"War plan Orange and other silliness" Topic

ok, so, another one of my random half conceived game ideas…

this one is inspired by "Sudden Storm" by general quarters. I have not purchased it yet, as I prefer Naval Thunder to GQ, and its kinda on the pricey side.

So, I like boats. specifically Battleships. I tried to start a ww1 project, and have so far amassed half the Grand Fleet and half the high seas fleet. the issue came up in that it seems most in my gaming group are opposed to making up engagements for the war.

so, war plan orange?? what do you guys think? where do I get models for the un modernized ships?

or my other hair brained scheme, some damned fool thing in south america. set in the same time frame (30's) this would envision a slightly more radical washington treaty or depression, combined with a slightly more economically viable south america purchasing a few dreadnoughts from the european powers (and allowing me to use my ww1 collection) and having some sort of ak-47 republic type "third guano war" or something of the sort.

thoughts gentlemen?
thanks
~Joe

It's a good idea

For an interesting variant on War Plan Orange, there is a chapter in this book

link

to be dreadfully honest, the only thing that I know about plan orange is that it was in the 30's, against japan, and had battlewagons in the stead of aircraft carriers. the last thing is what appeals to me and the "Sudden Storm" thing seems to have a pre done campaign.

~Joe

There were carriers in the 30s by the way.

Substantial ones, for that matter.

MJXII do a game of Warplan Orange. Haven't seen any specific ship models for it though.

A pity your group don't like what if games. Reading any naval history of the war gives lots of almost happened battles.

I know that the US had Lexington Saratoga and Langley, I'm not sure what else. I really have no idea what the Japanese had as far as carriers are concerned. but the main weapon at this point was still definitely the battleship. I find that this definitely makes more interesting games in carrier strikes. and i like dreadnoughts. carriers will definitely be involved in whatever campaign I do but in a supporting role.

I too AM rather sad about the not liking what if scenarios. I have a very substantial ww1 collection that gathering dust now because of it.

I have the majestic 12 games product that you referenced. I believe it's called flashpoint orange. it has a rule system and a bunch of stats for ships, but no real campaign system to speak of are any background to put their if I'm remembering correctly. could be wrong I read it two years ago.

thanks for all the responses and keep them coming

Check ebay for a copy of "Plan Orange" by Avalanche Press. It is long out of print but is very good on the forces and the what ifs of the era.

Not a page turner but it shows the evolution of the plan from the 1890s through WWII, focusing esp. on the 1930s.

link

Also, The Great Pacific War by Hector Bywater is a projection that allegedly got him whacked by the Japanese because "he knew too much."

All this means I intend to do it sometime!

I can heartily second the Bywater recommendation. The Great Pacific War is a great read, and written by an authority on naval warfare. I plan to list the battles that occur and then re-fight them. Great stuff!

War plan Orange developed throughout the 20s and 30s so you need to first pick a date. The most important thing is indeed the changing effect of aircraft. It is not the aircraft carriers that are most important in this buy the way as sizable ones were in service by the late 20s at the latest. What is important is the type and especially the range of the aircraft available.

Broadly your choice is early 20s when you can more or less ignore aircraft. Mid late 20s when they will start to have an affect mainly on scouting. Early to mid thirties, when you have effective longer range scouting and a 'first strike' aircraft capability but at a short enough range and little enough power that you will probably not do decisive damage before the battlefleets clash – more a 'softening up' process. Then into the later 30s when it is starting to look more like what we got in WW2 but with lesser numbers / power – the Shokaku and Zuikaku, the two best carriers in the world until the Essex class (probably) did not come into service until 41 for instance.

If you are interested in this idea would very much recommend the book 'Kaigun' by Evans and Peattie that looks into this potential clash from the Japanese perspective, plans, doctrine, equipment etc.

A fellow using the handle afrodri offers a number of the what if ships mentioned in Bywater's book. Others in the WWI line from Wartimes Journal and, Shapeways,

link

1/700 scale Japanese aircraft can be had from Hasegawa and US from Trumpeter though you may have to search eBay for them.

From my reading, it seems to me that aircraft are an essential part of War Plan Orange. in the 20s they weren't very effective, so would mostly be scouts, but they'd be present. WWI had proven their utility.

