Post by Eric Farrington on Nov 2, 2020 16:45:05 GMT
Vice-Admiral Travers had been pleased with the success of Taskforce: Chalice and their performance. They had been instrumental in stemming the flow of Orks out of the Green Zone and to Baron's Rest. The engagements had been in the open ocean, under the sea, and in coastal waters. However, the Ork menace was still comfortably ensconced in Da Deff Islands. General Kurtz and High-Command was ready to move to the next stage of Operation: Hemlock. Instead of keeping the Orks contained, it was time to exterminate them from the area.
Chalice had been beefed up with some additional ships, and now it was time to sweep the Approaches to the island clear. Warboss Skarbash had been building and collecting an impressive fleet of Ork ships. They had traveled from across Ammoriss to bring Orks to Skarbashz growing Waaagh! energy. However, the Orks biggest threats were still submersibles and commerce raiders attacking the PDF convoys into the area. Therefore, Chalice was being called on to pen in the enemy ships and trap them back in port or sink them.
Vice-Admiral Travers had unsuccessfully tried to blockade the Deff Islands with mines and pickets before. This time, his strategy was going to be more aggressive. He assembled several smaller patrol lines of escorts and light cruisers. The plan was to sweep the Approaches, located enemy forces, and then use the Wrath of Humanity and her escorts to sink any opposition. It was standard North Ammoriss Naval PDF strategy; find, fix, sink.
Well, that is an interesting title. What is AQ? What is Force of Arms? Well, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I created a game for the Warhammer 40K universe called Aquanautica Imperialis. It was a game about wet-navies fighting on an Imperial world called Ammoriss. This was part of a larger campaign called the Battle for Ammoriss. It was good fun and pulled a lot of material and ideas from Man O' War and Battlefleet Gothic to give it that distinctly GW design feel. I still play it pretty regularly and even Made my own Miniatures for it.
From there, it evolved into another game called Aquanautica Imperialis: Battle for the Depths. This game took heavy inspiration from Aeronautica Imperialis. However, instead of fighter planes shooting at each other, it was submarines from Aquanuatica Imperialis fighting for undersea control of Ammoriss. More fun was had, but I never got around to making any miniatures at the time.
As you can see, I have a bit of a soft spot for Sci-Fi and Naval wargaming. I have since experimented with various versions or adaptions of Aquanautica Imperialis. I was working on an Anti-submarine game between PDF and Tyranids for a while called Horror of the Deep based off older versions of Adeptus Titanicus. However, I never properly finished that game.
Force of Arms is an attempt to create a large scale Sci-Fi Naval combat game closer to an Epic style battle. That means covering more ocean space with more ships, but still creating a different gaming experience from the traditional Aquanautica Imperialis. At the scale of Force of Arms, you aren't as interested as what is happening to an individual ship, or even a squadron of ships. Tactics like broadsides, cross the T, melee, raking, etc are abstracted. Instead, it is a game focused more on Strategy, detection, deployment, and taskforces of ships coordinating together to complete their objectives.
I had some inspiration come to me one day, and I pounded out the rules in a matter of days. The impetus of these rules actually grew out of thinking about a game play issue for a historical airplane game. Some of the key games that inspired these rules were:
Chain of Command
Battlegroup
Blucher
Epic: Armageddon
Jovian Chronicles
I won't go into further details. I have not placed the rules in the Work-in-Progress section yet as they still need much more polish. However, I was so excited about the basic rules that I wanted to get them to the table as soon as I could. Operation: Hemlock seemed like a great way to do it. Hopefully, this battle report will give you a flavor for the game?
You can read more about the game and test-run battle here:
bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/05/operation-hemlock-aq-force-of-arms.html