Clementia Rules the Waves...

...

Spurred by their successes on land, the Gebrovians sailed a small fleet around Caltabrian Straights to raid the shipping lines between the mainland and Little Clementia.  This journey even upon itself was at some risk of raising the attention of the Bellephron Empire, but the fleet of four vessels passed through without incident, and began several weeks of raiding along the Clementian coast.  Other than wrecking several fishing vessels, the fleet also captured a Clementian mail schooner, and a Tarsan merchantman.

Of course the Clementians could not let such a transgression lie, when both their own shipping and that of friendly nations was at threat, something must be done.  And so they sent their flagship, the good ship 'Venus' and three escorts to meet the enemy wherever they could.

By October 1720 the Gebrovians had reached the limit of their own supplies, and a long journey home ahead, they sought to turn for home.  It was only a few days into this return leg that the Clementians intercepted them; at the Cape of Pferdekof.

the Hostoi leeads the way 

The Gebrovian flagship, the Aleste Doi Cheznavoy, heavy with booty, made its' way south alongside the Corvette Jnaravikchi and two schooners of the Illuvmaa class, the Hostoi and the Zsatavoi.  coming into a small archipelago of islands off the Pferdekopf Cape, the vessels progress was slowed as they sought safe passage.  It was at this point the flotilla of Clementian ships found their quarry.

  

The Clementian Frigate 'Venus' and Corvette 'Telesto' approached from the East, whilst the Schooners, Europa and Acaste came from the Southwest.

 

Early in the engagement the wind was with the Gebrovians, and their schooners were easily able to anticipate and outmaneuver the Clementians.  But raking fire came to naught, given the sturdy build of their ships with Clementian Iron Oak.

No luck here 

Conversely, when the Venus found itself abeam of the Jnaravikchi, its' deadly fusilade obliterated the fighting capability of the vessel; which was left floundering for the rest of the engagement.

  

Leaving it to idle , the Venus and its' escorts turned on the Aleste savaging it with fire from both sides.  The Aleste weathered the storm and did its' best to return in kind, but the Clementians ships had more guns and more good fortune.

Off! 

The Aleste limped away, whilst the wind took its escorts north to rescue the Jnaravikchi, and to capture the unfortunate Telesto, which never really joined the fight, due to a mast breaking when caught in irons.  The Telesto surrendered after a mauling assault.  Even at sea the Gebrovians are better in hand to hand combat than at range with gunnery!

 

The Aleste ultimately lost all momentum and was surrounded by the Clementians, to save souls, she struck her colours and accepted here fate. and with that, the light failing, the engagement ended.

Each fleet had arrived with four vessels, and left with four, but the exchange was undeniably in the Clementian favour, departing with two Frigates and two Schooners, for the loss of one Corvette.  The Clementian commander sailed home with his held held high, and some prized captives as well as a large ship and its booty.  As for the Gebrovians, their badly mauled remnant fleet, took the modest trophies it had left to it and returned with their tails between their legs.

_______________________

This was the first naval game to grace our campaign, and for my sins - and apparently out of some misjudgement of our national abilities - I chose to play this based on having won the previous engagement.  We used the Warhammer Historical 'Trafalgar' rules, as what I had available, but they did a good job with a small game like this; as to the 'miniatures', for the time being my collection of Pirates of the the Spanish Main cards provided the ideal contingency force.  

The mechanics of running a fleet for the game are homebrewed and incredibly simple, but indicate that damaged or captured ships will require down time to repair.  In our cases, neither side will have a full fleet again until the new year!  But at that stage the Clementians will have something of an advantage, having traded a Corvette for a Frigate.

...

A new Naval game, Via Warlord...

Well, I wasn't aware of this.

 

 This is due out in time for Xmas as a starter set, retailing for £50.  It'll contain the rules (obviously) and 10 motor torpedo boats - 6 British, 4 German.

Six fleets are to be covered; all the usual suspects, plus my beloved Italians...

 

ahhh...

 No joy if you fancy the French though.  Being Warlord it'll feature lots of plastic goodies; they've gone with 1/300th scale which apparently is divisive, being both quite big and not a traditional naval model scale.  But it seems ok to me...