A different way around the aircraft: set the war earlier. I started developing a purely naval pre-dreadnought campaign based on Plan Orange, set in 1908. My excuse was to play with the US and Japanese pre-dreadnought fleets some of us had lying around, but avoiding those pesky airplanes is another valid naval gamer motivation.

the issue came up in that it seems most in my gaming group are opposed to making up engagements for the war.

That's odd. I understand being opposed to really wild or implausible match-ups (everybody has a peronal limit past which suspension of disbelief is impossible), but the "what if" scenario is the root of all naval wargaming. Navy staffs used to conduct such wargames themselves to prepare for plausible or even planned conflicts. Ever seen the photos of the Japanese navy wargaming Pearl Harbor?

That particular photo may be a propaganda fake, but the principle stands: navies practice for war, and make a lot more plans than they execute.

Even if you ignore the actual plans made by the British and German navies that might have been tried, there are plenty of plausible "almost happened" scenarios in the WWI North Sea theater. Jutland-like battles between the Grand Fleet and HSF almost happened multiple times, even a few times after the actual battle, prevented only by bare happenstance. The Avalanche Press scenario books from the Great War at Sea series are an excellent source of "what if" and "almost happened" scenarios.

- Ix

Another suggestion: before you go off and start a whole new project that doesn't involve a single ship from your Grand Fleet or High Seas Fleet collections, consider expanding to include navies they really did fight, or almost fought. When I was in the same position you are now with half of each WWI North Sea Fleet, I started buying WWI Russians and playing Baltic WWI scenarios. To have even fights in the Baltic you do have to make up scenarios from whole cloth, but if you don't mind playing dogpile-on-the-GM games (GM plays the bad guys, all the player cooperate as the good guys) you can play actual battles of the Baltic campaign and run the totally overmatched Russians yourself. There is no better way to simulate the dangers of minefields and shore batteries than to keep them secret from the players until it's too late.

- Ix

"Sudden Storm" supposes a 'come as you are' war between the US and Japan in 1937. All the elements (ships, aircraft, land forces) are as they would have been in 1937. The primary difference from WWII, is that the battleship is still the dominant naval arbitrator; carriers (and, more importantly, their aircraft) are much reduced in their effectiveness. In addition, this is the time before the Type 93 24" torpedo had made it to the fleet and before the USN's Mk 6 torpedo exploder had been adopted, torpedo combat is even between the two.

What you get with the game is a full OOB for all the IJN and USN along with a full OOB for all air units, and a full campaign system for generating battles. Plus access to a very large selection of additional downloads for the game (such as full maps of all the major ports and their defenses, aircraft counters for every unit in the game, the option of foreign intervention, airships (yes, the Macon and Akron are resurrected for this option), and more).

And while its tilted towards GQ3 (duh!), the game can be used with any tactical rule set. So if Naval Thunder is your choice, you can use it.

The game also has the plus of being able to be replayed over and over since there is no one perfect (game breaking) strategy. Every game is different (in the 5 games I've played, every one was completely different and the outcomes just as random).

All in all, a good investment by my group.

The basic problem with WW1 naval combat is that the Brits are overwhelmingly powerful, even if the US is not involved on their side. The doctrine of the time encouraged concentration of the battle fleet, and thus they tended to sit in port waiting for a giant engagement that happened all of once.

Not many opportunities for interesting battles there.

If you posit that Italy stayed with the Central Powers, and A-H had fuel and actual useful crews for it's ships, then you can create some not-too-far-fetched interesting Med scenarios.

There's a similar problem with Orange gaming – Japan was relatively weaker in the '20s and '30s compared to the US than it was in the actual war, and it was still massively overmatched then, IRL. Who is the US supposed to be fighting in addition to Japan, to make it interesting, the UK? Then you get the other problem.
-Kle.

Another wrinkle could be an Anglo-Japanese war in this time period, after their relations had deteriorated. A friend and I did this in the late 1980s, using a lot of scratch-built ships. I used the Glorious and Courageous in their "light battle cruiser" configuration, and my oponent had the Kako and Furutaka with 6 single 8" gunes, etc. Given the similarity in designs at the time, it was fairly balanced.

For an 'Orange' scenario, you do not have to play very fast and lose with history to make it balanced.

The 5 Power treaty sign in Washington gave the formula 5/5/3/1.75/1.75 for Naval strength (US, UK Japan, France, Italy). This gives Japan a fleet in theory only 60% the size of the US. However, until the late 30s the US did not build up to its treaty limits – Japan always did so they were somewhat stronger than 60% most years.

