I got the ship stats....even if I had to proxy the Italian counters for now, and had a flipping blast last night simulating Italian v. Austrian "wargames" with a friend.

The fleets centered around a pair of BCs for the Italians (Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia) and a pair of Janos Hunyadi heavy cruisers for the Austrians (including the class's namesake AND Matthius Corvinus).

The Austrians fielded a pair of Huszar CLs with their FACs, as well. And honestly, I was surprised to see that the Italians drew first blood.  The FACs are just too fast in most battles for ships to kill them except in revenge.  If they can rush a ship and launch torpedoes at PB range, they're GOING to get their licks in first. 

But here the Huszars were so thinly armored (read none) that I was worried about getting them too close to the Italians and launched my attack craft right from the get go.  The table was large enough that the FACs couldn't reach the Italians right away, and while they were able to linger outside of effective gun range until the right time (double range mods make them harder than hell to hit, even for light guns), my opponent nailed two Harpunes with Haley Rockets.  The four that survived would eventually obliterate a Spada Lunga class destroyer and finish off  da Pistoia -- see below -- but losing those that I did really didn't equate in a very good point trade off for me.

The battlelines played to their strengths.  The Italians are FAST, and can saturate you with a lot of fire.  But their 10" (read d8 ) guns just couldn't penetrate the Austrian armor outside of knife fighting range -- which is how the Hunyadi was designed.  It forces you to draw up close.  Combining their fire -- their gyroscopic stabilizers really help maintain their line -- the two heavy cruisers clobbered da Pistoia. In one turn they landed three hits with their main guns, a couple of light gun hits and a single torpedo hit.  The result was some staggering hull damage in a short amount of time.  The Italians drew blood in return.  Nine primary guns on each ship resulted in a LOT of rolls. But they just weren't winning their exchanges.  I tried to warn him that that class isn't meant to tackle opponents with BB quality armor.  He didn't listen  .  His one bright spot came in the form of boarders deployed from the two ships.  Between the two of them, the Italians landed several hits this way on Corvinus, knocking out of one its primary turrets and killing a bunch of crewmen.

The Italians were able to play to another of their strengths.  The BCs used their superior speed and broke away, leaving the Hunyadi class CHs in their wake  (as the game had a time limit). 

Along the sidelines, the Spada Lungas had managed to kill one of the Huszar class CLs and a Vadasz DD (although we got one of 'em back) as those are some tough "modern" destroyers.    When the Italian fleet turned tail, they threw up a screen to protect the BCs' retreat. 

As I hinted earlier, two of the Harpunes still had ordnance, and managed to chase down and kill the crippled da Pistoia (nice accomplishment, killing a ship that big), but return fire did for yet another attack craft.

Final result was an Austrian victory of sorts.  We lost a Huszar (15 points), all three of its FACs (18 pts) another FAC (6 pts) and a Vadasz (7 pts).  The Corvinus and Hunyadi combined lost seven hull points (28 pts).  For a total of 74.

The Italians lost a BC (88 points), a Spada Lunga (23 pts) and a handful of hull hits scattered amongst their remaining ships (12 points).  For a total of 123.

We started to play again, this time with the Italians centered around a BB (de Monarchia) -- and saw right away that it was going to be tougher on the Sternmarine. 

FUN FUN FUN stuff. GOD I wish I could play someone at Origins.  But I don't think dats gonna happen.