My son and I finally got Sail and Steam Navies to the tabletop this past weekend and I can say with confidence that he is more hooked than I expected.

He had a serious blast and picked up the rules just fine after the first turn. I was a little surprised, honestly. It really is that simple.

And the resultant game was just that fun! He played the two Union vessels and quickly realized I was trying to isolate one of his ships in a 2v1, so he pivoted accordingly.

It wasn’t quite enough, so we saw how effective ramming can be at taking down ships. It’s uh… very effective. This counts as two kills for me, right? Right?

Alright, I was one ship down, but high in spirit, so I chased down his remaining ship for another ramming attack.

So it turns out running at someone at full steam while hoping to hit the enemy before you get destroyed really only works if… you don’t get destroyed. My son pegged the critical and it hit my magazine, blowing my lower hull and sinking the ship immediately thanks to some really good rolls on his part.

Crits occur when you roll three identical results for damage. Most damage rolls are between 2-5 dice so the odds of this are not very high. You then roll on a damage chart which may invoke further rolls for damage. He did D10 suppression and D10 hull damage. Roll high enough and, well, see the images above.

I skipped a lot of the shooting in the game. I found with the ships we were using it really came down to a time pressure on the Confederates. Either engage or get shot up. Each City Class ironclad has 13 guns. My Confederates had three at the most. My only option was the high risk game of “Rams Ahoy!”

This can be tweaked, of course, but on balance the Union had far superior vessels. It makes for an interesting assymetry that I rather like.

As for the kid? He was disappointed I surrendered, depriving him of the opportunity to sink my last ship. He is super excited to get another game in next weekend.

I’m liking the ruleset. I may try it as a small club game soon. We’re painting more ships and I could readily supply four players with 2-3 vessels each… but I have to admit that while the game is reasonably fast moving, it’s still inherently slow. Something about “vehicle” games always makes them slower to resolve. I see no clear sins here–I just think it’s an issue with the genre.

Regardless, the kiddo is happy and I’m having fun. That’s plenty for now.

Rams Ahoy!