companion to SimCan’s D.A.K. and could possibly be fitted to many other North Africa campaign games that have variable supply rates.

Collectors Notes

Boone lists low, high and average prices of 5/16/10.75 at auction and 12/25/19.00 for sale.

Errata

Air groups assigned to hexes for copmbat purposes as in Rules 9.3 and 9.4 may only be assigned to hexes containing opposing units. If this is not possible, the air groups may not be assigned. No formula for determining the overall level of victory based on the results of [La Regia Marina and D.A.K.] was ever intended. It is possible (though not likely) to win one and lose the other. I think this would be a draw.

Steve Newberg says:

I liked this game. From the start it was considered to be a game that would be linkable with D.A.K. to the central strategic need of the theater to keep or cut Axis supply to North Africa, but it was still a game of naval and air warfare on a huge scope, but no aircarft carriers, just land-based air. So very different from the Pacific War that not a single system could be really shared. The research was great fun, the map came out interesting, and we got to toss in Russians and the Black Sea. Sold every copy we printed and I wish someone would put it back on the market.