"1/2400, North Sea, 1914-15 campaign" Topic

British:
BB- 12"
Bellerophon-3
St. Vincent -3
Neptune -1
Colossus -2
Agincourt -1
13.5"
Orion -4
King George V-(4)3
Iron Duke -4
Erin -1
14"
Canada -1
15"
Queen Elizabeth-3 in 1915,2 in 1916
Revenge 5 all in 196-17

BC-
12"
Invincible-- 3
Indefatigable-3
13.5"
Lion--------- 3 (Queen Mary slightly larger w/round funnels)
Tiger-------- 1
CLs
Weymouth (4),Chatham (4),Birmingham (3) Caroline (6) classes

Colors- British 1914- Dark grey overall with light wood decks changing in 1915 to a medium grey w/ light wood decks.
Germans – Light grey hulls with very slightly lighter upper works and wood decks. DDs were black.

DDs-
Acasta, Laforey, M and Repeat M classes

Germans-
B-
Pommern-5 +1 Braunschweig
BB-
11"
Nassau-4
12"
Helgoland-4
Kaiser-5
Konig-4

BC-
11"
Von der Tann
Moltke-2
Seydlitz
12"
Derfflinger with Lutzow in 1916

Cl classes- Gazelle, Bremen, Kolberg, Magdeburg, Karlshrue,
Graudenz,Pillau, Wiesbaden.
DD classes- S, G, B, V.

Our group is planning commemorative and "what if" battles as the anniversary continues.
Fair sailing!

Here's an OOB for Jutland – you could pick three historical divisions per side if you want:

link

This should help with paint colors:

link

Have fun,

Mike

Avalanche Press' Jutland would make a great strategic game, the map is great.

…and you didn't invite me? Humph!

I've been shopping and painting for the same project this year, so I have some fresh input to offer.

Here's an OOB for the Dec 1914 Scarborough raid: link

It shows the extent of the HSF battlefleet in 1914. Note that it includes 8 pre-dreadnoughts, which the Germans refused to consider completely obsolete until after Jutland. I actually have all of those, but I doubt anyone would criticize you much for leaving them out. Nobody wants to be the pitiful player pushing those old battlewagons in a dreadnought fight…

You can look up the composition of the various Royal Navy battle squadrons right on Wikipedia:
1st Battle Squadron: link
2nd Battle Squadron: link
3rd Battle Squadron: link
4th Battle Squadron: link
5th Battle Squadron: link
1st Battlecruiser Squadron: link
2nd Battlecruiser Squadron: link

German naval triumphalism being somewhat less pronounced, wikipedia has no such pages for HSF squadrons.

The Panzerschiffe BBs are the cheapest around, but if you can afford to spend $7 USD per ship, the Viking Forge and C-in-C models look WAY better (proportions and detail). If that doesn't convince you, at least consider buying some of the C-in-C "whaleboats and launches" to glue onto the decks of your Panzerschiffe BBs: link Those and some wire masts will improve the appearance of the Panzerschiffes to a huge degree.

For CLs, C-in-C has the best value – they're only $.50 USD more per ship than the Panzerschiffes, and have way better details and proportions. Sadly, the range is not very complete, but you can get the mainstays of the North Sea battlefleets.

The C-in-C WWI DDs are the cheapest, cheaper even than the Panzerschiffe DDs. Again, there's not a huge variety, but enough for the North Sea fights.

- Ix

In case anyone needs more inspiration:

More info, painting and color help.

A useful page on German HSF colors: link

A nice page with colorized line drawings of German HSF ships: link
I'm not sure about all the olive green, though.

Another resource right here on TMP: TMP link
This is also by Mal Wright, author of the "WWI Color Schemes" posted by delta6ct above. Mal is a precious resource himself. I recommend all his books on naval camouflage.

For German TBDs, I primer with black, pick out some deck parts in mid-brown where I'm guessing linoleum would be (bridge deck, maybe around guns and TTs), then drybrush with a dark gray to pick out the details. They really did paint the decks black too, so you don't have to ruin your eyes trying to paint tiny DD decks.

Get a cheap used copy of Jane's Fighting Ships 1914 (usually under $20 USD on Amazon) and look at the ring patterns painted on the smoke stacks of British BBs. Replicating this will help players distinguish ships in a class. If you don't care to be perfectly accurate, just make it up, using black, red or white stripes, each ship in a class having a different pattern: usually 2-3 stripes on the end funnel(s), the middle funnel, or all funnels. Leave one ship in each class with no striped funnels.

