"The pinacle of miniature gaming?" Topic

westernwarshipcombat.com

You build your models

mount guns on them

use said guns to destroy other models

Sounds awsome to me, just wish there was a club near here..

Sounds silly to me and also it has nothing to do with naval warfare. Sorry.

I've seen the same thing done with RC tanks, but I can't remember where.

Sounds silly to me and also it has nothing to do with naval warfare

It's got at least as much to do with naval warfare as sitting round a table with pens, pencils and miniatures.

That looks cool. I want a go.

It doesn't have much in common with historical 20th century miniatures gaming. One thing which looks particularly strange is the point-blank age-of-sail ranges they fight at.

I have heard of theses guys before, another great site dealing with this is model warship combat, great outfit!

In the past i built two ships to their rules, the USS Houston & a Brooklyn class cruiser, which both gave good service.

I am sure that a sailing ship version of this would be fun, but what mode of propulsion used is the challenge.

The extremely short ranges used are mostly due to the smoothbore .177" BB guns that are used. plus, it's not like you actually have video-links to the aiming systems, you just have to hip-shoot. It's easy to shoot accurately when you're close, but to effectively engage at a range of 300 yards is just about impossible.

and what simulation is?

At least pencil, paper and miniatures are resembling to a plot. Armor is taken into account, different type of damage and the like.

sorry I think Harpoon IV or command at Sea have much more to do with naval warfare than this… and several Navies agree with me :)

Arrigo

Maybe it's because I've never done naval wargames (literally – Pirates of the Spanish Main is as close as I've gotten), maybe it's because this is an extension of childhood games, but I would find this a total blast.

Of course we did put an M80 in the Lady Lex when I was a kid, push her out into Lake Huron and video taped her exploding (with an old Super8 no less).

Don.

They used to call this "BB Battleships" in this area. It looked like fun until I saw the price list and realized I'd have to spend a lot of time with a fishing net trying to salvage my work off of the bottom of the pond….

sorry I think Harpoon IV or command at Sea have much more to do with naval warfare

I totally and completely agree with you, but who cares, this looks like wonderful great fun. There were a crowd in Nova Scotia that did this – they'd battle in a shallow pond so their work could be recovered. A lot of stuff was made with Balsa or some other light wood and it was assumed you were going to damage each other.

There's a place for traditional wargames, but there's also a place for this sort of thing, too. Rather like a geek's verison of smash up derby!

Or, better yet, the albeit crude, naval version of re-enacting!
--
Tim

yep, it can be fun….

but is not the pinnacle of miniature gaming… and to me still look silly considering how much time you spend in building a decent ship! Especially considering the price tag… If I build an 1/144 cruiser no one will touch it!

By those criteria then I guess the HG Wells rules using cannon firing matchsticks, marbles etc have little to do with wargaming either………..

Give me Ramming Speed.

Though this does remain me of a Convention Game were we had large models of Battletech (8 per side)

If a mech was destroyed it was actually destroyed as in crushed for real.

The side that I was on ended up winning with only one Mech being destroyed. The other lost 7 Mech destroyed and one damaged.

It was their Locust and if I had only been a few inches closer and only needing a nine instead of a ten it would have been destroyed also.

I want to see a tanker go up.

My nerdy toy boy hobby is better than your nerdy toy boat hobby!

I get twitchy when a kid at a convention drops one of my tanks. I would lose it at one of these …. Watching would be cool though ;-)

Build a beautiful scale replica of a fighting ship.

Let you friends detroy it by shooting ball bearings at it.

That is crazy.

It doesn't have much in common with historical 20th century miniatures gaming.

Well, it is a game using miniatures based on 20th century historical warships. Are there any criteria?

'By those criteria then I guess the HG Wells rules using cannon firing matchsticks, marbles etc have little to do with wargaming either………..'

At last, someone has finally figured it out!