Then of course you can assume that the Japanese fleet will always be concentrated in the event of a war. The US fleet is split between the Pacific and Atlantic fleets. Factor in either / or the US having to maintain some ships in the Atlantic or quite possibly a scenario where for political reasons the US fleet being ordered to sail to relieve US forces in the Philippines before the US fleet is fully concentrated in Pearl and you get far more balanced forces.

The basic problem with WW1 naval combat is that the Brits are overwhelmingly powerful

Not at the beginning of the war (vs. Germany). The period until early 1915 was the best time for the High Seas Fleet to engage the Grand Fleet, since the Royal Navy had so many major fleet units detached around the world or still working up. Even better (for wargamers), the British were also still unclear on their own doctrine and failed to concentrate the fleet properly during interception missions – only luck prevented a disastrous fleet encounter during the Dec 1914 German raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby. If the Germans had managed to sink or severely damage some of the best British dreadnoughts (and, likely, battlecruisers) during that encounter, the two fleets in the North Sea would have been much closer to parity, possibly leading to bolder German actions and a greater likelihood of major fleet encounters.

If you posit that Italy stayed with the Central Powers, and A-H had fuel and actual useful crews for it's ships, then you can create some not-too-far-fetched interesting Med scenarios.

This is one of my favorite "what if" naval campaign settings for WWI, and I've played the Mediterranean portion of it many times. The combined Italian/Austro-Hungarian/German Med fleet is a very close match for the Anglo-French fleet, and there are numerous interesting strategic gambits for both sides. I will blather on at great length about this if Dobber asks me to, but this subject is pretty far off his original topic. :-)

- Ix

There is always the other war plan, though I forget the colour, that pitted the US against the British.

In terms of conversion there was a guy called wolfs ship yard that did some excellent line drawings of what if ww1 ships that were modernized between the wars. I used these to convert the navwar tiger for the Dutch fleet.

I believe that was plan red plan crimson involved Canada. this thread is getting extremely interesting, yellow Admiral please do go on I'm quite intrigued by this possibility.

the only issue would doing plan red is I'm a little bit of an Anglophile so I won't know which side to be on, lol.

keep it coming guys is giving me a lot of food for thought
Many thanks,
Joe

There are actually Wikipedia pages on the Rainbow plans now: link

Pretty cool.

- Ix

Depending on how plausible you want it, Red is far more problematic then Orange from a History point of view.

First problem was that it is difficult to think of any plausible scenario where it may happen. When looking at the renewal of the Anglo Japanese alliance in 21 the British kind of make it clear that they would have dropped it like a shot if they could get a US alliance to replace it. As the Americans were not interested they were in a quandary as to what to do – this was resolved by the negotiations at the Washington Conference where the Americans insisted on the dropping of the Anglo Japanese Alliance as part of any deal.

British actions at the conference also made it clear that they had already accepted the position of playing second fiddle to American leadership in fact, if not yet willing to openly admit it.

So the Americans would have had to have been trying really really hard to push the British into a war in the 20s and 30s for it to have happened and why would they? As The United States and British Empires interests and broad world view were so well aligned.

The other factor in all this is if the Americans did push the British into a position where they could not have avoided war, everyone (well everyone whose job it was to know about such things) knew that the Japanese would have found some reason to have intervened – probably in the 20s and almost defiantly in the 30s. So any attempt in the US to launch Red, would have most likely also have triggered Orange, which would have in fact for the US Navy created a sort of pooey brown, which they would have been most keen to not step in. So although there were some in the US that might have contemplated a war with the British, the Navy would have most firmly put the kibosh on it before anything stupid happened.

Mind you, if you are looking at doing a complex campaign it would be interesting. 2 outgunned US fleets in the Pacific and Atlantic, linked through the Panama canal having to hold off the Japanese and British Fleets at the same time.

The Mediterranean "what if" campaign with Italy among the Central Powers is my favorite WWI make-believe to date (for naval gaming).

In real life, Italy was a signatory of the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy) and was expected to enter the war on that side, but as the war started Italy dove into the loophole that the war wasn't defensive and was therefore not obligated by treaty to join in. Internally, the Italians were disunited and couldn't decide which neighbor they resented more, France or Austria. They eventually played the good Condottieri and waited to see which way the wind was blowing. If the Schlieffen Plan hadn't bogged down, they might have invaded France instead, and tried to take parts of southern France, Corsica, and a bunch of North African colonies in the peace deal. My favorite scenario assumes that Italy starts the war greedier and more optimistic about its chances against France, joining the Triple Alliance in August as the war breaks out.

