Quick Naval Game

Today, my daughter and I had a quick test game of Fast Attack Boats: a Game of the Arab-Israeli Naval War-1973. It was published in 1980 by Yaquinto Publications. This is one of their record album games. The album opens up and you have the hex board in front of you. Its compact, but once you punch out the counters storage of them is a problem. Unless you hope they don't fall out of the record jacket (I can't believe I still remember such terms), any sort of ziplock bag or envelope is going to make the jacket bend and eventually warp. This is would be a bad thing considering that the jacket is your game board.

The rules are pretty simple: move, shoot, launch missiles or torpedos, repeat. It is simpler than Sea Strike, but at the same time, its less generic. There is no detection or lock on. The only bookkeeping was to track damage. Small counters representing missiles and torpedoes avoid the need to keep track of those. There are differences between Israeli SSMs and Soviet missiles that the Egyptians and Syrians use. Ships have differences as well. Torpedoes seem worthless, but I'm sure in the right hands could make a difference. The odd thing is that missiles and torpedoes are extremely maneuverable. It is particularly weird with the torpedoes, unless wire-guided ones were common back then. The restrictions for what direction to launch your missiles or torpedoes didn't seem to matter because of this. It didn't specify in the rules, but we made up a rule that missiles and torpedoes need a designated target just like gun fire. What probably compensates for the high maneuverability is that a missile or torpedo can get to your target and still roll a miss. Damage is similar to a lot of other modern rules where there are no damage points. Instead, a ship racks up percentages of damage that accumulate. Over 40% weapon systems and propulsion start become to become an issue. Torpedo boats are an exception, they are pretty much toast if hit. There is a rule for ramming, but we didn't get to try them. There is a campaign system included.

The game lasted all of a half an hour, tops. My daughter had two Israeli missile boats that had a combined 14 Gabriel missiles! I took the Syrians with two Komar-class missile boats and four torpedo boats. Not only did they have far fewer missiles, but could only fire one at a time as opposed to two at a time. It was pretty one sided. I did manage to slightly damage one of her ships, but she leisurely sank all of mine. all my torpedo boats valiantly managed to launch their torpedoes before turning to dust by missiles. Only one torpedo managed to make it to a target but missed due to poor dice rolls. My last missile boat tried to escape, but it got beaten down enough were it was moving at only half speed. I then decided to try to ram one of her ships, but she finished me off with missiles to spare. 

I liked it in spite of a few quirks. I think it lends itself to some tinkering to beef it up and include more ships. As always, I am looking for rules and ideas to be used for my ImagiNation wars.