We played our first two games of Grand Admiral - Castles of Steel last night.  I decided to take things easy with a relatively small battle and played the "what if" Troubridge's Armoured Cruiser Squadron decided to engage Goeben and Breslau.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau

The UK force of Warrior, Defense, Black Prince and Duke of Edinburgh came in at 66VPs and the Germans at 40VPs.  Based on the points ratio and the actual situation, we went with the "Patrol" scenario.  UK would get VPs for sinking enemy ships.  Germany would also get VPs for sinking enemy ships, but after sinking one of the AC's, they would be allowed to retreat off their board edge and also receive VPs for getting the ships off the table.

In game one [sorry for no pictures     ] Goeben advanced and managed to keep the AC's outside of range 3 for most of the game.  At this range Goeben could slowly wear down the ACs and take almost no damage herself.  The UK surrendered in the first game after losing 2 AC's and having a third crippled, with Breslau sunk but Goeben down only a point of damage.

Game two the Brits were more aggressive and managed to cross Goeben's T at range 2.  With Breslau at the bottom of the sea (again) and only one AC sunk, Goeben was heavily damaged with only one more point needed to cripple her.  With some luck of the cards Goeben was able to retreat off the table before the AC's could coordinate their fire again (i.e. I had both red face cards in my hand and held onto them for the entire turn). 

So in the end we agreed that Troubridge made the right call not to engage Goeben.  Goeben's guns cut through the AC's belt armour like hot knife through butter.  The AC's guns need to really close quickly onto Goeben to have any reasonable chance to get through her armour.  I think if we play this again we might let the UK at least score a draw if they can manage to cripple Goeben - because she would have had a lot of difficulty completing her journey crippled (to say the least).

First game took about half an hour as it was our first game - second one was only 20 minutes.  We will play something larger (maybe Dogger Bank) next game.

We really like the playing card game mechanic of Grand Admiral for the activation sequence.  Its a great way to reflect the difficulties of communication of the era, and makes for a really fun game too.  It also builds in a segmented movement system without the typical pain.

-Tim