[Consim-l] Sea Power and the State

[Mike NotSpecified]

I just posted the following review to BGG, where I hope it will be accepted 
and added to the House Rules, Player Aids and Session report I have also 
recently posted. BGG game entry is 
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6625.

I have also submitted the same material to Alan for www.grognard.com

In the meantime I hope you enjoy this review, maybe decide to read my Session 
Report or other materials, and I really hope you'll be inspired to give this 
one a play!

=====================================================================

Sea Power and the State
Reviewed Dec 2008

Snapshot Review
This is a great game.  It covers the whole of WW III at sea, which literally 
spans the globe.  Players have multiple possible strategies and there is at 
least one good counter-strategy for each.  Combat is quick, believable and has 
just enough tactical interplay to keep it interesting.   The graphics are 
dated and I found myself creating a few player aids and house rules, but they 
are not strictly necessary.  Omega Games has purchased the rights and rumor 
has it that they may republish this game in 2009.

I found myself totally immersed in the games I’ve played, and often thought 
about the game when forced away from the table.  That is the acid test of a 
game in my opinion, and this one passes easily.  This is a game with a lot of 
strategic depth and interest, I highly recommend it.

Game Description
Not sure who started it, or why, but World War III is upon us.  This game 
covers the naval aspects of such a war.  The map depicts the entire globe, 
including the polar cap in the north.  The Soviet navy and it’s maritime 
aircraft vs. the navies of the west.  The scale is grand strategic, although 
individual ships are represented, and the primary focus is on the Sea Lanes of 
Communications (SLOCs) which the West must hold open to give their armies in 
Western Europe a chance.  The game was published in 1982, so the force levels 
presented for scenarios in 1984, 1989 and 1994 are necessarily conjectural, 
but they include the submarines, ships, planes and satellites thought to be 
available.  Players can choose, on a turn by turn basis, to limit the war to 
conventional weapons, or escalate to three different levels of nuclear 
exchange, the last of which is all out strategic nuclear war.  There are some 
very scary choices in this game!

First Impressions
OK, I have to admit, I was underwhelmed upon first opening the box.  Largely I 
think this was because it was 2007 and I was opening a 1982 game.  Twenty five 
years has raised the graphics and presentation bar considerably.  The counters 
are dead basic, black ink on colored cardboard, the map seemed small and 
simple and the rulebook on first reading came across as lacking.  Particularly 
off-putting was the single paragraph devoted to the designer’s notes, which 
concluded with the comment that the game “
was intended for study as much as 
for enjoyment
”.

Uh oh.  I’ve tried a few games from that era (Air War anyone?) that were just 
horrible.  I had no stomach for “studying” an overly complex, amateurish 
effort from a second tier publisher (SimCan), so I put it back on the shelf. 
 Fortunately I gave it a second try this Fall and boy am I glad I did!

Second Impressions
This game came highly recommended by some kind soul on consim-l many years 
ago, it took me a long time to track down a copy and then another year after 
that first impression to pick it up again.  I owe a debt of gratitude to Bruce 
Costello who long ago wrote the only published Session Report on this game, it 
was instrumental getting me to try this one again.

The map began to make a lot of sense once I laid it out and started setting up 
my first game.  Everything is in reach and the treatment of the Arctic 
regions, which includes an insert polar map which allows subs to hide under 
the ice until they are ready to emerge, was excellent.  There is another 
insert map of the European waters, which uses super-sized hexes to relieve 
crowding, another nice feature.  The tracks for noting the numbers of merchant 
ships, satellites, etc. available work well for everything except the number 
of aircraft available.  So I made my own, which are available on BGG and 
www.grognard.com.

The counters proved to be highly functional and legible.  Nowhere near the 
good looks of say Avalanche Press, but in the end they worked well and that is 
the important thing.

The rulebook got better the more I read it.  Everything is in there, it is 
still fairly short and I encountered no real questions that were not answered 
in the rules.  It is quite complete, indeed there is only the briefest of 
errata posted on grognard  (http://www.grognard.com/errata/seapower.txt).  I 
do still wish Stephen Newberg had included a bit more in the Designers Notes, 
but he has been quite active on the consimworld folder 
(http://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?13@251.ehmieKiKETn.97@.1dd06650/67).

Strategy
There are two primary ways for either side to win.  The first hinges on a key 
premise of the game, that the West must hold open the SLOCs to keep NATO and 
Japan in the game.  Thus the Western Player earns victory points for every 
route he can keep open every turn, and sees the Soviet army marching across 
Europe and strangling Japan if he can’t deliver those merchant and tanker 
vessels to port.  The Soviets earn points for sinking those same commercial 
vessels, but not for denying the SLOCs or even taking ground in Europe.  So 
while one strategy revolves around the SLOCs, the scoring is not symmetrical 
and both sides have to pay close attention to their own needs.

The other primary strategy is to position one’s side to win an all out 
thermonuclear exchange.  You do that be being able to hit targets in the other 
sides homeland (having your ballistic submarines on station), by being able to 
those targets accurately (which requires you have guidance satellites in 
space),  and by denying your opponent the ability to reciprocate (which means 
destroying his satellites and sinking his subs, or at least keeping them out 
of range of your own cities).

