::By the power of the Necromancy, I bid this thread reborn!::
So Chris brought his copy of Leviathans to Games Day yesterday. We played a small game involving each side having a battleship, a light cruiser, and two destroyers and proceeded to destroy each other in good old Agincourt-style. Ya know, French vs. British old timey whooping. Had some thoughts about the game:
Things I liked:
1) The detail and the scale of the ships is great. The fact that these ships come pre-assembled and pre-painted is a nice plus point. The detail is great and we pretty much all agreed that a couple simple washes would be all that's needed to make what came out of the box look fantastic.
2) Different weighted dice eliminate tables and modifier numbers. Each gun has a color die associated with close and long range. Add that to color dice for whether your target was moving or stationary. Finally add in a crew die and a D6 to determine where it hits. Then roll. Nothing to remember "to-hit"-wise. No tables
3) The value you roll on the dice corresponds to a number on the record sheet.
4) Combat is pretty brutal. There's a good bit of strategy in picking facings and where you want to hit your target
5) Torpedoes fire before movement and resolves before shooting and if they hit, hit like a ton of bricks. I really like how this mechanic plays as it's as much damage as it is a denial tactic.
6) Intro Box includes 2 Battleships, 2 cruisers, and 4 destroyers with record cards.
Things not so great:
1) The dice are weighted, so you can't use normal dice, and it seems like they don't provide enough in the introductory set to actually give you what you need
2) It doesn't actually seem that difficult to really hit smaller vessels with big ship killing guns on Battleships. I was expecting a bit more agility out of ships like destroyers, but with turrets that hit with suppression fire (hits multiple locations and tends not to miss), small ships will get batted aside.
3) 2 mapsheets in an intro box for a game with minis that span multiple hexes? Sure they are backed on board game cardboard, but I'd much rather have double the map sheets...
Overall, I like it. It's more on the longer-side, but the game lends more a stronger naval tactics of screening, facing, and ranges.
