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.
RAM: Once per game, during the Sea Movement phase, this unit can make an immediate ASW attack when it enters a sector that contains an enemy Submarine
Not the most exciting of cards but covers the historical utility, a bit of game flexibility and a hook for icebreaker interactions to hang on.
Icebreaker: Once per game, when you enter a sector with which contains an enemy ship you may roll a dice. On a 1 remove 1 hull point from this ship and the enemy ship.
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: Once per game, when you enter a sector with which contains an enemy ship you may roll a dice. On a 1, remove 1 hull point from this ship and the enemy ship.
A revised proposal that explicitly uses Icebreaker as a SA name. RAMs requirement for ASW removes it as an option. DESPERATE RAM destroys the ramming unit in the attempt
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): Once per game, when you enter a sector with which contains an enemy ship you may roll a dice. On a 1, remove 1 hull point from this ship and the enemy ship.
Jääkarhu Commissioned 2nd March 1926 Decommissioned 24 December 1945 (transferred to USSR)
Any easy way to include just the word "Icebreaker" for now would simply be to put that word on the card with the SAs. Kind of the way we used to see "Flag 1" or "Flag 2" on cards. It won't east a bunch of space, and leave open both a house rule or a future terrain type on a custom card. It could obviously still have some other useful SAs, but that would leave some room for the future with minimal danger of making this a "non-icebreaker" in a future game with ice. The Icebreaker SA above seems like a weird RAM SA...if you really want RAM, I'd say give it that SA, and list "ICEBREAKER" by itself on a separate line. That avoids making every other Icebreaker in the future a "ramming" ship...most were so slow that was not going to happen.
Brigs did make a rule for Ice (which Icebreakers could then break). An unconventional idea, but you could put the rules for "Ice" terrain on the card. Or on the back of the card?
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