"Tabletop Naval Battles" Topic

This has come up at the club recently. Are tabletop modern naval battles boring. This is for simulations.

link

What are your thoughts?

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Jon
lebanon1982.blogspot.com

Personally I find almost anything post WW2 boring, land or naval. Possibly because it isn't really 'history', I lived through most of it, or because much of it is at the skirmish scale that I don't much care for.

Naval before the 'big gun' Dreadnoughts is a very different kettle of fish for me – almost any era is of interest and some fascinating to me.

I have always found them to be so. To me it seems to be nothing more than lobbing missiles at each other over the horizon. But that presupposes that you are gaming with two major naval forces pitted against each other

It depends on how they are presented. I have played a bunch of Harpoon games, none of which were boring. Many of these were run by the Harpoon rules designers at large conventions, so the prep work on setting up the scenarios were excellent. I have played some submarine engagements with Harpoon as well, and I found them to be quite entertaining. It requires a different level of expectation from the players, as modern naval isn't really a line em up and shoot affair. It's more a seek and evade, find and strike kind of game. This is my experience, anyway.

I think it's boring if the game played is a typical WWII style naval encounter game. Force X versus force Y, mid ocean, with limited decision making from then on, (we are talking of only two surface weapon types on the ships and the choice to launch, arm or recover aircraft). A good modern game, as DC says, should be about giving the player the opportunity to play with all the toys, not just the missiles, especially in the detection phase!

I think it's a question of taste really. I can't comment on modern naval games as I've never played one, but WW2 naval is loads of fun!

Thumping great battleships slugging it out while destroyers gleefully shoot torpedoes at them, as the entire fleet hammer away with its AA against the aircraft that are speeding towards it…

On the other hand, I find Napoleonic wargames to be the perfect cure for insomnia, yet the rest of the club really enjoy them.

Not really, especially if you game at the sharp, low end, with a decent set of rules, e.g. MGBs, MTBs, Missile Boats, etc. vs. each other, or the occasional, larger vessels.

Anything double-blind is rarely boring.

I found that modern naval games are best done with hidden movement and searches done with a GM. Nerves get taught when you know you've been found but you don't have a clue where the enemy is except a lone radar signature. Then the nerves get frazzled waiting for the inbound missiles to be detected. When the GM says to put your task force out and you get a note that you've detected an enemy task force…

We have had a good time with modern naval but it must be done double blind with a GM handling the searches etc.

Terry

I found modern naval gaming quite exciting, but rather slow-paced like a ballroom waltz, when I was playing it 1:1 scale…

The real problem with moderns is that the game is won or lost at detection, and that's hard to make exciting without an umpire.

chulainn
I think it's a question of taste really.

To be completely fair, I think thats the most "correct" answer to this question.

For example, any musket age battle.
Its ridiculous to think that men would actually march out, line up in the open and just 'Stand There' and shoot back and forth at one another, BUT.. that was the way wars of the period were fought.
From a bystanders point of view, that could be seen as pretty boring as well.

Since this thread has been resurrected I may as well add my tuppence-worth…

It is, without a doubt a matter of taste, but some of the comments above I think get to the heart of the problem in that the scenario is the key and there has to be a fair level of uncertainty.

I've been playing through Operation Praying Mantis scenarios recently and they've been real 'edge of the seat' games. In one game with my lad he declared he was pretty tense – he was the Americans and an unidentified air contact was getting closer and closer. In the event he didn't shoot and a commercial airliner passed harmlessly by some 5 miles distant, but the tension was the key to the game.

I've read that modern naval wargaming is a little like a wild west gunfight – tension followed by quick and nasty exchanges. If you like that sort of thing then there's much to be said for it. My games play pretty much in real time, but that's averaged out: an hour or so of identifying the right targets and then manoeuvring to get into the best firing positions, followed by some quick and furious (and heart-stopping) exchanges.

Rules of engagement can also add friction; in the Gulf during the 80s they were pretty restrictive so it gives the 'little guy' in an asymmetric conflict the chance to get the drop on the more powerful force.

I would love to try some Falklands scenarios, but as I say above it's the threat of hitting civilian or merchant traffic and the Rules of Engagement which make the scenarios interesting for me, and for the Falklands these are limited.

I don't play double-blinds due to the lack of an umpire, but blinds for me have produced some really fun and interesting games.

And yes; my preference is for fairly low level games involving Surface Action Groups rather than CVBGs. I would like to try an action such as that but my experience is that the more limited the forces available to a player the less likely he is to throw them away, which again makes for more cautious (but for me, more interesting) games.

As an example here's an AAR – TMP link

I've played this action twice; once solo and once with my son. Both were really tense (including the solo game where I knew that whatever happened I'd be on the winning side!). Again, the game against my lad benefited from blinds and neutrals – he got pretty jumpy trying to figure out which threats to concentrate on!

One more thing – decisions need to be quite quick. I use an activation mechanism with tokens for one side or the other – when a side's token is drawn they must decide which unit to activate in 30 seconds (egg timers from certain games are useful). This means mistakes are more likely – I have activated a surface vessel before now which failed to get a firing solution over the horizon even though I had an aircraft which could have easily done so if I'd activated that first! Similarly, when within the Area Air Defence Zone then aircraft the move at 10 mile increments but these are done pretty much one after so they other player has to jump in if they want to fire – again it adds to the tension and means decisions have to be quick.

So, in short: not everyone's cup of tea, but if the scenario and the environment is right they can be tense, exciting and fun with lots of critical 'decision points'.

Nick

I was surprised when I saw this link from a year old post. I than read Nick's post and I wanted to add to it. Operations off of any unfriendly country can come with certain restrictions.

We all know, "As always, should you or any of your I.M. Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions."

As a fleet battle may be a little over the top here are a few ideas.

A submarine operating off of an unfriendly port has to tack and ensure an unfriendly submarine does not leave port and exit the table. The unfriendly may have orders to exit the table undetected otherwise return to port. It can be tense weapons may not be fired but in most games player do forget the rules of engagement.

Another is a plane is down and a frigate it sent with a helicopter to rescue the crew. An unfriendly craft is on the scene to pick up the American pilot. A gunfight can happen, did I forget to say the pilot is down in unfriendly waters? I have run this game and the green forces was unable to get the pilot, but the was a collision between their frigate and the American. Both sides were able to claim a victory.

The Libyan coast is great for these types of game but do not forget areas like Vietnam, China and North Korea.

Jony663 – looks like we have similar taste in scenarios. It's these low intensity but highly tense scenarios which make good hypothetical games as they 'could' have happened, or in some cases have. The Libyan coast is a rich vein for these incidents, as is India/Pakistan, Greece/Turkey, China/Taiwan, Argentina/Chile.

Warship – the 1960/70's TV series had a number of interesting scenarios – IIRC episode 4 had a defector pick up from a hostile North African coast.

There is also Syria and Egypt in 1973 and always those pesky Albanians.

For those interested in this subject, I heard that Veteran Wargamer podcast was going to do a naval edition soon.

theveteranwargamer.blogspot.com

In the mean time you can listen to 10 great episodes.
For full disclosure, I have no financial interest in the game, so to speak.

Bozkashi Jones 14
..but the tension was the key to the game.

Reading more comments I can appreciate and certainly relate to this.

Though not "table top", It brings to mind the A H game, "MIDWAY". Before you could attack anyone, you had to find them.

The only down side, Midway was just that. An entire game based on a single battle / scenario.
But it was the 'hide n seek' aspect, that made it tense, exciting and it took sometime before it would get boring.