Grand Fleets: Third Edition Rulebook

My first set of naval wargame rules, was surprised that it allow players to play on hexes as well as measuring distance with measuring tapes. The game system is very straight forward using d6 dice pools which is generated by converting your firepower indicators such as gun caliber and shell weight into a factor. The problem here is that the chances are a bit too high and that the rulebook did not come with a list of ship logs and instead a mechanism that helps you calculate various data of a ship into a ship log, the calculation is not simple and deviation on sources and interpretations might result in the same ship having different point cost and performance.

Gee but Grand Fleets was a lot of fun playing on our Geek Chic tabletop - and Fuzz-Nutz, the bad orange kitten thought so as well. The biggest challenge of naval games for me is they are either easier than they seem or the interplay is more subtle than is first obvious. I have come to a realization the second conclusion is the right one, that even in the era of wooded ships and iron men, there was more subtlety than is first apparent. I found this a deceptively easy system to use, so much that after a while I was sailing and fighting and seldom fighting the rulebook. Maybe that means the rules are only so-so then? Well, I found it to be a clean system, one that was fun and gave me just the right amount of salt water in the face without getting soaked to the skin (enough sea faring clichéd writing there for ye?). I come back to the critical element at least for me as a gamer - does the system allow me to play a relative historic situation or does it force me to play a system? Grand Fleets is simply a smooth sailing naval war gaming system that deserves your hard look. The biggest negative of this game? I now want to go buy more ships from GHQ and Panzerschiffe. Now, I need to start digging out all those nice counters that Gary Graber has put out in Panzer Digest and with his naval games.....