 

 Beyond that I know nothing, but as one who dabbles in Naval games I am intrigued by this and will remain observant for news...

...

Le Porte-Avions Français Arrivé

Reinforcements for my Dystopian Wars French navy have been completed, taking the force to a rounded thousand points.

The Aircraft Carrier 'Le Condorcet'; accompanied by three escort cruisers - 'Leon Gambetta', 'Jule Ferrer' and 'Victor Hugo':

Also painted but not shown are another six fighter tokens to go with the carrier.  Which is a huge model, dwarfing the Pocket Battleship already in the fleet.  I had fun with the aircraft and the flight deck; but to be honest all that camouflage was a bit of a chore...

Having a fleet of twenty vessels now I probably should read the rules properly!

La Capture du Vaisseau Amiral Russe 1870

My French Dystopian Wars fleet set sail once again.  Facing our erstwhile allies the Russians in a clash through what appeared to be the straights of Constantinople.

My fleet was the same as before, but the Russians were a new threat.  Pleasingly a painted one though.

The Russian vessels had only fairly short ranged weapons, but have no end of defensive systems designed to reduce the effectiveness of enemy attacks, and support a lot of flying vessels of substantial size.

They would prove to be a challenge.

We played the battle using objectives, these are a simple facility of the DW rules to provide each player with their own mission within the battle.  We rolled off for it and the Russians, under Paul, were looking to destroy 70% of my fleet, whilst I had to try and capture his flagship for victory.

Both fleets began to advance, but the Russians stayed close together to exploit their defensive systems, and the cover of the large Island.

I was able to engage the Russians at a range they could not reply to, but their Torpedo and Missile redirection systems made it close to impossible to harm them.  Meanwhile his flying vessels advanced to attack and I began to lose smaller ships.  Luck was not favouring me at this stage and casualties soon mounted.

My plans remained to capture the Flagship however, and from the start of the game I had decided to use the smaller flotilla ships to occupy the enemy whilst the Pocket Battleship 'Voltaire' and my Cruisers, with air cover, went after his battleship.

The Voltaire proved largely immune to the weaker gunnery of the Russians and the lack of effective support from his frigates (the disc shaped vessels - apparently based on an actual experimental Russian ship design!).  We closed, and not for the first time in the game the Russians found themselves on a collision course.

We collided, and the Russians tried to seize my ships first in an effort to forestall defeat.  But close defence fire stopped him in his tracks, and with the arrival of my Cruisers he was overpowered.

The French seized their prize and the Russians were defeated.  Victoire!

That said, it did not seem like a victory.  I was elsewhere on the battlefield getting my ass kicked in every direction.  Paul's flying ships seemed immune to my attacks until late in the game, and the bunkering of all his ships around the terrain features made them impossible to target effectively.  My Frigates and destroyers were sacrificial lambs to the slaughter for his cruisers.

It was a frustrating game; and raised a certain degree of alarm, that Spartan may have allowed a degree of 'Codex Creep' to develop with the Russians; it will take more than one game to be certain of that though....

Du Nord d'Alger: 1870 guerres dystopienne

Given how quickly I got my French DW Navy painted, it seemed appropriate to get a game in fairly soon too.  To be fair to my opponent, Paul, on the day I was actually more than a little distracted and so didn't give the game all the attention I should have, so apologies to him.  Still it at least meant the sort of victory for him that keeps opponents coming back for more; and besides we all know the rule of newly painted models - that they will get nailed first time out, so what chance did I have anyway?!*

My fleet found itself facing the hated Les Rosbeefs in a small stretch of water filled with islands and sandbars - AKA fantasy game terrain.  In a naval game this level of terrain seems overwrought, why on earth would I sail my entire fleet through this channel that's less than 200 yards wide?  when you consider that in the game only one item of terrain had any effect on the game - the sand bar - it seemed unnecessary to be honest.  On top of that we both had aircraft, Paul a flying aircraft carrier and myself three surface skimming cruisers; so terrain became even less relevant.  All that sea and we chose to fight in the bit of it least suited to manoeuvres?  Really!

Enough ranting.  I made my way through the melange of terrain to advance on the Britannic Majesty's fleet.