In the interest of having a long naval campaign with lots of important naval battles, I scripted a narrative of the land war that emphasizes naval actions:

• The attack over the Alps into France bogs down badly (just like the Isonzo Front into Austria did). It's not an unreasonable assumption – in WWI defense was far stronger than offense, mountain fronts were hellishly harder to attack, and in real life Austria-Hungary fought an Alpine defensive campaign that cost the Italians 3 years, 600,000 lives and immense treasure. I assume France could have done the same, and ignore that front as a stagnant mess of high casualties and near-zero territorial gains. That sounds like WWI in Europe, doesn't it?
  
• Italy wants more colonies in North Africa, and France has a bunch to take. In real life, the French used a lot of North African troops to help defend France; in the campaign, Italy would try to prevent that and tie them down in Africa. This opens up all kinds of interesting naval mini-campaigns in a colonial sideshow theater encompassing Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.
  

This can run as a two-player campaign (just France and Italy, if we assume all the other powers go off to mind their own business elsewhere), or as a 4-5 player campaign (France, Britain, Italy, Austria-Hungary; a German player is optional). The nice thing about the multi-player campaign is that it fractures the coordination of the allies, just like real life. The hard part is keeping 4-5 players playing a campaign.

There's a big Western Mediterranean scenario called "The Triple Alliance War Plan" in Great War at Sea: Mediterranean which is a good starting point. My 1914 start scenarios have all been very similar. GWAS:Med doesn't go any farther than that first showdown, however, and I think the potential for ongoing naval scenarios is huge:

• Both France and Italy could try to break the stalemate in the Alps by conducting an invasion behind the Alpine lines. However, to safely conduct a landing, the enemy battlefleet has to be neutralized, which means winning a major fleet battle first.
  
• The Franco-Italian colonial war in North Africa would be much like the WWII campaigns in reverse, but slower (no tanks!). Both sides would be trying to ferry reinforcements and supplies to Africa now and then while also trying to intercept the enemy's. Lots of potential naval missions, and some very interesting problems involving shipping routes, convoy size and timing, and allocation of prosaic naval resources like small warships, mines and shore batteries.
  
• Italy should have a special victory bonus for capturing Corsica. The Italians considered it Italian land unfairly held by the French, so there would be a lot of political pressure to take it while the war lasted. It would be a silly side show to the Austrians, Germans and British, leaving it a shoestring operation between the Italians and French alone.
  
• If the Entente ever find themselves with naval superiority (like, after winning a big naval battle), an invasion of Sardinia or Sicily might be in order. Either could be seen as a stepping stone toward conquering Italy, a third front to distract the Italian army, and a chance to deny the Triple Alliance of bases close to French and British shipping lanes and ports. To keep the naval game interesting, either invasion should take a long time to conclude (using the "WWI in mountains" excuse again).
  
• What if Graf von Spee didn't attack the Falklands and survived the cross-Atlantic game of cat-and-mouse? It's arguable it would have been more useful to send him to the Mediterranean to join the Triple Alliance fleet, since his cruisers were of little use in the North Sea, but would bolster the Triple Alliance fleet, give Germany a greater presence in the 3-nation war councils there, and give Germany more freedom to pursue German war aims outside the alliance (like disrupting Entente commerce and communications with Africa and the Middle East). The trick would be getting his cruisers past Gibraltar and into the Tyrhennian or Adriatic safely. There's a fun hide-and-seek campaign here, if the Triple Alliance launches "distraction" missions to draw the Entente fleets away from the Straights of Gibraltar while von Spee makes his entrance dash (or is it a dashing entrance?).
  
• Malta was a thorn in Italy's side in the 1940s, so I assume it would be in the Great War as well. Without air power, however, it would be impossible to neutralize, so the Triple Alliance might instead try to capture it. The British had very stout defenses at Valletta and a lot of naval strength based there, making it a challenge. How hard the British (and their French friends) work to keep Malta depends on how strong they are.
  
• With the Triple Alliance fleet around, there would be no Gallipoli campaign, but the Germans would probably push the Turks to capture the Suez, leading to a sort of reverse Gallipoli in the Sinai. The Italians and French would probably be too busy with their life-and-death struggle to participate, and Austria-Hungary would be apathetic, leaving this a side campaign for the British and German players to wage alone.
  

