Man-O-War - 1990s Games Workshop, 2024 Review

 

I’ve not successfully blogged in a while, mostly due to excessive miniature painting. I will post some of the years progress in a post soon.

 

Generally speaking I have not had much luck with 3d prints. Some have had poor detail, others wrong scale, others rather fragile. The only 3d prints I’ve bought that have been great was my Man-O-War fleet. It cost me £30 off Ebay for a 1000pt dark elf fleet and it’s been a blast to play with.

The perfidious Brets approach my glorious dragon fleet

 

Man-O-War was released by GW in the 1990s, it was one of their shorter run base game plus a few expansions then done products and it is very much a game of its time. Its best and worst features are typical of 80s and 90s games.

 

Avast ye surly dogs!

 

Broad brush Man-O-War is a very traditional naval game. Your fleet will have 5-10 ships in a typical game, you have a basic system for determining wind direction, which influences sail movement. Your ships have turning arcs, little cards for tracking damage to different parts of the ship, status effects.  I move a ship, you move a ship, etc. If you have played naval games this kind of thing is pretty familiar.

 

 

So what makes it good? With the possible exception of the three best fleets; Empire, Bretonnians and High Elves, the fleet/faction designs are nuts. The dark elves can go crazy or refuse to fight when they roll 1s, but swing for the fences on 6s, and their black arc can literally just push its way through the opposing fleet, the Chaos Dwarves have hilariously unbalanced destructive spells but have to keep casting or their wizard may implode, they also have a grad missile launcher, the orks have a massive hammer on one of their ships, the dwarves get a submarine, the skaven can blow away their opponents crews with their bell. 

 

The Chaos Dwarves approacheth

            

Man-O-War is rich in imagination, it shows you a lot of that unbridled enthusiasm and daring that made GW great. The resulting games can be super fun with tense comedic moments and daring gambits as you run your fleet through a bottle neck or pincer your opponent. It has given me some of the best gaming moments of 2024 and my little fleet is probably the best investment of year.

 

 

So what's the rub? A few things. First the game is not balanced. I don’t believe game balance is essential, and I am not sure this matters that much here, but it is noticeable. The dull points efficient move fast and shoot a lot factions, Brets, Empire, High Elves do just seem quite a bit better than the other fleets I have seen. They won’t win every game, but they probably should always be favourites. The bigger issue is probably that the more interesting, and silly fleets incentive risk taking and fun play, the move and shoot type fleets incentivise the opposite. 

 

Second, the game is not cheap. A friend offered me £100 for a complete original box of bits. I declined, not because this is terrible value, but it’s more than I would want to pay. In the 1990s GW loved terrible card decks and lots of tokens. This game uses cards for a magic system and fleet bonus upgrades. Both of these systems work ok, but a more modern game would probably ditch the card deck and deliver the same content at a much lower cost and with a lot less mechanical faff for something which is very random and results in nothing interesting twice as often as something hilarious. The ship cards and heaps of status markers can easily be substituted with a pen and redesigned print out. You could DIY a set, but probably there are better ways to spend your time.

 

Tis an ambush!

Thirdly, the experience is very uneven in a multitude of ways. It can over stay its welcome, running over 3 hours (in some games), the scenarios are rather hit and miss, you could drive a bus through some of the rules gaps and will have to resolve issues with your opponent. In short this is definitely not a game for competitive types or those short on time. To get the best out of Man-O-War you need two+ players who say “it would be really funny if”. This is kind of the secret sauce many 1990s GW games and it’s why they are great but also terrible.

 

I'd quite like to see modern GW take another crack at the naval game. They tried with Dreadfleet (which I liked) but it tanked hard, so perhaps they have been put off the genre. Whilst I have mixed views on the Age of Sigmar aesthetic I think it would suite a naval game really well, the steam punk and high fantasy could really work and their modern boardgame design sensibilities could deliver something a lot slicker. It likely wouldn't have the charm and whimsey of the original but it could still be worth seeing.