I would like to introduce another kind of tournament game format. This format really opens a can of worms. Empires of Steel is set in the ‘era of the great war dreadnought’. I’d like to test this theory on the table.
But first here is a lot of background information:
I really like this video because it’s got a lot of info in it for new players.
I’m sure there are many folks with their own mind on how big an impact HMS Dreadnought had. Feel free to comment on this post. Get flaming people!
Ok so I mentioned a game format:
Chase the Dreadnought format.
Players bring two 400 point fleet lists.
One fleet list contains just HMS Dreadnought and no other capital ships (no battlecruisers or other battleships). This list can contain any other class of ship that has a date of 1914 or earlier.
The other list is made the same way as the Pre-Dreadnought only format. Here is a link to these rules: https://broadsideempiresofsteel.com/2024/12/30/list-building-formats/
Each player alternates between these two lists. One player playing Dreadnought and the other pre-dreadnought only list.
At the end of the tournament we will see if Dreadnought really is a game changer!
In this game it may well be the case that “Dreadnaught” is not a game changer.
For 2 basic reasons
1) You are pinned to the board, Dreadnaught cannot use her superior speed to hold the range open indefinitely
2) The problems of spotting mixed calibre artillery – one of the main arguments for Dreadnaught – have just been assumed away.
Want to try it for real?
Use a scrolling map
Place aiming tokens by battery rather than by ship
Penalise -1 accuracy for each battery other than the firing battery that has ranging tokens on the target ship (just -1 per battery, not -1 per token)
Lets see what happens then.
We played this scenario through last night. While Dreadnaught did not do that much, her presence dominated the tactics of the other side as they tried to stay at range as much as they could. This in tern allowed the RN to get in a rather devastating destroyer attack on the opposing pre-dred battleships.
I would like to play this a few more time before making a final call.