My skimmers were able to sweep over the sand bar to target the monstrosity that was the British Dreadnought.

Alas the Dreadnought was to prove brutally invulnerable, whilst the Royal Navy's submarines played merry havoc with my frigates.  But a lucky shot from my Destroyers would bring down the flying carrier and briefly take the smile off my opponents face!

My pocket battleship swept around the rear of the sandbar, allowing it to fire on the enemy but protecting it from torpedoes.  Frigates had led the way and cleared the enemy screen, allowing it some security.  In the mean time the Dreadnought had destroyed one cruiser and captured another but his attempts gain further ships resulted in the loss of all his marines. And if I'd had any sense I'd have thrown my own marines onto here or one of the other defenceless submarines.

But I didn't, my Frigates nad interceptors tried to torpedo the Dreadnought out of existence instead.

To no avail.  Although with the loss of his aircraft carrier and several other vessels it was close, the destruction and capture of numbers of my smaller ships gave Paul a narrow victory.

Curse you English Imperial dogs!

Afterthoughts, I must read the rules next!  Would really have helped...


*apropro to what was distracting me too.

La Marine Française à la Parade

You will recall a week or so ago I posted about my slightly impulsive Dystopian Wars purchase.  Well I've justified them somewhat by getting them already painted:

A nice little starter fleet - the contents of a fleet box plus a blister pack of destroyers for support.  Despite going overboard with the details, notably going for a dazzle pattern of camouflage and ship numbers, these were a breeze to paint.  It only takes so long to paint 1/1200th scale models for the wargames table!

I decided to add bases to the ships, not the convention in the game but it would make handling the models simpler and ironically, make storing the models easier.  The Spartan Games models are mostly a modern compound resinated plastic, which takes detail extraordinarily well, and it is also easy to see that they are computer designed and possibly the masters are produced on a 3D printer (given the precision of the work - though I'm guessing here!).  Only the large aircraft and the gun turrets are Pewter.

Everything, even the tiny aircraft on the flyer tokens, was given an heavily thinned ink wash for shading and to give something of a rusted look.

And yes, those aircraft are absolutely tiny!  Nonetheless you can see cockpit details, the engine exhausts and so on; given they are on a base all of 20mm square, they are remarkable!

So the fleet is ready for all hands action.  Overall I'm really impressed with the models, fine sculpts and great value.  Now to get a game o two in...

Les Guerres Dystopiques

Like a true gamer, I have sometimes to sell things, but usually only to fund other projects instead.  In this instance the selling of my otherwise unwanted AK47 Republic models has allowed me to guiltlessly embark on another game.

I've played Dystopian Wars a few times, along with its predecessor - Uncharted Seas.  The rules I really liked, providing a playable naval wargame, and the background - a steampunk version of the late 19th century transformed by the discovery of a 'super element' but still mired in very human politicing and fighting; but none of the initial fleets really appealed and so to date I'd been able to justify not getting involved in the game.

But with a hefty chunk of cash falling in to my Paypal account and some much mre attractive new releases; I've finally succumbed.

£50 or so with Trolltrader.co.uk purchased me the Rules, a starter fleet and an extra blister pack of ships:

And for the nation of choice, well I went with the French.




I find they have more elegance about them than the original model ranges (I really didn't like the look of a couple of the original nations produced for the game), and certainly look more like real vessels, even if as with most of the nations in the game, closer to the shipping of the 20th century than the 19th.  Though clearly the implied technology of the games' background plays a huge part in that.

One of the strengths of the rules is that they cover all arms warfare - land, sea and air.  And the French have attractive airships as part of their forces.
 


Though I have to say it is the naval games that appeal most to me, there's always been something about naval gaming that has fascinated me, and as the blog will attest to I've indulged in many maritime wargames.


But anyway, Spartan Games are certainly getting better as they go in the design stakes for their models, and with this game picking up in interest at the Headingley Club (I attend intermittently on Thursdays) I hope to be able to get some use out of these models once painted.


And given their size I don't see that taking too long to achieve either!

Sound General Quarters - 1943

Having gamely taken a thumping at Force on Force, Jez took the reins and organised a Naval encounter using a classic old set of Naval rules; General Quarters.