Very fun for the players, and slightly difficult for the reviewer to describe, 
both sides can pursue both strategies at once.  The best moves obviously 
contribute to either strategy, but there is room to feint and bluff.  It gets 
to be nail-biting, hoping that sub is off the coast to intercept a convoy, but 
knowing he could be planning to launch!

Sequence of Play
Both sides bid for the conflict level they want this turn.  Level I is peace 
(very useful for getting ships into position before hostilities and worth 10 
VPs), Level II is conventional warfare, Level III adds in tactical nuclear 
weapons, Level IV is Operational Nuclear (which wipes out most bases, 
aircraft, large groups of ships, etc.) and finally Strategic Nuclear, Level V 
(which ends the game and kicks in a different set of victory conditions).  The 
player choosing Level IV loses 75 VP and the player choosing Level V loses 
150, but both can still be viable options.  The conflict level is whichever is 
the highest chosen by either player.

Then comes an optional phase in which the Western player can allocate his 
remaining commercial shipping to those routes he thinks he will be able to, or 
must at any cost, keep open.  The rulebook mentions a substantial increase in 
bookkeeping to use this rule, but in 2008 that is not so much a problem and I 
have posted a spreadsheet on www.grognard.com and BGG 
(http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6625)  that will help.  I highly 
recommended this rule, with the caveat that I like to force the Western Player 
to fully commit to all routes on the first turn as I assume the war brews up 
quickly enough that the West can’t get all those commercial ships under 
control immediately.

Once the conflict level for that turn is decided the Soviets move first.  They 
move their subs and ships, allocate their naval aircraft to different missions 
and then resolve combat.  The Soviet turn ends with a satellite phase where 
they can launch their own reconnaissance (RSAT) and communications (CSAT) 
birds , then launch anti-satellites (ASAT) to try and knock down western 
satellites.

The Western Player then gets a turn, identical to the Soviets.  Note that this 
has an important impact on the possibility of Level V nuclear exchange.  The 
West has the option to finish their turn killing as many Soviet satellites as 
they have ASATs (and good die rolls) available.  So it is hard for the Soviets 
to count on control of space from the end of their phase to the beginning of 
the next turn when Armageddon might arrive.

After both sides have moved and fought, there is a “War Effects” phase in 
which the players determine how many commercial ships were sunk, how many 
SLOCs were kept open, the progress of the land war in Europe, which nations 
drop out of the war or decide to enter, etc.

Gameplay
The game plays fast.  Ships and subs have sufficient range to cross most of 
the Atlantic in one turn (four days) so both fleets make contact on the first 
turn.  The first couple of turns there are a lot of ships and subs on the 
board, but they die fast and later turns can find only a handful of vessels 
still afloat.  Both sides have a lot of decisions to make during movement. 
 Putting ships astride the SLOCs can sink commercial ships (for the Soviets) 
or protect those same commercial ships from airstrikes (for the West).  Any 
sub within range of land based air is vulnerable, but sometimes that is the 
only way to get into position.  Subs can hide from planes under the polar ice, 
but both sides have attack subs that can follow them under.

Combat is resolved by a very elegant system.  Essentially you take the 
combined attack strength of your units who can hit the target type (air, 
surface, underwater), add a die roll, subtract the combined electronic 
countermeasures of the targets and that gives you an amount of damage done. 
 Your opponent then loses units as long as their cumulative defense rating is 
less than the amount of damage done.  Defense ratings run from 1 (some 
Frigates) to 65 (New Jersey!).  The cool thing is that this formula, which 
plays even easier than it sounds, is used for all combat (air to air, air to 
surface, etc.) so after 10 minutes or so you no longer need the rulebook.  It 
also does a good job of showing the relative strengths of various platforms in 
different situations.  (For a really thorough explanation, see my article with 
two suggested house rules http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/364440)

Both sides have a lot of decisions to make.  Simply rushing forward and 
engaging in as many combats as possible is a sure way to lose.  You have to 
pay attention to the capabilities of your units.  Ships make lousy ASW 
platforms.  Subs are great at killing ships, but very vulnerable to aircraft. 
 Bombers can smoke ships well out to sea, but suffer when they run into 
carriers.  Soviet ships along the SLOCs can sink merchants and tankers in big 
numbers, but NATO ships along those same routes can drive off the bombers.  No 
platform is safe, and each must contribute.

But before you get too proud of your tactical skills in organizing little 
hunter killer groups, remember those victory conditions.  Other than the 
ballistic submarines, there are no points for sinking warships!  Combat has to 
be a means to an end.

Bottom Line
For me a great game has to capture the situation so thoroughly and well that I 
feel like I’m really in command of the situation depicted.  I very much have 
that sense of immersion with Sea Power and the State.  The Players have to 
wage war across the globe, making the best use of their different assets, and 
compensating for the inherent difficulties of their situation.  The two sides 
are not symmetrical, they have different capabilities, limitations and 
objectives, so they must necessarily take different approaches.  And given 
that they both have at least two viable end games in mind, there are a lot of 
possibilities to keep track of!

And the real genius of this game is that all of those strategic possibilities, 
and tactical nuances, and varied technologies are presented in what turns out 
to be a highly playable and relatively easy to learn system.  Mr. Newburg 
should rest easy, the game is fun to study, but it is also quite enjoyable as 
a game!  I found myself thinking of it often and I look forward to playing 
again.