Skip to main content

6th Fleet: A quick look


I might be a Balkowski fan boi. There are things he does in his designs that just seem to work for me. I like good tables printed on the map, that are loaded with possibility, I like irregular turn sequences that don't use chit pulls, and I like the way he front loads his games with tense challenging decisions. He creates those smokey room nail brighter moments. 


In 6th fleet this is done with your airforce. At the start of each three turn day you have to decide how many planes to allocate to strategic air missions and to which air zones they will be sent. Both players do this in secret. It is a mental game of chicken, as you need those fighters for CAP (combat air patrol) over your carriers and airbases but you also want to clear the Black Sea so your recon planes don't get downed by MIGs, but your opponent only has limited interceptors too, what will he or she do?


It's a game about guessing and gambling and then watching the dice roll as a T16 bombers attempt to knock out the Nimtz. This game is a good Sandy Woodward simulator, how cautious should I be?


If you are looking for a spec for this game, its about middle weight in rules, with several scenarios that can be played within 3 hours. The advanced game will take a bit of grokking but I found the regular rules easy enough to process. You get a ton of 80s mil tech hardware to play with. Weirdly, Russian subs seem to be a bit weak compared with USN, but other than that its great.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Pete.26 September 2016 at 19:12

    I like the sound of that- I'd happily give it ago. Sign me up as Red Air Force Commander.

    Cheers,

    Pete.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Simon Lestrade27 September 2016 at 13:20

    I'll bring it thursday

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Quick Looks: Cimean War Battles - Tchernaya River

 A quick one today I traded off Across the Narva by Revolution Games (should post something on this) for an oldish (2000) copy of an S&T magazine. The mag came with two battles reprinted from the 1978 Quad game on the Crimean War. The full Quad also contained Inkerman and Balaklava, this magazine version just has Tchernaya River and Alma. Initial setup Early SPI games (and actually GDW and AH come to think of it) of the 70s tend to have lots of rules you already know. I go, U go, movement, fire, melee, rally, and most of the rules are standard. Command and control rules and friction of war arrived a lot later. To couter this I have added a simple house rule. For each division (units are brigates and regiments, about 2-8 per division) roll. On a 1 in 6 movement is halved unless the unit can charge, in which case it must charge the nearest enemy.  A simple easy to apply rule for generating those light brigade charges. You could also easily convert this to a chit pull game by division
2 comments
Read more

Quick Looks; Red Star / White Eagle

I generally hate it when people describe designs or ideas in games as dated, because many of the most innovative games  are older than I am. Equally it implies there is something innately good about new designs, which I don't think there is. Dune is arguably the best multiplayer 'war' boardgame and the 70s basic DnD is in my view still the best RPG. I wasn't born until the late 80s and didn't discover these things to the mid 2000s so this isn't nostalgia doing my thinking, its just that some old ideas are better than new ones, despite our apparent 'progress'. Back when Roger B MacGowan did cool art house covers But having said all this Red Star / White Eagle is a dated game design. And this matters if you are looking at popping £70 on a new reprint of it from Compass Games. I am a wary cheapskate so I picked up a second hand copy with a trashed box of ebay for £20. It was worth it, but only just. Poles have just been creamed on the south we
2 comments
Read more

Jena Campaign - Debrief - Lessons learned.

On the last Saturday of this past June I enjoyed one of the best learning experiences I have had in wargaming to put a positive spin on it. The day did not start well in character as General von Ruchel I arrived to the field 3 hours late having boarded the wrong train. When I arrived I discovered that my colleagues had spread our forces in a long thin line between the Fulda gap and Gera with no reserve. Control's game map The Jena campaign megagame, designed by Rupert Clamp was devised as a double blind map game. Each side of 10-15 players wrote orders for each division ordering it about a large map of central Germany. When battle was joined a divisional commander collected his regimental level counters and played a simple face to face tactical game. A step up the chain of command it was the army commanders (generals) role to devise the overall strategy for then the divisional/corps commanders and their chiefs of staff teams to implement. Or if you were on the Pruss
7 comments
Read more