I took on the role of the Japanese Admiral, with a fleet of a heavy cruiser, two light cruisers and two groups of three destroyers.

Against these, Rich had two heavy cruisers and two pairs of destroyers.  Generally the American ships had more firepower, and were better at range, thanks to their radar.  Aside the numerical advantage, the Japanese could at least rely on more Torpedoes.

The game began with the two fleets at an already effective range, at which stage the Americans started laying smoke whilst I charged the Japanese forward to get in close.

At range the American cruisers pounded the light Japanese ships, but their sacrifice allowed the Japanese destroyers to close and start to swarn the American escorts, and permitted the Japanese heavy cruiser to bide its time in cover.

This stage of the engagement was dominated by torpedo fire causing the loss of one American cruiser and one Japanese destroyer.  Despite losing two of my cruisers, it was now apparent the Americans were on the back foot, with their destroyers starting to look worse for wear too.

At this stage I released the heavy cruiser from behind its veil of smoke, at which point the American fleet scattered.  Whilst all of the other ships were heavily battle scarred, the Japanese heavy was untouched, and any fire it laid down was now brutally effective.

Rich's fleet saw this as the perfect moment to disengage.

For a very old set of rules, they seemed to work well enough, and we were just about able to run through the shooting and damage tables autonomously by the end of the game.  As a period and size of engagement this cruiser & destroyer engagement was nice and simple, but I did find the smoke overly effective.

Still, as my first naval game in a couple of years, it was good fun.

The Greatest Ingominy

Really, I must be letting every one of my countrymen down as a result of this, I lost a game of Trafalgar, with the British, against the French; the French!

Ok, maybe overstating it a bit; though several members of the club told my opponent to go home and think very seriously about what he had done. The average British gamer will it seems accept the defeat of his or her majesty’s armies, but the Navy is somehow sacrosanct. To put it to the sword, especially with the traditional enemy is a step too far.

But you can’t argue with results. I set up both fleets to be even handed 500 point forces, no dodgy choices (hot ammunition and so forth), just a single ship of the line each, a pair of frigates and one or two unrated vessels. So the blame is not on any abuse of the rules.

My deployment at the start left me sailing away from the enemy at first, hoping to bait him in to splitting his fleet, but instead ensured I split my own. My mistake for sure. But then when I got a little opportunity, thanks to the wind changing, the dice intervened to ensure even my most perfectly placed broadsides bounced harmlessly off the enemy ships.

The French held the tactical high ground throughout most of the game, although forced to withdraw one ship due to the wind (i.e. it fell off the edge of the ‘world’, it sailed off the table); and having their flagship ‘in irons’ for two turns, they managed to destroy the British fleet piecemeal, sinking two vessels outright and leaving two others, including the HMS London, my flagship, as hulks. Only one frigate managed to escape.

As ever the models used were the ‘Pirates’ card models. The nicely painted blue board is a recent club innovation; a common sense solution, simply paint the underside of a normal board blue.

The lake war of 1812

Somewhere on Lake Erie the two forces made headway towards one another...



Actually it was at the Leeds Nightowls; My original game fell through, but as I'd brought a backup plan, we gave the Trafalgar rules an airing.

I quickly knocked up a couple of small fleets, though this is not a speedy task of course when you have to copy out the profile sheets by hand. A small American fleet of 250 points would face a similarly sized British fleet. Broadly speaking the forces were:

America: a 5th Rate Frigate, a Ship-Sloop and an overgunned Brig

Britain: two 6th Rate Frigates and a Cutter

Ross, my opponent, took command of the British; whilst, the day after Independance day I led the American fleet. I sent out my light ships ahead, knowing they had pound for pound more firepower than any one of his frigates. I hoped to lure at least on ship into a trap. As with any game based on warfare of this type though, the wind had the biggest influence on our manouevres.

My brig was able to move behind and savagely rake the enemy cutter with fire, ending it's involvement in the battle. My Sloop however was unable to slow the Frigate on its' own and instead found itself boarded. The short boarding action saw the Royal Navy capture the ship; but choose to leave it uncrewed so they could focus both their vessels on my larger frigate. My Brig came under fire from the trailing frigate and was soon also out of action. I had to commit my flagship therefore, and in a brutal exchange it left one Frigate burning.

