Imperial Skies - First Clash over the Baltic

Our copies of the Imperial Skies rulebook arrived on Friday - and so as we had a free evening Saturday we decided to give the rules a try. Typically we had more enthusiasm than sense so niether of us had fully read the rules before we started. However we decided on a 400pts per side game and got down to choosing our fleets. Before going further I have to apologise for the quality of the pics in this report - I was using my phone rather than a real camera, and it shows :-(

As I have Russian models for Aeronef, and Paul has British, that part was easy. I went for a Borodino Class Battleship, supported by a Light Cruiser, Destroyer, and a squadron of 3 Novik class Torpedo boats. Russian ships seem to be a bit slow (the round hull forms can't help) but have a good balance of firepower across all three gun categories.

Paul went for a squadron of an Agincourt class Battleship and three Exeter class Cruisers - clearly he was on a long range patrol and my ships had sortied to intercept. The Battleship had marginally more heavy firepower and was slightly faster than it's Russian counterpart, but had less light and medium firepower. The Cruisers were faster than the Russian but had less firepower all round. 

Our mix of forces proved very fortuitous as it allowed us to try out the target priority rules - more later. 

The game went fast and fairly smooth - particularly considering the fact both of us had no real idea what we were doing and had to constantly refer to the rules, at least at first. Both squadrons turned on to parallel courses to allow maximum firepower to be brought to bear, and the Russian Torpedo boats headed off towards the British. The poker chips are being used to represent Command Points - these are used to issue orders that can allow special actions - increase speed, turn tighter, re-roll some shooting dice etc. This is not really a new system, but in Imperial Skies it is quite nuanced.

The Russian Torpedo boats closed on their target. The British were concentrating their fire on the leading Russian ship - a cruiser, but also the target priority rules prevented them from using their main armament on the little ships - we rationalised this by saying you wouldn't waste your main guns in big, slow traversing turrets trying to hit fast moving small targets. The Borodino managed to hit the nearest Exeter quite heavily, and it dropped out of formation to play no further part in the game.

The first torpedo shots missed, fired from too far out, but the little boats pressed on and managed to score a heavy hit on the Agincourt. Return fire was not very effective and it was clear what the British really needed as a fast Destroyer sized ship to mix it up with the Torpedo boats.

Meanwhile the Russian Cruiser suffered a series of heavy hits when trying to screen the Borodino. Remember those command points? - well you can spend then to use smaller vessels to screen the capital ships they are escorting, taking some damage for them if positioned correctly. This worked too well, and a lucky hit caused the cruiser to explode from a magazine explosion.

As the range was now down to "snotty" (very close) the ships were pounding each other relentlessly. The Russian Destroyer succumbed, followed by the Agincourt, but by that point the Borodino was in serious trouble and the Torpedo craft were out of torpedoes so only had their puny light guns - this wasn't enough and the Borodino soon joined the Agincourt as floating wreckage.

That ended the game. We had a lot of fun and are keen to try it again. The target priority rules in particular worked well, meaning we both quickly recognised you cannot just rely on your big ships, you have to take plenty of escorts to stop enemy torpedo craft getting too close - a nice reflection on the historical tactics.   Looking forward to another game, but this time ........

Imperial Skies - VSF Evolved?

I'm a big fan of Gruntz - the 15mm Sci Fi rules by Robin Fitton. They're very playable but flexible enough to allow you to play as any faction you can imagine. When I heard he was producing a set of Victorian Sci Fi rules dealing with airships and flying gunboats I thought it would be worth a look.

I've always been a fan of VSF - I particularly liked Space 1889 and it's expansion Ironclads & Ether Flyers, which incidentally made quite a reasonable set of real world Ironclad rules. The problem with Space 1889 was the models were either unavailable or ridiculously expensive, so it never went very far.  I tried Aeronef from Wessex Games. They were fast play but were clearly lacking in some elements - the damage system particularly meant very soon larger ships were condemned to moving in straight lines - not great to be honest. The core rules were solid enough, but there was still a lot of rough edges and the overall result was ok but not great. We did however buy a fair few ships (Nefs technically) from Tony at Brigade Models but these have on the whole gathered dust, which is a shame as they are nice models.

So along came Imperial Skies - announced as a Kickstarter last winter with an expected delivery date of April this year.

The Kickstarter was reassuringly simple - just the rules, with a few add ons and stretch goals, so hopefully not one of these that manages to kill itself by promising too much (I'm looking at you Baker Company and Prodos). The project was a joint effort with Brigade Models and would tie in with their Aeronef range, so I thought it was worth a punt. Of course like all Kickstarters, you have to take the expected shipping date with a pinch of salt, and this was no different, arriving in the first week of September, but it is finally here - so is it worth the wait?

I think so. Production quality is good, with lots of pretty pictures, diagrams explaining rules, an alternate history time line, some associated fiction and the now obligatory painting and modelling section. All well and good. The rules are brief but comprehensive, and well written. Those diagrams I mentioned earlier at first seemed to be a bit overdone as explanatory diagrams, however I soon realised they are actually an integral part of the rules rather than an attempt to explain the text elsewhere, and once I grasped that they were VERY clear and easy to understand. The basic rules bear a resemblance to Aeronef, but with some nice additions and much of the rough edges smoothed off, plus the addition of some very nice command and initiative rules, plus some optional stuff for a more in depth game, topped off with design and construction rules. They read and play fast.

The timeline \ history section is pretty standard stuff, but I was interested to note they had pushed the setting back to what would be WW1 - so I suppose that's Edwardian SF (ESF) rather than VSF. This is a good move, as it makes the inclusion of fixed wing machines much easier to understand and justify.

I do have some gripes - none of them major. The fiction sections are interspersed through the rules. They are not bad as far as they go,  but are not at first glance easily differentiated from the rules sections - ideally I prefer this sort of thing in obvious text boxes so they don't interfere with reading the core rules. More problematical is the data card section. Each ship has a corresponding data card, and they are all printed in the book. The problem is you can't copy them without folding the page all the way over, risking breaking the spine. Robin is working on a set of printed and pdf cards which will fix this. The quick play sheet is the same - it has everything (just about) you need, but you can't copy it without risking damaging the book - another pdf needed I suspect. Additionally the data cards don't get fully explained in one place, which is a bit strange as the following page appeared on the facebook page (I hope he doesn't mind me repeating it here - copyright Rob Fitton etc) but didn't make it into the rules, which is a shame because it helps explain stuff quite a bit. On the other hand once you do understand the layout the cards are very easy to read.

  However, all that aside these are an excellent set of rules with a lot of scope - I heartily recommend them.

Next post will be a quick battle report, so watch this space!