A Return to cold Blue Water

Finally got another game of Axis and Allies: War @ Sea a couple of weeks ago. Trevor from the club was keen to give it a go, spurred on by reading naval histories I understand. So I brought along all the doing and we set to.

We used my tabletop adjustments, naturally; I'm biased off course, but I think it's the ONLY way to play the game!

The Fleets were each of 150 points, myself the Brits, whilst Trevor took the Germans. To the best of my recollection I fielded a carrier, a battleship (The Rodney), a cruiser, two destroyers, a submarine, fighters, torpedo planes and a patrol bomber; so a bit of everything really!

Trevor, opted for The Bismark, the Admiral Hipper, The Koln, an auxilary, a destroyer, a couple of subs and a selection of similar aircraft to me. It was a gun heavy force compared to mine.

Initial deployment on a 6x4 table with a couple of low islands blocking our view.

As the battle played out, my submarine was discovered early and my fleet conversly suffered from an ambush by his. My battleship and carrier both suffered early on. However I was able to neutralise his subs and reduce his air power compared to mine. But it was as the German big guns came to bear that I began to really suffer, the Rodney was more than a match for The Bismark alone, but the supporting cruisers of the Germans comprehensively out gunned me.

Admiral Von Trevor gloated of course!

By the end the Rodney and my cruiser had sunk to the bottom, and the carrier was running. But that was a darned good little game. And it had got me thinking too about some simple advances to make to my tabletop rules; expect to see a second supplement on the blog soon.

Elsewhere a variety of games were going on, but the only one that caught the camera's eye was this DBMM (the new version of DBM, unsurprisingly) game in 15mm.