Commander Ross decided to concentrate on fighting me rather than the fire and paid the price, when his frigate's powder room (rolled a one on the blaze table and) exploded. The ruins of the ship were no longer a fighting force; had he fought the fire the ship would have been saved.

His other vessel now found that wind and inertia took it away from the fight, and so the battle ended. On the grounds that I could at least retrieve my sloop, I was considered the victor, though it was a bloody victory for sure.

As to the rules, well, they are simplistic, but they are also fast and pretty clearly written, sailing is realistic enough, though shooting seems too generous and brutal at times. This game was followed up by a second one featuring the Americans against Barbary pirates (though not featuring any photos); so we managed two games, with beginner players in four hours. What's more the rules seemed to turn several members of the club onto the period. No bad thing.

Incidentally, as nice as real models would be, I think the 'Pirates' card models look absolutely fine for this sort of game. As their a cheap way of playing too - especially as the club had a box of twenty or so ships in the bottom of a store cupboard!

First [solo] game of the year!

Hurrah! I held up on a promise to myself, and despite the easy temptations of DVD's, a bar next door and large sofas'; I managed to set aside a couple of hours to try the Trafalgar rules out.

The Pirates cards I'd picked up on saturday supplied a total of 6 ships, two [in game terms] mid sized multi-deckers, three standard single deckers and a large schooner type. It was easy to define the multi deckers as ships of the line, and the smaller boats as frigates; the schooner was not a lot of use though. Still I had enough to get something together.

A quick flick through the fleet lists and I decided on a small engagment between a French Ship of the Line - L'Hercule, and a pair of Portugese 6th rate frigates - El Rayo and La Trinidad (captured from the Spanish with a name like that, no doubt!). That worked out neatly at 200 points a side. The rules suggest games of 500-2000 points, and we'll discuss the practicality of that later.

As shown in the first photo, the French ship started some distance from the two Portugese vessels, closing in on it independantly. They were running with what turned out to be a squally wind.

One of the Portugese ships prepared it's guns with double shot and managed to cut across the bows of the French ship, firing as it did so. The damage to the hull of L'Hercule was significant but not yet critical. L'Hercule swung away from the El Rayo and instead exchanged broadsides with La Trinidad. Damage was light, and both sides temporarily disengaged as they found themselves against the wind.

Although it had lost its' Caronades (short range heavy howitzers), L'Hercule was still a potent source of firepower; and using the French skill in aiming at enemy masts, it was able to savage the El Rayo on its' second pass. Destroying two masts. It was then able to turn on La Trinidad, which although managing to retaliate in some kind (causing dangerous losses in the French Crew) was set afire and then left helpless; whilst the crew first tried to quench the fires and thence to save themselves.

At the Victory was to the French. L'Hercule was battered but managed to destroy one Frigate and force the other to strike its' colours. The Portugese had the advantage of numbers and were initially able to run rings around the lumbering giant, but when they found themselves disadvantaged by the wind the vast firepower of the French was able to bear with devastating effect.

So, thoughts on the rules now I've tried them. Well, I'm sure there is nothing too new here, but the sailing rules work well enough; ships cannot move around at will, their actions are dictated by the wind - as they should be, and the command roll works well enough to limit the use of complex maneouvers. The initiative system is sensible, but in smaller games certainly will allow those who move last a very significant advantage for making bow or stern attacks on the enemy - the most devastating kind. The fire rules are exactly the sort you'd expect from a 'Warhammer' game, but the damage system works well.

The main criticism I'd say at this point is the time a game may take. Now this was just three ships, and solo play, so there were no disputes or discussions of rules. Still it took an hour and a half to play to a point where the result was clear. I think a 500 point game would take easily two to three hours, and for anything larger I'm sure you would need either an entire day or several players per side.

Still overall it works well, and I'll be pleased to introduce the rules to other players.

Once again the Pirates ships served their purpose well; but in this case I can also be pleased that my duvet cover happened to be a nice shade of blue! It's a good job that scenery wasn't needed! My socks are fairly unconvincing as the Iberian coast...

Trafalgar!

