Summary:  It was quick and bloody and somewhat indecisive

Set-Up:  standard map, 22 x 23 hex board

The British arrayed their fleet evenly across their edge, with the Lion, Queen Mary, and Princess Royal taking up one third positions along the line.

Their starboard flank was anchored by the Invincible and New Zealand, their port was held by the Arethusa, Fearless, Falmouth, Southhampton, and Liverpool.  The center was held by their three Birmingham class light crusiers.

The Germans set up center of mass with the Stettin as the center piece and all others swarming around it.

Turn 1

The British surged forward at maximum speed, no imagination.

The Germans cautiously approached, putting nearly all their light ships on evasive maneuvers while banking to their port (the British starboard).  The Strassburg and Straslund foolishly did an extended turn forward before bearing port and ended up just within range of a number of lighter British guns (precisely range 9) while the remainder of the German fleet was range 10+ from the British.

Good for the Germans was that the ships that could fire got their broadsides off at the British.  Bad for the British was that they had only their forward guns to bear on the Germans.  Good for the British was that they had more ships that could fire within range.  The throw weight of the three British BB versus the single German BB became obviously apparent.

The end result of this turn was the sinking of the Straslund.

Turn 2

The British became a little more creative with their maneuvers and moved forward as much as possible while jinking left or right with every ship to bring their broadsides to bear.

The Germans has a slightly different strategy which was to pull the majority of their fleet (and the Stettin) towards the British starboard while sending their fast destroyers nearly into the center of the British line to cause as much havoc as possible and drop minefields to split the battle space in two.

Now things became really bloody .

The British combined firepower managed to decimate the German line by sinking three destroyers squadrons, the light cruisers Mainz, Kolberg, Strassburg, Ariadne, Danzig, and Munchen.  With the sinking of the light cruiser on turn 1, they easily exceeded the 600 VP goal with 825 VPs.

Well, the Germans didn't resolve their fire back yet and they did manage to plot brilliantly with their destroyer groups by getting one each within short range of the Princess Royal and Queen Mary.  To be quit honest, after the British fire we thought it was a foregone conclusion, but those 19.7" torps were murder on the British BB.  Twelve dice to hit on 5+ landed about 4 hits, resulting in 20 impact dice!  That was just the torpedoes .The other two destroyer squadrons were at medium range, needing 6's to hit their targets, which they managed to do rather reliably.  Lots more dice rolls.

When the smoke cleared, both the Princess Royal and Queen Mary were no where to be seen and the entire center of the British line was removed.  The Nottingham, Lowestoft, and Nottingham were all joined in a communal wreckage at the bottom of the sea.  The Stettin was down about a third of it's hull.

Also, the Germans managed to plop out a mess of mines.  We had no idea how BIG the combined minefield would become after laying the following:  two 3MF and two 6MF fields.  The entire center of the map became a sea of overlapping mines.

The German tally was 829 VPs.

Turn 3

We didn't play a turn three.  It was obvious the British firepower could take out the rest of the German fleet, but it may have been likely the Stettin could have crept off the board, probably not though.  The Invincible and New Zealand were in place to cause it some trouble, even though it's armor was relatively intact it had lost two of it's main batteries.

For those buying the drinks, the Germans won, but if you ask me, it was a bloody draw.

Impressions of Dreadnought (Dan's thoughts welcome on game design)

When one DD squadron got hit with a 4 impact torpedo strike we realized the entire DD squadron was gone.  That surprised us and didn't feel quite right. Maybe each hit should destroy a single DD instead of each Impact (make it more ROF based instead of IMP based).  Also, historically, did a barrage from the big guns take out multiple destroyers?  I don't know, but we felt ROF should be the key factor (number of hits) not the power (impact) of each hit.  We realize impact represents extra guns in a battery.  Our opinion.

Although modeling WWI, we realized that the minefields used in Starmada are far more flexible in their placement (within 6 hexes of the laying ship).
We artificially restricted placement to the rear quarter of the ship (arcs E and F).  We probably shouldn't have done this, since mine laying ships are very expensive (91 pt Madgeburg light cruiser, 3 hull hits, speed 7) compared to non-mine layers (48 pt Chatham light cruiser, 4 hull hits, speed 6).  That's nearly twice the cost per hull hit for the mine laying ship than a non-mine laying ship.  Any idea how the point cost would change if the laying rules were restricted to rear arc only?  Or maybe only hexes moved through?

Piercing was very deadly, since most of the targets had Armor 1, but a few times, the Stettin's heavy armor did bounce critical shots against it, even against Pierce +3.