I haven’t gotten any games in yet, but I’m hoping the spring will allow for some nice outdoor play. I’m curious how ship balance has felt so far - my initial impressions were that the cheap medium ships like the Gur Panther and Blood Runner were insanely good value, but it’s really tough to mathhammer things like turning angle and the value of close quarters weapons. Plus, I haven’t yet seen a main battle ship cheaper than 30 points, so it could very well be that support slots are very valuable but limited.
On top of that, it’s going to be tough to experiment with weird skews because of the starter/booster sales model, though to be clear I think it’s a good model - retail stocking is challenging enough without huge SKU bloat. I expect Kingdoms of Men will have more swarms, simply because it’s easy to buy lots of frigates and brigs!
Anyway, I’d love to hear feedback, especially as it relates to internal balance within factions.
Can’t comment on a game play front, as haven’t played yet(!), but couple of points from review of rules and list building.
The Support ships are good value stats-wise, but as you comment, the fleet building restriction can limit getting them on the table.
Concentration of fire - given how the rules look like working, the firepower that a correctly placed large ship (and forthcoming xl ones) can bring to bear looks nasty. A broadside, esp at close range (let alone crossing the T), can cripple a lighter vessel, while the return fire does comparatively little.
I have been thinking about it for a while and some ships seem incredibly good in comparison to others, especially if You compare raw damage output. The Orc Bomboat is a perfect example - it is insanely good both at long range and (especially) short range. I used a very simple method to compare ships - I calculate biggest available DMG/shot of the ship (usually broadside) divided by cost. To hit - without modifiers, so 50%. If You do that, You immediately start to see that there are huge discrepancies between ships. Considering this factor, Bomboat seems to be the best in the game. If You take into account SP Gur Panther is close second. Dwarven Hunter is 1.5/10 and from my quick calculations anything close to that or above is good, while anything less - not so much. Of course the largest ships have a huge advantage - concentrated firepower. However, I still think it’s much more efficient to have 4 Hunters than a single Runeaxe (which seems really poor).
For my taste so far, at this point, it would be really hard to beat an Orc 200pts fleet of 4 Bomboats and 2 Smashers, especially considering Orc boarding buffs. Such a fleet can soften targets from afar and then unload their Close Combat Guns to ram and board in the end.
I am also afraid that using basic wind rules those other factors (turn angle etc) don’t matter much. Only using full wind rules may make a big difference.