I think several poster, me included, doubt that this is gaming… maybe it is more related to torture… (that is what I will tought if I see one of my models holed and sunk…)

"Or, better yet, the albeit crude, naval version of re-enacting!"

Actually Richard Knox, the guy who's just located the real Bosworth Battlefield belongs to a re-enactmentgroup who have a small Victorian warship anchored down in Portsmouth…

Why stop at models?

ahahahahahahahah

that start to be interesting… we can use MILES and hoffman devices… and have real wargaming… without sinking our toys… the Japanese government is thinking about raising the Yamato… so we need only Nagato, Kongo, Haruna, sever cruisers, some Fletcher DD 4 bucklyes and several CVE (I think several hulls are still available) and we can do Samar sea!

That would be the pinnacle of naval wargaming!

Sorry but the Nagato is upside-down at Bikini Atoll. NUKED!!!!

uhm is the Japanese government raise the Yamato and rebuild it for wargaming purpose we can try to collect money to build a replica of the Nagato!

I've seen the same thing done with RC tanks, but I can't remember where.

rctankcombat.com

If they raise the "Yamato" they're gonna need a lot of super glue. She was hit by at least 10 torpedoes and her magazines exploded as she capsized. This great warship is in many pieces.

actually I have seen photos and sonar scan of the wreck, It is not so bad as you think. At start I was thinking the Musashi would have been better, but the Yamato is not in so bad condition… and guys we are in the XXIst century sooner or later we will need her for refitting as space vessels…

By the the way google on Yamato wreck the situation is not so bad condition. Froward section is partially detached (according to some intepretations now it has ben moved, but it is still near), but the majority of the peieces are still there. Main turrets have been located. I have been told of the project by a japanese historian, maybe is a day dream, but condiering how much money the JMSDF is putting in rediscovering the past right now and they PR strategy I will not be surprised on a major recovery efforts (ok the new PM is not on the same wave lenght I fear but…)

Arrigo

Talk about raising the Yamato is as perennial here as was talk of raising the Titanic back in the west, and I'd imagine it is just about as unlikely to happen whatever the condition of the wreck.

My hunch would be that if it depends on government funding, raising the Yamato in its entirety is destined to remain a pipe-dream for all but a few romantics at the JMSDF and amongst the wanna-be-militaristic fringe.

Unless, of course, and putting aside the inevitable controversy, it was with the intention of selling all that steel for scrap. Given the price of scrap steel before the economic collapse, when demand was at record highs, that may have been an viable concept. But even that option is less attractive these days with falling steel prices.

What with the current economic realities facing the present Japanese government, which is much more concerned about rising health and pension costs, the money- and the will- almost certainly just isn't there. Luckily. It is not something I'd want to see my tax yen spent on.

I'm a member of the Western Warship Combat club, and can answer a few of the questions posed. There are several variations of the hobby (Big Gun, Fast Gun, Treaty) with their own rulesets, but here's some general information.

We base our ships on actual ships (usually keel must have been laid between 1900-1946), in 1:144 scale. People build the ship from scratch from wood, or use a fiberglass hull. In either case, "windows" are cut out of the side of the hull and covered in balsa, leaving just thin ribs along the sides for structural support.

In some rulesets, the thickness of the balsa corresponds to the thickness of the armor of the original ship. The speed of the ship is based on the speed of the original ship. In big Gun, we use not only BBs for ammo but also several sizes of ball bearings, up to 1/4 inch, again based on the firepower of the ship.

There is generally paintball gear inside the boat, and the CO2 bottles power the cannons and turrets. Those fire the ammo, which can penetrate the balsa and sink the boat. The boats are designed to sink, so essential electronics are waterproofed or shielded from the water. There is shielding on the inside of the boat to prevent the ammo from going straight into the electronics. We usually have four battles in a day, spending about an hour between them patching up the ships if needed.

Various clubs and rulesets have different types of scoring, including counting number of holes, number of holes below the waterline, number of sinks, number of cargo runs completed, etc.

Hope this helps explain things a bit.

Keri Morgret