In case the campaign gets lopsided (one side does too well), there are some plausible ways to level the playing field:

• Without the Göben, the Turks are too weak to oppose the Russians alone in the Black Sea. If the Triple Alliance is doing too well (esp. if there's no German player) the German units can be sent out of theater on the excuse that they've gone to help the Turks.
  
• If the Entente is doing too well, British ships can be "withdrawn to the North Sea" to face off the Germans, or alternatively dreadnoughts and battlecruisers can be replaced with pre-dreadnoughts and armored cruisers to maintain British quantity with reduced quality.
  

The Great War at Sea: Mediterranean game is the best place to start with this campaign. It provides the map, rules for campaign movement, lots of background, and a whole host of scenario ideas. If you add in the amphibious invasion rules from later copies of the rules, you can do the island campaigns without too many adjustments.

- Ix

BTW: The Great War at Sea: Mediterranean map shipping routes are wrong if Italy is an enemy of Britain and France.

The GWAS rules include raiding shipping along shipping lanes, and the shipping lanes are drawn on the map. Since the maps show WWI as it actually happened, there are shipping lanes between Italy and France, and a shipping lane from Messina to Tripoli that goes right across Malta.

On my laminated map I used grease pencils to erase the La Spezia-Toulon and Messina-Tripoli lanes, and wet-erase markers to create a new shipping lane that goes from the heel of Italy, past Corfu, straight south to the tip of Cyrenaica, then due West along the coast of North Africa to Tripoli. I have no data to back me up; I was just imagining how traffic would route itself through enemy-infested seas. Malta is a serious problem for the Italians.

- Ix

A word of warning:

Most naval rules are paced inappropriately for campaign gaming. Typically, damage accrual is accelerated, and in some cases (like General Quarters) speeds are reduced, to make set piece battles more decisive, which gamers tend to prefer. However, in a campaign, you want results like real life, where in any battle a few ships get sunk, a few more get critically injured, and the rest get away. Most naval battle games tend to end with one side slaughtered and the other limping home, and with results like that there can never be a second campaign battle.

I originally thought the problem was player tactics, and that a campaign context would encourage players to choose flight over a heroic fight to the death. That turns out to be difficult or impossible using most miniatures rules, and only partly because of cavalier player tactics. I had to spend quite a bit of time reducing the rate of damage and increasing the rate of speed in GQ2 before it got to reasonable levels for campaign gaming. I've started tinkering with GQ3/FAI for the same reason, but that game is much harder to adjust, so I'm not done yet.

- Ix

Some other pre-WWII naval campaign ideas to look into:

The Russo-Japanese War. It's actually a really even fight with a lot of interesting strategic issues. Just buy the Avalanche Press game The Russo-Japanese War, use the game for the campaign and your choice of miniatures rules for the battles. It's an excellent two-player campaign as written.

The Second Russo-Japanese War. Again, you could use The Russo-Japanese War, but Russian and Japanese dreadnought fleets of the late 1910s or early 1920s. If WWI hadn't started when it did, Russia and Japan would have eventually gone to war again (like they did in 1939). You could start it off with a Russian invasion of Japan, or a Japanese attack on Vladivostok. Either way, it's an excuse to fight a Second Battle of Tsushima with dreadnoughts.

The 1914 Russo-Turkish War. Had WWI not started in 1914, the Turks would have found themselves with a naval advantage in the Black Sea by the end of the year, as their new dreadnoughts arrived (the ones that Britain took over as HMS Agincourt and HMS Erin in WWI). Since both the Young Turks and the Tsar faced considerable internal dissension, either might have sought a limited war with a traditional enemy to distract the public. Throw in a few German pre-dreadnoughts of the Brandenburg class (German "arms sales" to their Turkish ally, and a nice way for Germany to fight a proxy war against the hated Russians) to motivate the Turks. This campaign can be fought with the Great War at Sea: Mediterranean game, which includes the entire scope of the Black Sea from the WWI era.

