As previous readers will have been aware, I have been waiting for Victory at Sea to arrive for what feels like forever. Scheduled for an April release date but thanks to the global pandemic the release date was pushed back till late August. My supplier (The excellent RKStudio) was also hampered it getting my copy to me but it has arrived and first impression........man the ships are small . This is a whole new scale for me to play and I'm excited. The starter set is called Battle for the Pacific, so its US Navy vs the Imperial Japanese Navy. You get 15 ships in the box, 9 US ships and 6 Japanese ships. Seems odd numbers but you get more destroyers with the US and bigger cruisers I believe with Japanese.
Also in the box you get the usual tokens and cards to play the game with plus an odd looking movement template. It looks difficult but appears to be easier to use than it looks like. What's a nice touch as well is the inclusion of 2 large paper sea terrain mats to use in your games, which is great for me as my gaming table is green and my dining table is black. The usual dice are included, the game uses a D6 and D10. I found the D6s a bit small but as I have a load pf D6s that's not really a problem.
The rulebook is small but I know the plan is to release a bigger rulebook with all the ship lists in for all the fleets that will be available in the games future. Nice quality book as you would expect from Warlord. Every ship has a card with all the info you need on it plus sliders to keep track of damage. What is a good touch is on the back of the cards is information on the ships re fits. So it seems you get the ships stats for when it first set sail then on the back it tells you what changes to make for the various times the ships have been refitted and upgraded. allowing you different fights with the same ships.
Now onto the ships. They are I believe 1 /1800 scale so are very small but this is needed so you can have fleets fighting each other. There are battleships and aircraft carriers all available now or soon. I also picked up the Japanese battleship the Yamato , this week I plan to add the USS Idaho to my American fleet. This way I will have a small force based around a battleship for both factions. When the aircraft carriers get released on their own (Currently only available in fleet box sets) I will no doubt grab one for each fleet.
Japanese Fleet
The starter set comes with 3 crusiers, The Kumano, The Mogami and Furutaka. Also 3 Fubuki Class Destroyers. I added the beast that is the Yamato as well.
American Fleet
The US navy brings the USS Northampton, USS Chicago and USS Indianapolis as its 3 cruisers. Backed up by 6 Fletcher class destroyers.
Painting these ships was a new challenge due to the size and I still have not managed to paint the name plates on the base of each model yet. I can not get the dry brushing clear enough so going to have to think of something else. Apart from that very happy how these came out and I think they look great on the game mat. I cannot wait to give the game a try.
