Today I played Naval Battles for the first and last time.

We had a slightly larger than number of players than normal at our monthly gaming day, so one of the players said "I have Naval Battles, it can handle six." I looked forlornly at Bang! (the Bullet) and acquiesced, choosing to learn a new game instead.

The explanation took a good forty minutes, and I finally got the jist of the game (after wresting the rulebook from the box and quickly perusing them).

My take on the rules after the muddled teaching session, and how I would teach this game if I were to play it again (which I won't) is as follows:

You start with a fleet of ships worth 25 victory points. You have lots of different kinds of ships, and ships have guns or torpedos or planes. All of your ships start out in a formation and you probably won't be getting many other ships out to play with, so choose wisely, but without any real knowledge of why you're picking various ships.

Ships have guns or other means of attacking. There are 4 gun sizes. Gun sizes are: 4" and 5", which magically take the same kind of ammunition, 6", 7" and 8", which again magically take the same typs of ammunition, 9", 10" and 12", which, you guessed it, take the same magical ammunition, and 14", 15", 16" and 18" which take an entirely different magical type of ammunition.

Now I undertand the desire to be historically accurate, but for the sake of gameplay, it would've been easier to fudge it and only have 4 types of ammunition (small, medium, large and huge) -- or to consolidate to standardized sizes instead of having four different types of bore size be represented by a single class of ammunition card.

There are two other types of ammo here... Torpedos, which require die rolls to hit, and planes, which require die rolls to hit.

Ammunition comes in the form of action cards, which also incorporates defense and 'preparation' cards, which allow you to not get hit (defense) or repair or plan (preparation). I don't know about other people's supply lines, but my generals weren't sending enough of the magical ammunition I did need, weren't sending reinforcements and definitely weren't teaching us how to evade, jam the enemies guns or otherwise not get blown up.

Top this forty minute rules review off with going last, and it's over an hour from opening the box to when I get to play any card, since my first hand was full only ammunition, meaning I couldn't defend even if I wanted to, and couldn't participate in any of the other player's interactions. Two of my front line ships are on the ocean floor, meaning most of my ammo isn't usable any more, and I am starting to wonder the fastest way to sink my entire fleet and escape this game.

I've played similar games and enjoyed myself thoroughly. Battle Cattle and Car Wars come to mind, as does Creatures and Cultists. Ultimately, something here left me wondering where two hours went for a game that lists as having a play time of 30+ minutes.

Should read 30+ minutes, emphasis on the "+".

We had multiple other games capable of handling 5-6 players which would've taken less time and given me more of a feeling of involvement.

Summary of complaints in no particular order:
- Use of red/green in the targetting icons bad for those players with red/green colorblindness.
- Drawing up at the end of your turn (only) really leaves you open when you have no defense cards.
- Air strikes seem very powerful
- Lack of recommended fleet arrangements leave the new player without a clue
- Ship cards look way too much alike and have no real differentiation
- Unnecessary differentiation on bore size of guns, could have been simplified
- Last player at massive disadvantage compared to start player
- Difficulty of getting reinforcements or defenses makes feeling of tactical movement all but vanish

To summarize: I'd rather have folded the cards into paper boats, floated them in a tub and thrown pennies at them. Now THAT's how to run a Naval Battle.

Overall Score: 2 -- The game's not terminally broken, but I'd prefer to play almost any other game than this one.