It didn't take long for ships languishing at sea to get rust streaks from the anchors and portholes. You can replicate this with a watery red-brown, very lightly brushed in a vertical stroke, starting at the anchor or porthole or break in the deck. Many photos and paintings show these streaks, so with a little looking around you can get a feel for where to paint them.

- Ix

I a going to do a scenario for the conventions next year.
I am using the postulation from a recent S&T article. It shows that at the start of the war the two fleets where very close in strength.

Just on a side note, I would suggest going with CinC's miniatures for the destroyers. You get 3 for $3.50 USD, so you save $1 USD for every three, and there were LOTS of destroyers. Also, the metal is a better casting, in my opinion.

link

HOWEVER, that being said, I have lots of Panzerschiffe Great War light cruisers, which are very reasonable, and great for conversions and a superior value.

Just a thought.

ilodic

All the Great War CinC Photos can be found below:

link

NOTE: I am not affiliated with CinC miniatures in anyway, just a big fan, nor Odin's Arts and Collectables (e.g. the link attached.)

I just use it as a reference for pics.

ilodic.

Queen Catherine, on the site that Ilodic linked, just click on "WW1 British Ships," and "WW1 German Ships." All the photos are there of C-in-C's WW1 line. I've got all that stuff, along with the Italian destroyers too. Sometimes wish that I'd bought a couple of the Japanese WW1 Kongo class battlecruisers. If I'd seen that photo of the Kongo model, I would have bought them too!

I haven't had trouble with mold lines on my C-in-C ships. The metal is partly lead, so it's a bit softer than the brittle white metal that Viking Forge uses, unless C-in-C has switched metal since I bought mine. I had no trouble with cleaning up flash, which hardly exists on the C-in-C castings. And the soft metal allows the frightfully thin barrels to flex rather than break. I've found working with C-in-C models to be a pleasure.

Gluing turrets was a little bit of a pain, but they fit well and the C-in-C turrets look fabulous. But if you don't want to bother gluing on turrets, then just buy Panzerschiffe. Or wait for the WTJ printed plastics to arrive. Panzerschiffe look better than you would imagine when well painted. And the WTJ stuff is making me drool!

If you do try C-in-C, I would suggest that you skip the light and heavy cruisers (a bit on the small side, and too few types available), buy the excellent destroyers (as many as you need, since they are clean castings and a great value), and buy the dreadnoughts. C-in-C WW1 dreadnoughts are arguably the best balance between price, quality, and reasonable level of detail for WW1 gaming, at least until the WTJ line of 3D printed plastics arrives.

My cruisers are a mix of Panzerschiffe, GHQ, C-in-C, and Viking Forge. I'm replacing some of my C-in-C cruisers because they are a bit small. The Panzerschiffe cruisers are the best bang for the money right now, at least until the WTJ 3D printed ones arrive.

Panzerschiffe destroyers are also excellent. I have lots of Panzerschiffe destroyers, a few Viking Forge, many C-in-C, and many GHQ.

Look back through the old threads that start with the words "Survey of" for my reviews of the various lines of 1:2400 scale ship models available from the different companies.

I'm pretty happy with my Panzerschiffe British armored cruisers. They have crisp lines, the turrets look fine when painted, and they dress up well with the addition of masts, cranes, boats, anchors and anchor chains, and some random hatches glued to the deck.

I'm not so happy with the Panzerschiffe dreadnoughts. They are oversized compared to the GHQ, CinC and VF models (which are all close enough in size and detail to mix well in a fleet). They also just look kinda plain, and adding masts and boats and stuff doesn't seem to help as much.

I'm also unhappy with Panzerschiffe casemate guns on anything. They tend not to be very well defined, so they are hard to make out at a distance without some fancy brushwork.

I dislike my Panzerschiffe Russian pre-dreadnoughts enough that I will probably give them away after I've painted replacements. I don't like the proportions, and Panzerschiffe doesn't seem to do curvy tumblehome sides as well as VF, GHQ and WTJ.

If you find the Panzerschiffe proportions to be acceptable, you should also consider going with Navwar 1/3000 scale instead. They are about the same price, slightly smaller (more maneuver room in big fleet actions), and as far as I can tell Navwar has a model of every engine-powered ship ever made and some that never left the drawing board. I am not personally all that keen on Navwar models, but they seem to look fine to less picky eyes.

You might also consider buying 1/6000 Figurehead models. You can get the entire fleets of Jutland for a few hundred dollars and have them painted in a few weeks. They are tiny, but the proportions are excellent, there is *no* flash to clean, and they paint up quickly. I also like the fact that you can fit a giant battle onto a standard gaming table (9'x5') with room to maneuver and starting the fleets at the edge of sighting distance. I have pictures of a few on my old GQ pages here: armory.com/~fathom/gq Note that I added large 1/2" wide bases to all of mine – they come with much smaller cast bases.

