"Naval War AAR: Norway 1940" Topic

Last saturday, I've been able to play another playtest game for my Naval War rules. My opponent has been very kind to write a very nice battle-report of the encounter; Enjoy!

5 April 1940
Saltfjord, Norway

During the preparation for the assault on Narvik, the Kriegsmarine high command receive reports that the British carrier HMS Glorious has been sighted making emergency repairs at Bodø. Hoping to catch the ship defenseless and strike a decisive blow, Raeder dispatches Konteradmiral Oskar Kummetz's I Kreuzergruppe to the area. His forces comprise three squadrons:

Admiral Hipper (Hipper-class heavy cruiser)
Blücher (Hipper-class heavy cruiser)
Lützow (Deutschland-class heavy cruiser)

Z21 Wilhelm Heidkamp (Zerstörer 1936)
Z10 Hans Lody (Zerstörer 1934)
Z11 Bernd von Arnim (Zerstörer 1934)
Z12 Erich Giese (Zerstörer 1934)

Albatros (Typ 23 Torpedoboot)
Möwe (Typ 23 Torpedoboot)

Upon arrival at the Saltfjorden, however, it becomes apparent that the situation is much less favourable than anticipated. Glorious is nowhere to be seen, and instead a Royal Navy cruiser division emerges from the fog:

HMS Devonshire (London-class heavy cruiser)
HMS Berwick (Kent-class heavy cruiser)
HMS Sheffield (Southampton-class light cruiser)
HMS Galatea (Arethusa-class light cruiser)

HMS Janus (J-class destroyer)
HMS Javelin (J-class destroyer)
HMS Codrington (A-class destroyer)

Although the German cruisers, and especially the pocket battleship Lützow, theoretically outgun their British counterparts, this advantage is soon rendered moot: a large squall is drifting West out of the fjord, between the Bliksvær and Nordarnøya islands, and hides the fleets from each other before they can exchange fire. Only HMS Sheffield can be seen by the heavy cruisers and, with poor visibility and rough seas, the opening salvoes all miss their mark…

Follow the link to read the rest of it:
link

great!

I love your downpoor…

Robert

Yeah, that downpour is a very clever piece of modelling.

I really enjoyed the write up as well.

Wow – inspirational indeed!

I love to see a naval game that strives to have the same visual aesthetic as a land game and this has it in spades! Love everything; the squall shower looks superb (my personal favourite), the templates for torps are fab and the fires look amazing.

I even like the blue opaque dice colour aesthetic!

Thanks for sharing,

Nick

Fascinating. So very well done. Great photographs and report.

How did you get "into" this type of wargaming?
Can you recommend a couple of good books and introductory rule sets?

Thanks

Well, I started out on the very 'light' side of things with War at Sea, which is a beer-and-pretzels collectable miniatures game. I really loved the scale (although they are by all means way to big for any kind of believable ground-scale) of the ships at 1:1800, big enough to see a nice amount of detail and for the ships to have a real 'presence' on the table.

War at Sea is pretty abstract and a bit too simple in its mechanics for my taste, so I tried to find another ruleset that would give me a little more detail with the same amount of suspense of a beer-and-pretzel game, which turned out to be pretty hard. So I decided to write my own.

A good book I'm currently reading is "On Seas Contested: The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War" by Vincent O'Hara, W. David Dickson and Richard Worth.

It really gives you nice outlines of every nations' objectives and attitude to the war at sea.