WWI Baltic Sea campaign. The WWI campaign in the Baltic is actually pretty interesting, and very even. The Germans had a much bigger and better navy, but kept all the modern units in the North Sea operating against the British Grand Fleet. What was left in the Baltic was a collection of pre-dreadnoughts, old cruisers, and the torpedo craft too small to operate in heavy seas, altogether only slightly more force than the Russian Baltic navy. The Russians started the war with 2 dreadnoughts and eventually completed 2 more, and though the Tsar refused to let them out of port, gamers aren't quite so shy. This entire campaign can be fought with the Great War at Sea game Jutland. You can buy all the miniatures in 1/6000, 1/3000 scale, or 1/2400 scale. 1915 is the most interesting year, but 1914 and 1916 have potential too, especially if you start playing "what if" scenarios.

The Adriatic War. Italy wanted Trieste back, and if WWI hadn't started, they might have started a war with Austria on their own eventually (assuming they could find a way to keep Germany neutral). So let's say Hungary decides to secede from Austria in the early 1920s and Italy declares war on Austria to "help" the Hungarian Revolution (and acquire Trieste in the process) – by then Italy was supposed to have 10 dreadnoughts, Austria 8. If you want to even the score, assume the Germans still have a Mittelmeer Division based in Pola, with a couple battlecruisers and scout cruisers they can "sell" to Austria at the beginning of the war (complete with German-speaking crews, no less). Perhaps they will all show up to fight near the island of Lissa.

The 1940s Anglo-Japanese War. (Not exactly "pre" WWII, more "althernate" WWII) What if the Japanese didn't attack Pearl Harbor, and just went after British and Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia? If they avoided attacking Australia and limited the war to Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, New Guinea, etc., the US public might not have accepted a war with Japan. With the UK barely hanging on against Germany, it's hard to see this going well for the Royal Navy, so it might not be a good game unless you unrealistically bolster the British side. It would be fun to fight the carrier battles between British and Japanese carriers, though. They had very different doctrines and equipment.

The First Japanese-American War. In 1908, while the Great White Fleet is in the Phillippines, the Japanese Combined Fleet attacks it in Manila. Several second-class ships are sunk and the main US battlefleet is driven out of port to limp back to Guam. The Japanese army invades the Phillippines and while the US Navy regroups, mobilizes and repairs, Japan conquers most of the islands. The Japanese try to negotiate a peace but America wants war and Roosevelt will give it to them. The US pre-dreadnought navy must escort an invasion force 7000 miles across the Pacific and fight off the Combined Fleet to conduct landings in the Phillippines, then maintain the supply lines long enough to win them back. Cruisers operating out of Phillippine ports, Formosa and Guam contest the lifelines of both sides, and the two battlefleets fight occasional big battles in the Phillippine Sea. No airplanes, no submarines, no dreadnoughts, just a grudge match between new navies of little battlesships with thick armor and big guns.

- Ix

Getting right back to the original posting: I totally forgot about the Avalanche Press game Pacific Crossroads. It's a game of a Japanese-American war immediately after WWI (the cover says 1917, the scenarios mostly take place in 1919). It's basically Plan Orange with WWI fleets. It's also one of the cheaper AP games ($30).

- Ix

For a scholarly examination of the USN's Plan Orange war plans, I'd recommend Edward Miller's "War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945".

I would like to thank everyone for their contributions!
I shall collect the books recommended and read them, and set to getting the miniatures. I am having a little trouble finding US battlewagons that are not modernized ww2 configurations.

I would like to especially thank yellow admiral. your information is greatly appreciated and the alternate scenarios are all very interesting. I am not entirely sure which one is the one that I find the most intriguing.

many thanks to all
~Joe

GHQ makes (very expensive) versions of the US WWI battleships in 1/2400 scale.

Navwar makes nearly every ship that ever served in a war and many that never did in 1/3000. They're not great to look at, but they're cheap.

You can get the WWI and the WWII versions of the US and Japanese fleets in 1/6000 from Figurehead miniatures.

- Ix

Actually you could do another hypothetical war I've fought on a number of occasions: The Second Great Northern War:

Norway and Sweden v. Denmark and the Netherlands.

Pre-dreadnaughts but smaller.

Do you know a source for miniatures of the Scandinavian pre-dreadnoughts? I'm not aware of any.

- Ix

Not sure I understand about General Quarters having its speed reduced. The ships move at their scale speeds, Sudden Storm is a very much come as you are affair, without too much what-if bolstering. Definitely a game for the big gun aficionados, plus it has a land game and a very detailed OoB for both sides. It is a very immersive experience for the players. Full disclosure—I co-wrote it.