- Ix

The WTJs look fabulous in pictures, and the cost is phenomenal. I have some (pre-dreadnoughts) on order to find out what I think of them in the flesh (er… in the plastic?). It's too bad I already have nearly all the Jutland BBs and BCs. I have yet to order the Iron Duke class, and I see that's coming. I'll wait for WTJ to release those.

There is only a slight difference between 1/3000 and 1/2400. I would recommend you consider 1/3000 for a few reasons:
1) You will get a bit more maneuver room on real-life tables, and given the size of the North Sea WWI battles, every little bit helps.
2) Anything you can't get from WTJ you can get from Navwar (and I really mean "anything"), cheaply and quickly.
3) Significantly lower cost.
4) Faster painting time.

You don't seem to regard detail as hypercritical like some of us naval nutters; the main reason to go with larger scales is to see more details. With bigger scales also comes higher cost, longer painting times, and usually more scale distortion on the gaming table.

- Ix

Hi all,
Above was mentioned Jane's Fighting Ships 1914: any other book recommendations?
Thanks
Mike

Besides Jane's Fighting Ships 1914, there is also Jane's Fighting Ships 1919, which gives better detail and photos of the ships completed during the Great War.

Conway's All the Worlds Fighting Ships 1906-1921 is a primary source for me. There's great information about what ships joined which squadrons when. The photos are better than those in Jane's.

Finally, a terrific online resource is the following:
gwpda.org/naval/n0000000.htm

Is the Jane's Fighting Ships of World War One a mix of the 1914/1919 books? I have the Fighting Ships book and was wondering if there was info in the 1914/1919 books which would make it worthwhile picking them up.

QC:

Instructions on how to post images on TMP are here: TMP link

Note that you have to have the image hosted on an outside server somewhere. TMP itself cannot afford to host all our images for us. Mine are currently on a Comcast server associated with my cable services account. Example is below. Note that if you right-click on the image, and select "view image info", it gives the URL of the Comcast server my image is on.

Mark

My understanding of web programming is weak, but I do know that when posting we can either reference the location of the image in a manner which causes a blue-colored "link" to appear in the post, or alternatively in a manner which causes the image itself to appear in the post.

The picture itself will show up if, when writing your TMP post, you insert a URL to the server (computer on the Internet) where your image is stored, using the appropriate syntax. There are a number of alternative syntaxes (as described in the TMP instructions link) which you can use. That's what I did in the example above, and what Yellow Admiral presumably did earlier in the thread.

If the above is done correctly, TMP's software writes the correct html referencing your image location, and our web browsers when they read the html fetch the image and depict it accordingly in the post.

Mark

QC, if you are hoping to display an image here in a TMP post which is stored on a Yahoo-groups-related server, I don't think that will work. I believe the term is for that is "hot-linking" (or inline-linking), and the Yahoo servers won't allow it. Check Wikipedia for details.

Instead, you will need to have personal storage space on some sort of hosting service. You would then upload your images to this space, and insert URLs to those images in your posts, per the TMP posting instructions. As I mentioned previously, I am using personal storage space associated with my Comcast cable service account. There are quite a few "free" hosting services available on the Internet, and you can do online research to find out which ones are well thought of. You can also right-click on images in TMP threads to see what others are using to host their images.

Mark

Any progress on the North Sea campaign? I've seen lots of pictures on your blog of WTJ models arriving, so I imagine those are somewhere between "unpackaged" and "final clear coat". :-)

My own North Sea project is stalled – too much life in the way for filing, gluing, painting, etc. So instead I have been thinking about the logistics of running North Sea WWI games.

The 1/2400 dreadnoughts are typically somewhere around 4" long. Even with tight spacing, that's probably about 6" of length per ship in line ahead. At Jutland, the British formed a line of 28 dreadnoughts, which would be 14' long. Even if you stuff them together at about 4" per ship, the Grand Fleet battle line is going to be 9' or more long. Then you have to add in the cloud of escorts spaced out beyond the horizon… Jutland is not game-able on a table in 1/2400 scale. Since I happen to have the fleets in 1/6000 scale as well, when it comes time to play the 100th anniversary Jutland game, I'll probably use those.

