Victory at Sea: Battle for the Pacific Starter Set (Last Chance)

Love the models here, unfortunately they are resin so need to use superglue, but a joy to paint and look great when finished. Excited to give the game itself a try. It looks like this box gives you everything needed to get started at an affordable price.

The set comes with a Japanese and an American fleet to start you off. You can add other ships and aircraft from expansion sets. The ships require some assembly, but nothing difficult and painting is a snap. (Basically some variation of battleship grey with a bit of black or silver)

Trying to review Victory at Sea is a bit difficult at the Starter set level as I have already played Cruel Seas and Black Seas by Warlord Games in addition to the rules used in this WWII naval game when published under a different company. In general, there is a modified initiative mechanic to determine who will move first versus firing first. This is followed by a shooting phase which is six sided die determinate with modifiers (range, sun lighting up the ship, etc) and hitting with damage is then impacted by the weight of the shell (1 to 3 damage if large caliber). Since each barrel of turreted guns and secondaries is rolled, this can be a significant number of dice rolled, but, usually, this game actual comes down to the six rolled which is the potential for critical hits. The game is somewhat driven by these criticals to cause havoc and catastrophic damage. Otherwise, this is a bit of an attrition game where a Cruiser may have 25 hull points (just an example) and the enemy fire takes a small number of points off each time if similarly sized guns. In that respect, the game does have a feel of Black Seas to it which was similar (oddly enough, Cruel Seas had similarities but the Bolt Action style die draw encouraged gutsy closing to point blank range which could be result in attacker or defender catastrophic damage if the die selected was not expected). The unique nature of Victory at Sea is the inclusion of a real air and aircraft carrier game included and the torpedo launching is far easier than other naval games (though not certain it feels as effective). My thinking on the limitations and frustration is based on the starter set being US versus Japanese only. Warlord has to date not made a German versus British starter set which seems like an omission. The starter set does not have aircraft included (see Warlord Website for the aircraft - the gamer has to decide if they like a whale tail style stand with aircraft on the top - some folks do not care for this look) and the aircraft carrier(s) are also not included. While I do believe this is a fine starter box to introduce gamers to the game system, there is only 28 pages of rules and historical background with no historical scenarios provided (there are random generated scenarios). If the gamer is really into the naval campaigns of World War II, I strongly recommend the Victory at Sea hardback rule book which is 268 pages, has every ship chart included, and quite a number of historical scenarios covering most sides of the war. The set does have counters, ocean playmats, markers and ships. I did not have any warped resin main ships and I do recommend dry fitting the metal parts and really concentrate to be certain one does not accidentally glue things on backwards (very easy to do). The ships do paint up beautifully and the price is great especially on Miniature Market, but the lack of a German/British starter set and no aircraft seems a real missed option. Recommended product, just wish there were some additional options.