Not sure I understand about General Quarters having its speed reduced.

In the original General Quarters (GQ-1 and GQ-2), speeds were cut in half in a misguided attempt to improve game play. To correct this, all one has to do is double the published speeds.

Mark

Actually, the speeds weren't cut in half. The speeds and actions are consistent for a 3 min turn. So if you want to be correct, you count each turn as 3 mins. (That's from the author, BTW). That being said, it really doesn't matter 99.99% of the time since the overwhelming number of games played are stand alones.

Actually, the speeds weren't cut in half. The speeds and actions are consistent for a 3 min turn. So if you want to be correct, you count each turn as 3 mins. (That's from the author, BTW). That being said, it really doesn't matter 99.99% of the time since the overwhelming number of games played are stand alones.

I'm going by what he (Lonnie Gill, the author) says on 2 of the GQ-1 rulebook: "Since each 'Game Turn' represents 6 minutes, movement has been halved to keep the players from steaming their forces out of the playing area too quickly …". True that 30 years later he tells a different story on page IX of the GQ-3 rulebook (which is what you are quoting), but memories can get foggy after 30 years so I put more faith in the original version.

As you probably know, it matters whether you move the correct tactical distance in an hour, or only half that distance, when you use campaign rules with relatively short campaign game turns. This is because if the tactical battle lasts for the duration of a campaign turn, you have to allow for additional forces to join/leave the tactical battle. Some of my campaigns use a 2-hour turn, and most of my games occur within the context of a campaign.

Mark H.

Well, Mark, I'm inclined to believe Lonnie's own interpretation on this one (he is the one who WROTE the rules, afterall). We discussed this issue at length one time and his own assessment is as I stated and that he based the amount of 'action' in a turn on a 3 min basis. You can double the speeds (to reflect a 6 min turn) or leave them as is (to reflect a 3 min turn); either is viable.

Coastal2, note that he wrote *both* of the contradictory explantions (31 years apart), so *both* are "Lonnie's own interpretation". The question is which to believe.

Actually, if one believed that an author had correctly designed the amount of game "action" for a 3-minute turn, one probably wouldn't want to double just the speed, as this would distort the game dynamics, with various tactical consequences. Such distortion would be avoided if one merely limited one's self to changing the time scale, as suggested on page IX of GQ-3. This is because doing so would change *both* the movement rate, *and* the rate at which you inflict damage, equally, in proportion. Perhaps this is what you intended to say …

Mark H.

I've always gone with what the GQ1 and 2 rules themselves say in print: the speeds are halved in the rules and each turn represents 6 minutes of battle time. Accordingly I doubled the speeds to get better realism for all the reasons Mark lists above.

After a lot of games that way, I still felt the ships were sinking and crippling each other too fast, so a few years ago I switched to using d10s for rolling damage, to reduce the rate of damage accrual. That seems to have changed the pace of the game sufficiently that now a ship with enough remaining speed can actually withdraw from a battle gone bad if the fleet is maneuvered correctly. Which, in turn, means there can now be a *second* campaign battle, and maybe even a third! :-)

So far the pace of FAI battles seems better, so I haven't made any adjustments to speed or rate of damage accrual. (Though I'm still trying to find a more satisfactory way to adjudicate torpedoes…)

- Ix

We played a good deal of GQI&II back in the day. It arguably was one of the earliest successful examples of "fast-play" rules, so hats off to Lonnie in that respect.

I recall the game designer note that movement distance was halved for game play purposes. A simple test to determine the validity of the statement is to compare tabletop movement distance of a ship at her known maximum speed to the maximum tabletop range of, say, a WW1 British 15in gun whose maximum reach was known to be +/- 24k yards.

My impression after extensive play back then was that the degree of damage effect inflicted within a very short period of historically represented time could be quite dramatic. We developed several modest rule "hacks" to moderate this effect – one being to alter speed reduction versus hull box losses from a linear to a square root relationship … which helped a lot.

B

An interesting variant of Orange is to assume that the Washington conference never took place. You get the Lexington class battle cruisers, Tosa class battleships, etc.

Actually, if you want to be historically accurate, you'll probably not get all the Lexington class BCs. Even before the Washington conference, the USN had already proposed completing at least 2 as CVs. And, for the IJN, beyond the initial BCs and BBs laid down, it is highly doubtful that Japan would be able to afford the later proposed BBs and BCs.