ESTABLISH SCREEN: Choose one local or adjacent Cruiser or Destroyer. After both fleets are deployed, this unit and the chosen unit can move one sector.
GUARD THE CONVOY: While this unit is in the same sector as a friendly Auxiliary unit, enemy units can't attack that Auxiliary unit until this unit has been attacked at least once in the same phase.
Icebreaker(new): this unit can enter sectors that contain shoals.
Jääkarhu Commissioned 2nd March 1926 Decommissioned 24 December 1945 (transferred to USSR)
Gents, you seem to be twisting yourselves into a knot for no reason. Shoals are not Ice. A real life icebreaker hitting a real life shoal isn't going to break a shoal. It's going to real life run aground. I guess you could make a dredge if you want to break up shoals, but that process takes way longer than any W@S game is meant to represent. Bottom line - the base game doesn't have Ice as a rule, so unless you make one, any attempt to make a proper Icebreaker is going to be a terrible kludge of a card.
Eh, its a auxiliary with a SA nod to being an icebreaker. I'm reluctant to add specifuc ice rules. And adding a keyword without explaination will equally confuse people. The shorthanded use of sa keywords was based on known and existing SAs.
I say either add Ice as a rule whole cloth (could be done in a special terrain card), or avoid doing this in the first place. Icebreaking is a historic and furtile ground for wargaming. A kludge to make icebreakers capable of breaking through the shallow sea bottom (shoals) would be shortsighted.
I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way. - Captain John Paul Jones
Ice as a stand alone isn't within the scope of what the project was started with.
A degree of abstraction is acceptable in my mind. I can put ice-breaker + the mechanic together to get the intent. That'll be a personal taste equation however
This is more than "a degree of abstraction". Shoals are shallow water that do not block line of sight, but do block ship movement. Nothing in an icebreaker's design give it the ability to plow through the sea bottom. Surface ice? Yes. Planet Earth, no.
Is this really intended to be an official forumini deck? If so, "personal taste" shouldn't really enter into it when it comes to using a unit or not. Players will be required on this forum to use it "as is", personal taste aside. A ship that can blast it's way through shoals on any map that has them doesn't seem right.
I realised we've not given it a mobility abily to get it into the fight.
Icebreaker - This unit may deploy anywhere on your side of the map adjacent to a friendly ship. If you do it cannot capture an objective on the first or second turn
Would adding icebreaker, into the fluff in bold the way we do cross nations roundels be enough?
probably. I am sure I brought it up at the beginning, it is an scenario piece but if someone wants to put it on it can fight similar to a DD minus the asw.