"1/700 scale wargaming" Topic

Are there any good rules for wargaming in 1/700 scale? I'm looking at the carrier war in the pacific WWII. I checked out Naval Thunder: Battleship Row, but it seems the air war is done on paper. I's like to have the visual appeal of squadron's in flight. Any help would be appreciated.

Use 1/600th aircraft, with the 1/700th carriers.

Scale seemw like a small difference, but the larger 1/600th planes are really quite a bit bigger. Of course, if you are on a budget, you can stick with the 1/700th aircraft instead.

The Blue Skies series of rules is a decent one, for larger scale battles. I think the title is Red Sun, Blue Sky for the Pacific Theater.

The air rules in General Quarters will do what you want. Use the 2nd volume ones. The 1st volume is much more abstract.

I actually have used Grand Fleets in the past for the Naval battles. Now I am looking at Naval Thunder for my 1/700 games.

Thanks,

John

General Quarters 3 should fit the bill.

John –

I actually run 1/700 scale at GenCon with Naval Thunder usually when I attend. Just multiply ranges/movement x4 and you're all good. Change turns to 4 MP and allow them up to 45 degrees.

Actually you can use the speed in knots as inches if you have it handy.

It always a big hit.

I use my own Naval Action rules, of course, which players seem to like.

And I design my cardstock model ships with 1:700 scale in mind, although they are all out of proportion to the game scale. I have some free plans on my webpages – both LCoat and coatneyhistory.com

I once did a Basic program which could compare model scales against game scales and time scales. It's on my LCoat.tripod.com webpage, albeit in Pascal which can be a threat to your computer.

Trumpeter has just released HMS Queen Elizabeth in 1:700 scale … for the year 1918. Gnash!

link

Presumably, QE or Valiant 1941 is coming, but …

I went ahead and got Roma instead of waiting for Vittorio Veneto or Littorio, because I wasn't sure what the commerce/trade situation with China was going to be.

I think any set of rules are fine, it's just a question of how much scale distortion you are willing to tolerate. The main issue with distortion is the distances between the ships of the same squadron.

At 1/700 a deployed carrier group will need an oval / circle of about ten yards in which to deploy, which is fine if you've a 12x6 table. However, you need space for the planes to attack and make their approach, so let's toss in a scale distortion of 100%, not very extreme. Now a yard on table is 1400y, so a 12x6' is 17,000 x 8,000, a 6x4 is 8,000 x 4,000, just enough to get by. All the CG needs is space to track incoming planes and to engage in evasive action.

Far as rules go, I'd use General Quarters 3, which has both streamlined Campaign and detailed Tactical rules. You can always simplify your scenario by making ships and planes identical classes, or gaming one phase of an attack (planes rarely managed simultaneous attacks anyway, sequential is more likely).

Naval Thunder would be fine for surface actions but the carrier and sub rules are abstracted, unless a supplement has been done detailing them out.

I took Matt Fritzs rules for Midway from his Junior General site and tweaked them to fit the carrier battles of 1942 both real ones and never were ones, like at clash in the indian ocean. let me know if you'd like a copy.

To use the large, beautiful 1/700s, I'm prepared to accept A LOT of scale distortion. :-)