Well, I'd been looking forward to this release from Warhammer Historical since it was announced. The release date seemed sooner than I expected, but it did mean I could reliably put in an advance order for delivery to my French address.



Amazingly, my copy arrived the day after the official release date; despite where I am. Pretty impressive delivery GW/WH! The book itself is a large softcover A4 volume with, as one would expect, high production standards throughout; particularly the extensive use of full colour in most of the book, and the high quality illustrations.

The rules themselves only take up 22 pages of the book and are in some ways typical GW fare: all D6's and some simple solutions to complex issues; but in others they break from the GW norms. For example the rules do not operate on an IgoUgo rationale, but rather sequence vessels based on their proximity to the direction of the wind. Shooting and other key actions are considered simultaneous.

The rules make large use of data sheets for each class of vessel, and so details of all ships from 1st rates down to gunboats are included.

This is where the real strength of the GW design philosophy starts to show; as these are covered in the sort of clear, but reasonably comprehensive detail, that allows someone with no knowledge of the period other than what is in this book to get a lot of good information. On top of this data the book also includes an extensive introduction warfare in the age of sail, timelines for 5 conflicts, a detailed essay on the Trafalgar campaign, and a glossary of terminology.

By the end of this any beginner could bluff his way through a discussion of the age of sail.

There are also fleet [army] lists for 8 nations and the 'Privateers' (who also allow for Barbary coast forces, which could constitute a ninth nationality), a half dozen standard scenarios, a campaign based on Trafalar itself - though very linear in design - and the usual hobby section, mainly devoted to painting and rigging 1/1200th scale model ships. I should add that the rules favour this scale, but include scale adaptions to work with anything from 1/2400th to 1/100th scale [personally my 'Pirates' card ships will ably fulfill the role of fleets for the game].

It is hard to fault the book as it stands, my biggest concern will be how the game will stand up to play; that is something that I will maybe get to find out some months from now; but as a primer on the history it works really well, and one can't fault its' presentation or scope. It isn't perfect, for one I'd have liked to have seen a couple of other fleets included and a little more detail on the war in the Mediterranean. But those are minor gripes really.

Overall, for the asking price (£20) this is one of the best presented sets of wargames rules I've ever seen; I really hope they are a sucess, and I hope I get a chance to try them out soon.

Belang-Alasan: War at Sea in the East Indies 1943...

1943, and as the war in the east slowly begins to turn, a British fleet attempted to intercept the Japanese Carrier Akagi on a run to port.


The Akagi, fat with aircraft was accompanied by light cruiser Jintsu, and a single destroyer. Running a few miles to the north were the Battlecruiser Kongo and the heavy cruiser Myoko. Picket duties were being maintained in this sector by a I-19 class submarine.

In response, the British assembled a force centred round HMS Rodney and Carrier HMS Illustrious. A pair of Australian cruisers and two destroyers were seconded to the operation, in the hope of stopping the Japanese reaching safe waters. A British submarine was also rushed independently to the area.

In the engagement the Japanese were split by a pair of small Islands 10 miles east of Belang. The Royal Navy was able to initially engage the smaller but powerful Japanese battlecruiser group. However air attacks by the Japanese fighters based on the Akagi effectively neutralised the British air power.

Nonetheless by 11.45 hrs the Japanese had already lost most of their offensive air ability in an unsuccessful strike on the British carrier group. Though their submarine picket managed to Torpedo the Illustrious.

By this stage the Rodney was beginning to make its' impressive main battery tell, with a firepower the Kongo and Myoko were unable to match. However the engagement had now descended to one of a close quarters assault, as the Japanese attempted to use their 'Long Lance' torpedoes to sink the British carrier and its' escorts, whilst screening their own.

The Kongo, Myoko and Jintsu were lost, but the combined efforts of these vessels, the I-19 submarine and desperate surface attacks by Japanese fighters were enough to sink the Illustrious, and allow the Akagi to escape.

Although the Royal Navy could count control of sea lanes and the destruction of several key enemy assets in its' favour, the loss of its' own carrier and the escape of the enemy's resulted in Belang-Alasan being considered a Pyrrhic victory at best. It would be some time still until the mighty Akagi was sunk, but for now all it could do was slink back to port, unescorted.