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.

Up Ship!

Had some time last week at work, while watching machine control panels, to start brain storming my Quar Diesel-punk Airship Fleet Combat Game! idea.

Royalist battleship and cruiser with some kites flying past

I've wanted to do a diesel-punk alt-history airship game for quite a while, but got held up by not being able to source enough drop tanks etc to make the ships from and brutal reality. There being rather good reasons why aircraft quickly overtook airships in warfare. Alt-history doesn't let you ignore physics.

But along come the Quar with their thicker atmosphere, and presumably more readily obtainable helium, and voila!, suddenly fleets of airships fighting it out don't seem as impractical or belief-stretching as human crewed ships would. 

The lack of models were readily solved by Don and his resin printer. A quick tour around Yeggi and Wargaming 3d (search "airships" and "zeppelins" for more models) for airships came up with lots of models, some of which Don was able to scale down for me. An 8 inch long Hindenburg would make great air support for 15mm Quar though, just sayin'.

Crusader kite carrier launches two flights

I was looking at converting Nimitz or Full Thrust, but I want lots of ships, whole squadrons in fact, and I did not want to be managing ship damage cards for EVERY ship model on the table. So something where I could mark minimal critical or systems hits with pipe cleaners and record basic damage points on the ship itself (or micro dice by the stand) was desirable.

Royalist Cruiser

Ships will be divided into 6 classes:

Class A- Aircraft Carriers 8 Damage Points, 4 light batteries, 4 flights of kites (aircraft), SLOW 0-3, MEDIUM 4-5, FAST 6-7 hexes

Kites 3 Damage points, 1 firepower per kite (3) SLOW 4-10, MEDIUM 11-15, FAST 16-20

Class B- Battleships, 8 Damage Points, 4 heavy batteries, 4 light batteries, SLOW 0-3, MEDIUM 4-5, FAST 6-7 hexes

Class C- Cruisers, 6 Damage Points, 2 heavy batteries, 4 light batteries, SLOW 0-4, MEDIUM 5-6, FAST 7-8 hexes

Class D- Destroyers,  4 Damage Points, 4 light batteries, SLOW 0-5, MEDIUM 5-7, FAST 8-10 hexes

Class E- Scouts, 3 Damage Points, 2 Rocket pods, 1 light battery, SLOW 0-5, MEDIUM 5-7, FAST 8-10 hexes

Class G- Transports, Merchant shipping, 6 Damage Points, 2 light batteries, SLOW 0-2, MEDIUM 3-4, FAST 5-6 hexes

Note that airships can choose to not move at all in a turn, using reversed engines etc to hold position in air currents. Kites however must move at least 4 hexes or stall.

Heavy batteries are 37mm to 50mm quick firing breech loading cannon with explosive shells. Light batteries range from 9mm light machine guns to 20mm magazine fed autocannons.

Crusader battleship

Turn Sequence

Dice for initiative. Winner decides if they want to move first or second. Player who held initiative last turn wins a tie.

Movement

Player with initiative moves first ship or formation of ships. Players alternate moving formations or single ships. All ships or formations moving in their SLOW speed band are moved. Then continue alternately moving all formations or ships in the MEDIUM speed band. Finally all ships or formations moving in the FAST band are moved.

Class A and B can make one hex facing turn every 3 hexes moved.

Class C, D and E and can make one hex facing turn every 2 hexes moved.

Kites can make one hex facing turn every hex moved.

Class G can make 1 hex facing turn every 3 hexes moved.

Formations do not need to move together, but they won't count as a formation in the shooting phase or in the next turn.

Shooting

The side that moved first then shoots first. Shooting is alternated between players again by ships and formations. A formation can shoot at different targets. But all batteries on a ship must fire at the same target, except light batteries directed to anti-kite fire.

Arcs of fire: 1 light battery can fire through the bow or stern hex facing. All batteries can fire to either flank.

Kites have a range of 0-3 and hit on a 5+ they start with 3 firepower but lose 1 for every damage point they take. Kites arc of fire is through their front hex facing only.

Light Batteries Range 1-3 hit on 4+, 4-6 hit on 5+ 

Heavy Batteries Range 1-4 hit on 4+, 5-7 hit on 5+, 8-10 hit on 6

Rocket pods 1-2 hit on 4+, 3-4 hit on 5+ 5-6 hit on 6 

Anti-kite fire, light batteries only Range 1-3 hit on 5+, 4-6 hit on 6, each hit causes 1 DP to the flight

For each successful hit roll 1d10. Heavy Batteries and Rocket Pods add +1 to the die roll.

1- No effect, passed through the envelope and missed anything important

2-6 1 Damage Point

7- Engines Damaged, no longer able to make FAST speed, second result no longer able to make MEDIUM speed

8- Steering hit, rudder jammed, must make a 1 hex face turn every 2 hexes moved Roll a d6. Odds turn left, even turn right.

9- FIRE! Fuel line hit. Roll again on this chart at the beginning of each turn.

10- ammunition hit, BOOM! ship destroyed

For each damage point the ship loses 1 shooting dice, players choice and they can change that decision each shooting phase, the damage is as much shock, chaos and crew casualties as it is destroyed guns. (Scouts can count expended Rocket Pods for this), at 25% damage the ship can no longer move FAST, at 50% damage it can no longer move MEDIUM

Terrain

Clouds block line of sight for shooting. Ships moving inside a cloud must roll 1d6 and roll again after every 3 hexes moved 

1-drift 1 hex to left keep moving in same direction

2-drift 1 hex right keep moving in same direction

3- turn 1 hex facing left and move in new direction

4- turn 1 hex facing right and move in new direction

5- stay on current course

6- stay on course but move back 1 hex

Mountains block line of sight and movement. 

Storms move across the battlespace in a straight line 2d6 hexes per turn. Move storm clouds at the end of movement phase. Ships caught in a storm roll on the damage table each turn they are inside the storm.

Royalist battleship with kites