GWAS: Jutland an ongoing reviews

The Great War At Sea is a series of board wargames covering pretty much all aspects of naval conflict in WW1(and hypothetically beyond).

There are plenty of right-ups and discussions on Boardgamegeek so that is a great place to look at the family of games.

The review is going to concentrate on playing the games, looking at optional rule amendments and eventually looking at other games in the series.

Firstly the game parts and how they stack-up:

The rules
- good points: short & simple
- bad points: things seem a little spread out. Relies on single D6 for results. Could be laid out a little better
Tactical Display
- good points: straightforward
- bad points: a bit lightweight but should be ok (not sure yet if we can purchase separately) & perhaps a little small
Counters
good points: nice design. Has all the information you need. Cover a wide range of ships & aircraft!
Perhaps a little small
Dice
good points: they have some
bad points: you need more
Ship Data
good points: simple record keeping
bad points: either in book form or a pdf (from the website). We have replicated for our first scenario (Dogger Bank 1915). Some people have gne to a lot of effort (and I mean player fans here, who have driven much of the tactical rule updates).

Learning the Rules
For the basic strategic & tactical rules I found the easiest way was to create some Quick Reference Sheets (QRS) for the game. This helped me glean over the various sections an learn whilst writing. We have published these QRS free of charge. They will be enlarged as we try out more games mechanics (such as aircraft) and other modules (such as Dreadnought). Please go to the 2024 section.

Playing Dogger Bank 1915
Ok firstly the game was quick with setup time being a couple of minutes. The scenario only has a few ships per side so that is to be expected. The Scenario details were clear except for the Victory Conditions.

Play was straight forward following a strict 20 segment sequence of play (twice) and then the game ended. The sequence included multiple gunnery, movement & torpedo actions and was simple enough.

Pros & Cons

The game was enjoyable but seemed to lack any tactical finesse (there were no arcs of fire - only distance mattered)
Despite some weird dice results the scenario generated a reasonable result based on both players' and the umpire's views
We would have preferred to continue the scenario a little longer
It was quick (not unusual in the current range of boardgames & tabletop rules sets available)

The Scenario Itself
Ok as an introductory scenario is is highly suitable however there were more (lighter) ships available, as well as the odd seaplane & Zeppelin. Additionally communication limitations were a major factor in the battle.

The lighter ships did not really get involved (other than some spotting in the early phases, but the German Torpedo Boats were nearly ordered on a potentially suicidal torpedo run to save SMS Blücher.

Below are the record sheet details required to play this scenario. Set-up & Victory Conditions are in the Scenario Booklet. Please note that the armour symbols have changed slightly.

We will be providing a more complete ORBAT with additional ships & boats (and optionally aircraft).

GWAS Jutland 2.0 (2024)

Ok so there are now a few major changes. Firstly there is now a pdf version of the latest rules set on Wargames Vault. This is a major step forward. There are also a number of new rules to cope with the increased level of tactical doctrine and primarily technology.
However there are not rules for three important items, those being smoke generators (used at the Battle of Jutland) and generation, ammunition usage and searchlights.

Great War at Sea: Jutland Unofficial Rule Amendments (for tabletop)
We've play-tested but more than that we've amended to accommodate those missing areas of the rules that we think important such as variable visibility and night actions. As a group we also felt that tabletop actions might be more suitable so we converted everything to tabletop games using either the counters or 1/6000 to 1/4800 scale ships. We tweaked the sequence of play as well (more in-line with 2WWAS).

Here are some files including all our amendments to the pre-GWAS Jutland 2.0 rules (we'll review then separately at a later date): -

So apart from the operational rules that remain unchanged from the pre-GWAS Jutland 2.0 rulebook we've added a 5 volume rules set that we think is easier to follow. It is totally non-hex with distances in inches. A sequence of play that you can mark to keep track of the game, a QRS (with the extra rules and a more detailed Combat Results Table) are included and record sheets for the Dogger Bank "Battle Scenario" have been added. Note these rule amendments are unofficial but include mechanics such as ammunition usage - which is included on the record sheets. We think it brings more realism to the game.

We'll bring out more scenarios as and when we can (more "Jutland" scenarios are nearly there).