Victory at Sea (game)

Victory at Sea is a hardback book that contains a set of wargame rules used to simulate naval combat during World War II using 1/1800 scale.

To simulate the split-second decisions made during actual naval combat, the attacking player may not pre-measure the range, or determine if the defending ship is within the firing arc of a particular gun.

[1] During the End phase, players may attempt to extinguish fires and repair damage caused by critical hits.

[1] The Advanced rules cover additional concerns such as aircraft, weather, night battles, radar and submersibles.

[1] In 2004, the UK game company Mongoose Publishing based in Swindon released A Call to Arms, a tabletop miniatures spacefleet wargame designed by Matthew Sprange that was set in the Babylon 5 universe.

In 2009, Mongoose released Victory at Sea: Age of Dreadnoughts designed by David Manley revised the rules and ship lists for naval combat during World War I.

In 2013, iEvilgames, the gaming subsidiary of Evil Twin Artworks, created a videogame for iOS, Android, PC and Mac based on the Victory at Sea rules.

[2] In 2020, Warlord Games published a revised edition of the rules designed by Matthew Sprange titled Victory at Sea: Battle for the Pacific.

"[1] Stuart Fieldhouse was ambivalent about Victory at Sea, finding that "it is NOT good for fighting convoy actions, and the rules for sub-hunting are sparse and inadequate".

Fieldhouse also found that "Airpower in the game is understrength, to say the least" and commented that record-keeping might be a concern for some players, saying, "There is also a lot of paperwork in VaS.

This is great in a multi-player game, where each player has his own squadron of four or five ships, but if there are two of you playing a larger battle, you will be swamped with record keeping as you struggle to track how many torpedoes HMCS Haida has left to shoot.

Fieldhouse concluded that Victory at Sea was not what he was looking for in a naval combat game, commenting, "A Call To Arms was a very successful project for Mongoose, and they are apparently in the process of hatching a new set of sci fi rules that draws heavily on CTA as its game engine, but [Victory at Sea] has simply not worked well for [naval combat set in] WW2.