Admiral - Italian naval game to get new English release

[Mr Brown]

Luxlu, the small company behind the Admiral rules have a kickstarter running just now to release a new edition of their popular (in Italy at least) WWII naval game. The new edition is set to bring all of the expansions and core rules from their previous releases into one handy tome and they've also got a range of nifty little laser cut ships for the main belligerents.

I checked out the demo game and blurb here - http://tabletopgamesuk.co.uk/2019/06/22/take-control-of-your-navy-in-admiral-from-luxlu/

Still over three weeks left on the Kickstarter at time of writing.

[Arrigo]

to be quite honest never heard of their game... okay I am not that Italian anymore but... 

[Mr Brown]

Haha, maybe popular in Italy amongst a sub-set of wargamers would be more accurate then?

I had never heard of it until I saw a post with a few photos linked in a group Im in on Facebook. There's so many new things being released traditionally and through Kickstarter I dont know how anyone keeps up with it all.

[Arrigo]

certainly we are on the receiving end of a lot of new releases    and it could be good or bad (some years ago Professor Phil Sabin was complaining about it, that the market is so full that is becoming necessary to pass over interesting releases, and also that rarely people play the same thing...).

Another element is the almost ludicrous nature of the hype by game authors (especially on KS), everyone selling their stuff as the most popular product ever... it is becoming a bit like the fragments of the True Cross... I understand why the hype is necessary (especially on KS) but sometime is really too much.

I am puzzled y the MDF ships, some are nice, some a bit less. Also the dimensions sounds a bit off base to me. As the rules themselves, they are quite standard, and makes the usual errors on turning radius... with larger ships turning in larger circles than smaller ones. According to the USN (and naval constructors around the world) it was not a question of length, but of beam vs length. An Iowa ad a smaller turning circle, at the same speed, than a Fletcher.  the two Lexingtons were poor turners, while the Enterprises had better tactical radii. One of the most impressive ship in this regard was the Yamato. Look at the pictures, she is literally turning on a dime.  First one who told me that was... none the less than professor Andrew Lambert while on board HMS Warrior...

[Mr Brown]

Oh most certainly agree with your points there. I think there will always be an element of 'fudge' when it comes to ships and turning in this era. I think if you are aiming at a faster play option, I'd be happy with some historical inaccuracy if it prevents the need for countless other tables and stats. Whilst I can also see the appeal in having this distinction, if a game design is upfront in this regard then I'm ok. Nothing worse than something claiming to be full of om theme flavour and in depth realistic options for it to transpire that it's completely off.

As I said in the blurb there, WWII naval never really peaked my interest with a lot of older games that I encountered focussing on trying to do to much and not being that much fun to play. The demo at least strikes the right chord so I'll see what the full rules are like.

[Arrigo]

Naval games are always a sort of niche in a niche. I was always interested in warships (disclaimer: I watched the Battle of Midway when I was around 4... I think I was the only 4 years old in Italy who know who Chester Nimitz was...), but  I can  understand why naval wargaming is often not very popular.

To a certain extent I think the reputation for complexity is undeserved and often complaexity is just there to appease rivet counters with little understanding about naval tactics... after the revelation on board the HMS Warrior I had (some years later) the opportunity to chat with dr. Alan Zimm and the late dr. Todd Kauderer  (both USN officers, naval analysts, historians, and... wargamers). We briefly discussed the interwar Naval War College rules Fire and Maneuver. They are quite complicated for a lot of reasons but they approach turning in a simple way. the USN has a thing called tactical diameter that provides for turning for each class of ships. The rules had just some templates for different class of ships (you can have broader approach with some specific deviations for specific ships, like the Yamato). The issue is not that realism creates complexity, but that usually naval rules got it wrong assuming bigger ships turn slower and destroyers turn faster and in shorter time. Because it is something we take for granted often rules tend just to replicate it.

Another staple of some games is the need to include terrain as you were bringing BBs in restricted waters (except if your name is Crutchley and your shis is the HMAS Warspite...  )

[Admiral Hawke]

I think another challenge for naval games, particularly in the steam era and later, is the range/scale compromise. If you have any reasonable sized household table, and want battle  ranges to be anywhere close to proportionate for the size of your miniatures, you end up with very small miniatures. So you have to compromise somewhere.
Then you add the problem that naval battles were often a running fight (e.g. River Plate, Cape Matapan, Denmark Straits, Sirte, Barents Sea) and your miniatures are trying to steam off the table.
So, despite the lack of scenery that should make naval battles easy to stage, I think they are harder to set up than land battles fought over a specific piece of land, usually with limited lines of sight. Heavy artillery is usually off table in a land wargame, but has to be on table in a naval wargame.
Like Arrigo, I don't understand why islands are so popular in naval games. Apart from the battles at Narvik and the Guadalcanal battles around Savo Island (involving Crutchley indeed!), it's hard to think of naval battles in the Second World War (or the First World War) where land was a crucial tactical factor.

[carlos marighela]

I think another challenge for naval games, particularly in the steam era and later, is the range/scale compromise. If you have any reasonable sized household table, and want battle  ranges to be anywhere close to proportionate for the size of your miniatures, you end up with very small miniatures. So you have to compromise somewhere.
Then you add the problem that naval battles were often a running fight (e.g. River Plate, Cape Matapan, Denmark Straits, Sirte, Barents Sea) and your miniatures are trying to steam off the table.
So, despite the lack of scenery that should make naval battles easy to stage, I think they are harder to set up than land battles fought over a specific piece of land, usually with limited lines of sight. Heavy artillery is usually off table in a land wargame, but has to be on table in a naval wargame.
Like Arrigo, I don't understand why islands are so popular in naval games. Apart from the battles at Narvik and the Guadalcanal battles around Savo Island (involving Crutchley indeed!), it's hard to think of naval battles in the Second World War (or the First World War) where land was a crucial tactical factor.

Agreed for the most part. Cape Bon is the classic example where the presence of land does matter. Two Italian light cruisers ambushed and sunk, with the attacking British destroyers being masked by their proximity to the coast. The Italians barely go a shot away and one of the cruisers was raked by machine gun fire, which tells you how close the destroyers got. Beyond that, land tends to play its part in strategic or grand tactical level for the most part.

Used to play quite a bit of naval warfare in my youth, mostly with General Quarters and Harpoon (shudder) before discovering that naval warfare was for the most part better played on a computer. Still it's good to see people still enthused about big ship battles.  I have fond memories of refighting Cape Spada and the Java Sea battles.