Sky Aemyril -Rules for Airship Battles on the World of Alwyd

Had today off for reasons, so while waiting for the phone to ring, I cleared off my messy wargames table and unrolled my sea mat to try playtesting my airship battle game idea. I published the initial draft here. As you can see from the pictures I've gotten more ships painted this past week. This about half of them.

Royalist battleship emerges from cloud cover in Game 2 to fire a broadside into the Crusader heavy battleship

I decided that I had too many ships identified as Carriers in the first post, and thought that some, or most, could be battleships. So the ships previously identified as battleships have now become battlecruisers.

I also decided to add a "heavy" battleship. Yes, we could call it a dreadnought, but that seems very earthlike to me.

Class BB - Heavy Battleship 9 Damage Points, 6 heavy batteries, 3 light batteries SLOW 0-2 MEDIUM 3-4 FAST 5-6

Class BC - Battle Cruiser 7 Damage Points 4 heavy batteries 2 light batteries 1 rocket pod SLOW 0-4 MEDIUM 5-6 FAST 7-8

Royalist battles cruisers and cruisers

Crusader Cruiser squadron

Game 1. I rolled for where each fleet set up and they rolled for opposite short sides of the table.

I decided on a doubles initiative roll that a storm would arrive and move across the battle space like some alien horror from Original Star Trek.

Flanking cruiser squadrons veering to avoid the storm

Crusader Cruiser squadron is caught and thrown into disarray, with some minor damage suffered.

Even though they can't shoot as a unified formation now, they get some good hits, blowing up the Royalist heavy battleship.


Cruiser goes down from accumulated damage points


Royalist Battle Cruiser explodes!

Crusader Battleship explodes

So that was interesting. I was madly scribbling notes across my print out as I moved models and rolled dice. There were a few things missing, like a proper set up and weather. The complicated Formations weren't working, and I decided to just measure moves and shooting instead of using the hexes.

I decided to add proper set up, borrowed heavily from Nimitz.

• Each side rolls a d6. Low Roll is Disadvantaged.
• Disadvantaged Player starts with a 12"x12" box 12" in from the right hand corner of his table edge. He rolls a second dice. 1-2 adds a second 12x12 directly to the left along the table edge. 3-4 12x12 box adjacent to upper left corner. 5-6 12x12 box on the top of first square. He deploys his fleet inside these two boxes (yes, he can include the area between the corners if he rolled the diagonal boxes). The fleet is pointing in the direction from initial box to box rolled.
• Advantaged Player then sets up anywhere on his half of the table.
• Roll for weather.

Roll 2d6 for Weather after both fleets deploy.

1/1 Big Storm covers a 12"x6" area. Roll for where around the table it starts. Every turn it moves 2d6 towards the opposite table edge/corner. +1 on the damage roll for any ship caught by it.

1/2-5 a 6"x6" storm

2-5/2-5 2d6 3" clouds placed alternately around the table

1/6 12"x6" cloud bank roll for initial placement and moves 2d6 across table

2-5/6 6"x6" cloud bank

6/6 Clear Skies

After lunch I cleared things up and set up another game.

Game 2. 

Crusaders are the Disadvantaged Player and rolled 1-2 for Deployment. Then we got 2d6 clouds.

Clouds are placed alternately by the players.

For Activation I reached for the This Quar's War: Clash of Rhyflers card deck. 3x 3s, 4x 4s, 3x 5s. Draw first card and discard face down.

Advantaged Player gets first card. 1 Activation you can Move or Shoot a Formation or Single Ship. 

A Formation or Ship that has Moved can be Activated again to Shoot. But may only do each only once per card.

The black pipe cleaners are marking who has fired.

Ships can only move as a Formation if they are bow to stern in line with no more than 4" between posts. Ships in squadron may "follow the leader" to stay in Formation.

When you're a Squadron of Destroyers and find yourself going broadside to broadside with the enemy Battleship Squadron!

Your Destroyer only scores 2 hits, but you roll really well on the Damage

Boom! A fire is started on the Royalist Heavy Battleship which promptly explodes some ammunition! 

Later in the game the Royalist Destroyer Squadron repeats the performance. Close range Rocket salvos blowing up a Cruiser and a Battleship.

Still need to clarify maneuvering. But Nimitz's one 90 degree turn somewhere during the move seems OK.

Measuring from the posts and using the hex bases for firing arcs still seems to work though.