Naval Thunder Comparison Chart - Renown v. Littorio

As you've seen from previous entries I've been working on some 1:3000 Davco ships. These are British, Italian, and German as I want to play the Atlantic and Mediterranean in WWII. After the last game convention I did a bit of research on Naval rules and not being a huge draw I wanted something fairly straight forward. I.E. less stats and detail.  I certainly see the appeal of General Quarters, but I knew I would never play something at that level on my own. Though, Adam, if you're reading this, I would certainly play in a hosted game.

HMS Renown

Victory at Sea was another, more closely considered, WWII naval game. It also abstracts more things than GQIII. At the moment I can't recall why I moved over those for my own use...but again, The Composer, if you're reading, I would love to play a game your hosting...especially since your miniatures are so well done!

Ultimately, I decided to go with Naval Thunder and I'm pretty happy I did. I've done a couple of solo runs and look forward to trying them with an opponent.

(Side note: Go here to the View from the Turret review of GQIII and of Victory at Sea. They also review Naval Thunder here.)

Littorio on the Right

While working on the ships, I've thought it would be interesting to take a couple of the ships and compare the stats to each other. For the first time, I picked the two ships that looked the coolest to me. Actually, the Italian ship Littorio looked the coolest with all the round secondary guns. Then I perused the British ships to compare it against and picked the Renown. Hindsight, I should have chosen a stronger British candidate, but they're fairly close... or are they?

I also thought this would be a good way to introduce some of the concepts of the Naval Thunder rules. I'll probably do this in 2-3 parts to avoid a book of an entry...wait, this is already a book.



In fact, I may end this now. In the next post, I'll discuss these basic stats and what they mean in the game and how they affect the performance and survivability of the each ship.

Though I will leave you with these little tidbits:
FC is Fire Control (RDR is radar and STD is not what you think it is...it's Standard)
AV is Armor Value, this is the main armor
SAV is Secondary Armor Value
AA is Anti-Aircraft value and
SW is Submarine Warfare value

d10s are the dice used in the game
move and firing for each ship type is simultaneous
move and firing is done in inches
each gun has a specific range band based on diameter and barrel length
each gun also has specific penetration and damage values as well

And, on a slightly different note: I just saw that The Composer has posted some new tutorials on how he built some of his ships. He knows how to model and paint 1:2400 ships - go check out the series beginning with this post.