Task Force: Wooden Cruisers

 Project Wooden Cruiser:

Last Christmas I made my son a wooden battleship.  It was looking lonely, or out of place amongst the lego cargo ships, so I decided to make a couple of "cruisers" to go along with it.

ships are moslty poplar, with toy wheels for turrets.

Captain Fossling between the devil and the deep blue sea.

As per the house tradition, the children name the ships. My son named his the USS Helpful. When pressed, he stated it was  because it helps his battleship. USS Battley. My  2.5 year old daughter christened her cruiser the USS Alanana, which she assures us is Spanish, yet the definition changes from time to time.

The task force on manuevers on the Saltillo sea

The Hook:

There is a method to my madness, and in this case the madness is math.  You see, I have been designing more games that I can play with my kids, and Taskforce is now one of them. The Rules are very simple:

Each player gets either the battleship, or the two cruisers. Battleships have 100 hit points, the cruisers each 50.

Each ship gets to roll one D20 attack per barrel on the turrets

The Battley fires her mighty guns!

During a player's turn, they may move ( totally Krieg spiel about  this) adjust turrets towards the target and fire by rolling the dice at the target. Any dice that strike the target and bounce are hits, and the number shown is the damage done.  Natural 20 on the dice also means a turret was hit and  is removed for a turn ( IE lose a die).

When a ship has been damaged past her hit points , she sinks. 

USS Battley takes a pounding!

We keep score on a chalk board, and, using  a lot of fingers and hooks, do the math each time.  They are learning math and don't even know it!  If ever a time I felt like Bill Cosby....

Next will be either a sub, or an aircraft carrier... or another battleship.....