Mel hosted a WW2 naval game using his ships and using some rules from the US called Flaklighter 2.
We hadn't played the rules before so we were all interested to see how they would work. I hadn't played this kind of naval at all, and the our experienced players hadn't gamed WW2 coastal for 3 years.
The scenario was simple the German schnellbootes were to attack the British convoy and the mixed Royal Naval and US Navy force were to stop them.
I played the Kriegsmarine, Dave the Allied interception force and Tony controlled the convoy.
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| My German S boats |
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| The convoy is on the left and the interceptors on the right. |
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| My force bottom right |
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| Tony's armed trawler |
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| And we're off. The template is for turn circles |
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| I hurtle towards the convoy at top speed (13") and fire torpedoes (the tiny green dice) in the turn previous to this picture. The boat veering left has had a hammering and I thought I'd fire my remaining torpedoes to disrupt the interceptors. I then learnt that I would normally fire both to ensure their was an affect. Mel kindly gave the option to choose and I decided to take the advice of the experienced players and go with all torpedoes having been fired. This left me with a 3 boats charging ahead and 1 conducting a lone charge without weapons to sink the opposition. We all realised that as a scenario I would have fired my torpedoes and turned away - making for a very short game. We played on as we're learning how the game played. |
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| My torpedoes sunk a freighter - mainly because Tony underestimated their speed relative to him. Tony also hadn't see the damage modifier diagram which would have shown clearly that turning away from the torpedoes were his best option. The rules weren't that explicit how torpedoes were managed or at least didn'y grasp it quickly. We settled on step by step simultaneous movement to see if the torpedoes hit - working out a ratio of 1": 5" with the torpedoes travelling at 5" bands up to 15". This worked ok. Having learnt the previous turn I couldn't sink the ships I was facing with my 20mm and 37mm guns I turned away to head for home. This brought me broadside on the the armed trawler which I shot up merrily took all it's guns out and set it on fire. |
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| My loner charger also turned away but too little too late. Reduced to half speed it couldn't get away fast enough and was shot to pieces and sunk. It's sacrifice letting the others escape. |
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| The end of the action |
I enjoyed the game. I haven't played naval games for decades, the closest I've come to it is playing Full Thrust space combat and that was a few years ago. To do the rules justice we'd need to play them a lot more. Personally I'd need to translate all the measurements in knots/yards to the playable value in inches. I wrote these down as we went along - using the true values gave atmosphere but as it was all new we were constantly converting them to fit what we were measuring on the table. In the heat of action some players did get confused with 10 knots = 10" when they should have been moving 3.33".
The experienced players were not won over by these rules. It was decided that the next game we'd use a more familiar rule set and compare them with these.