I've always wanted to the double-blind Jutland map campaign, so I'll probably break out my Avalanche Press game and do it that way. Unfortunately, the GWAS system is slow and bookish and I may have trouble keeping players interested. That's the usual problem. Has anyone found a better way to play the North Sea missions double blind but without a lot of bookkeeping?

- Ix

Re double-blind North Sea system – Take a look at Dunnigan's old Avalon Hill JUTLAND game. It includes a mission/search feature, which may prove useful.

This game also might offer an alternative for dealing with that big encounter between the battle fleets. That, IMO, cannot be gamed with miniatures unless you are willing to put it on the floor.

B

That, IMO, cannot be gamed with miniatures unless you are willing to put it on the floor.

I was eventually planning to do Jutland in 1/6000 on my 7' x 8' table. If I allowed a 1" minimum spacing between ships, I thought I could do it. Note the image below showing the 1/6000 BCF on my table. Also note that the ships in the foreground are the big BCs, and that most BBs were significantly shorter. Thus a 28-ship battleline would be about 5' long. This would work on a 7' x 8' table if I was willing to shift stuff over as the battle moved. Incidentally, the first model ship in the line of British BCs in the image below (HMS Lion) is depicted in closeup earlier in this thread, as are the 2 DDs in ahead of her.

BTW, if I want to do this by the 100th anniversary of the battle, I have about 21 months left to finish the ships and finish refurbishing the gaming table (…).

(Sorry for hijacking the thread; I will shut up now).

Mark

Hi Mark,
Re the floor comment, I was referring to 1:2400 scale. But even in 1:6000, if you include the BCs and all the light forces, it will be a trick to put it on an 8ft table IMO.

B

I think the Jutland encounters will fit on a 6'x8' table in 1/6000. Using a ground scale of 1cm=200yd, the sighting distance at Jutland (20k yards) is about 40 inches. (Even in ideal weather, maximum sighting distance is about 30k yards = 60 incehes).

The 1/6000 ships are small, and operating in base-to-base contact the full Grand Fleet battleship line will be about 4 feet long in line ahead. At 1 cm/kn, they move at about 7-8" per turn, a little farther for the BCs.

There is a definite need to scroll the terrain to avoid steaming off the edge of the world, but I already have that problem licked with my 2' interlocking foam tiles (made like these).

Anything much outside the sighting encounters can be taken back to the map for strategic movement.

I can make a 6'x12' table in my own house, and I have a friend with a 6'x20' table if we really want to go wild.

- Ix

Take a look at Dunnigan's old Avalon Hill JUTLAND game. It includes a mission/search feature, which may prove useful.

I thought this was also paperwork intensive….? The last couple times I've seen this system used, it was run by an impartial referee taking written maps from both sides to determine if/when/where the encounters take place.

One of the advantages of the GWAS system is that a referee is not required. Did the old AH Jutland also have a way to play without a referee?

- Ix

Hi YA,
> I guess you are right on being able to get it all on a single table using 1:6000 scale and touching bases. I myself am not a big fan of touching bases for aesthetic reasons, but it will indeed mechanically work in the manner you describe.

> Hah! I use geomorphic sea tiles as well for my AoS games (18x24x3/16" Lucite). 16 pcs are heavy to carry, but they work like a champ.

> It has been a really long while since I played JUTLAND. I seem to remember calling out hex references in turn as part of the search phase. A neutral party would be best. If such a person is not available locally, perhaps it would be possible to enlist someone over the web. You and your opponent could individually scan and email your plot schemes to this this person and he would advise accordingly to each player by email. Just a thought.

B

Hi guys,

No referee was required for the AH Jutland search system. In the original game, there was an initial large German move, and then subsequent simultaneous hourly moves for both sides. After each such move, each side had to search hexs in which they had task forces, with the additional option of searching adjacent hexes. One could also deliberately reveal a task force's location by entering a coastal hex. Contact resulted in 6 (?) turns of battle with the ship counters.

The SPI magazine game "Flight of the Goeben" improved on this, by using a 3-tier search system which gave away less information. All my naval campaigns have used a variant of the FOTG scheme, as I don't generally like using referees. BTW, all "Flight of the Goeben" components are available in PDF form on the General Quarters Yahoo site.

Although I found the FOTG system adequate, some might object to the fact that information is revealed with each search, even if only with the "top tier". FOTG rationalized this as being due to radio intercepts, neutral sightings, and other peripheral intelligence. To get around this, one could use a computer program to substitute for a referee. I assume that nowadays many such programs are available on the Internet; alternatively, one could write one's own, as I am doing. Modern IDE's are freely available on the Internet, such as Visual Studio or Eclipse:

link
eclipse.org/downloads

Mark