I finally sat down to play out a learner game of Sail and Steam Navies. I played solo and I’m deeply thankful I did so. I read through the ruleset several times and had myself under the impression that I basically understood but would need to go through a turn to piece it all together before I could teach my son. Five turns and a lot of reading later, I was definitely right that I needed to sit down and play.

Several parts of the rules are written in a manner that made it hard to really parse the details of how they play out on tabletop. I’m thankful for the great example of play, which I relied on heavily to help clarify. There were two major sticking points:

1. How does turning work?
2. How does ramming work?

Now, to be fair to the ruleset, I don’t think my confusion over turning was particularly dire–but I wanted the right answer and really could not find it. Here’s the issue: to turn, you must travel a distance equal to the ship’s Turn Rating. So if a ship has a Turn Rating of 4″, you have to first travel 4″, then you may turn up to 30 degrees. Easy. Any time you move in a straight line, you put a dice behind your ship to indicate how far it traveled. You keep doing this until you turn and the dice carries over between movement phases and overall turns.

Okay… not too bad. But it took me a while to solidify that understanding. Further, I’m still not sure if you track beyond 6″ of straight movement, which is one dice. I have a ship, the CSS Virginia, which takes 7″ of straight movement to turn. Every other ship I own is 6 or less, so I suppose I’d just make an exception for the Virginia, but the rules don’t really tell you to do this.

Oh wait, I forgot the OTHER issue I had and still don’t know the answer to: do you consume the dice entirely, even if there’s extra inches on it? I need 3″, but I moved 5″. I turn once so now I… pick up the dice entirely? Deduct three inches from it and leave two inches? I’m not sure. I will reread and check if perhaps I missed this in the example, but for now I assume you pick up the dice entirely because you’ve… er… lost momentum?

Ramming was the other issue. It took me only two rereads, so it was not as bad. You roll a D10 to see if you hit the ship you rammed. To succeed you need an 8, but you add the inches you just moved in a straight line to the dice result. I move 5″, roll a 3, and get an 8, thus successfully ramming. You then use your ship’s speed for the turn to create a pool of damage dice. From there, you deduct the enemy’s armor value from that pool, giving you the final number of damage dice you roll.

Okay, okay. So it was a bit tricky to read. How was it to play? Honestly, quite smooth once I got it. It really produced a fun little game, where the USS Carondelet took on two CSS vessels of lesser quality. The Carondelet had far superior firepower, which it leveraged to nearly sink the CSS Little Rebel by turn 3, while seriously damaging and chipping away at the CSS General Sumter. Unfortunately, the Confederate vessels headed off the Union vessel and pulled off a successful ram.

And then… er… well, another.

I wanted to see ramming! What can I say? I had no idea it would be so successful. The second attack, after I understood the process, was better executed. I had the CSS General Sumter ram the USS Carondelet at a full 10 speed, which resulted in it rolling 8 dice and doing 8 points of damage all at once. This resulted in the USS Carondelet taking on water and starting the sinking process. I was content to call it quits there, having gone through the rules pretty thoroughly, aside from critical hits.

I will say the shooting was straightforward, though it did require me referencing the chart in the book that explains how to ‘read’ the guns on the player sheets. Again, this slowed me down. If I replayed this battle now it would take me maybe 15 minutes, perhaps a bit less. My solo play last night took me… er… an hour and a half. Again, thankful the kiddo wasn’t there to suffer through it. On balance, I’m still quite excited to play.

I don’t believe the ruleset is hard to teach and I don’t doubt my son will be able to play it just fine. If I didn’t have a midterm to study for, I’d already have photos from a game with him. He’s on notice that we shoot smoke balls at each other come Saturday, so next week I’ll report back on whether ramming your child’s ships makes them want to play more wargames.

My money is on “Dad, I miss my lizardmen.”