"Never Built Warships collecting and gaming thoughts" Topic

Over the last several months I've been getting from Shapways several 1/2400th scale Never Built ships like H-44 and Super Yamato and I wanted to know some things from you.

First off how many of you have any of the Never Built ships?

Second if any of you have any have you given any thought of gaming with the Never Built ships?

Third if any of you have gamed with the Never how were they in the game?

Finally for those of you who don't have any of the Never Built ships would you get any of them?

Back in the day, I gamed using the USS Montana. Overall, it never really dominated the game.

I'm generally not really interested in them.

Perhaps the one I would consider, just for grins, is the Graf Zeppelin, which might make for an interesting scenario or three, while it serves as a major target for the British navy and aircraft.

I bought a lot of the 1/6000 Figurehead WWI never-builts. The WWI French battlefleet doubles in size if you use them all. :-)

There are so many actual historical scenarios and "what if" scenarios that use existing ships, I never felt much need to pull out the ones that never launched. I eventually decided it was far more interesting to use the "built but never used" and "never fully utilized" designs (which has lead to a very expensive fascination with pre-dreadnoughts and ironclads). In the WWII era, I've never had much interest in the never-never-ships, except a periodically recurring obsession with German, French and Italian aircraft carriers. I do own a painted Béarn, but haven't ever used it.

The proposed designs that never left the drawing board are fascinating and can be fun to collect and paint up. The WWI versions I tried tended to outperform the historical counterparts they were meant to defeat, but I think "proposed" designs tend to be overrated too. The translation from 2D paper design to 3D steel warship tends to compromise some of the theoretical performance characteristics.

- Ix

I've got pretty much all of the interwar ships that were cancelled by the 1921 Washington Naval Conference. Fun to 'what if' and balance some OOB match ups but they are all essentially just upgunned and upsized WW1 ships and not monsters.

I have read about the never builts and found them interesting but I see no need to buy and game with them.

The ones I might be interested in are the ones from the hypothetical war postulated by Bywater to take place between the US and Japan in the 30's but even there the actual ships of the time are more in my interests.

Allen57 someone on Shapeways does make some of the Bywater ships like the Alaska,Galveston,Albany and Kaga and Akagi.

And someone else makes the Tillman Battleship which is not part of the Bywater ships but it looks interesting.

I for one welcome our new Never Built Ship Overlords.

I don't have any, but certainly want to get at least a few Z-Plan ships at some point. I know it borders on sci-fi, but a Germany-dominated Europe vs the USN for control of the Atlantic seems to have interesting game possibilities.

Of course, another way to increase Kriegsmarine strength is to assume they seize control of the French fleet in '40, somewhat more plausible!

If it wasn't for never-builts and what-ifs I would not have enough to build.

Seriously though, many of the fleets I build have some element of never-builts and what-ifs in them. For example,
my Ten-Go All-In scenario has Yamato,Hatsuse (Yamato with 6 x 20), 2 x B-65's and a 5-turret-forward Tone type light cruiser (<-- original scheme for Ibuki) and I am considering throwing in Tosa modernised or pretending one of the pre-Yamato designs got built…. all in the name of trying to balance a scenario.

Several classes of WWI or 1920s classes that were never completed can be used in my scenarios. For some, the performance of fire control, armor piercing shells and machinery can only be guessed at.

Top row No13 class (with fictitious names):

Bottom to top, French Lyon class, French 1913 Battlecruiser class (with fictitious names), British G3 class.

Spudeus with regards to the Z-Plan Avalanche Press is working on a Z-Plan game complete with counters etc.

I also have 2 of the German Hybrid Carrier Battleships from Shapeways.

I know that years ago Panzershiffe did several of the Never Built ships like the 13-Class,Cruiser P to name a few and now with Shapeways help I have H-44 and several other Never built ships.

And I know that some of these ships aren't really gameable but just having them is great.

Cap, I had heard about the Avalanche game and look forward to it. Viking Forge also has a nice-looking H-class BB.

Germany wasn't the only power with unobtainable designs – who remembers the UK's Habakkuk ice berg/paper/carrier thing? (I think All at Sea actually has stats for it!)

Spudeus I wasn't aware of the Viking Forge H-class BB I know that GHQ has the H-39 and Shapeways has the H-44 as I mentioned before but they recently added the H-41 so that's 3 maybe 4 of the H-class BB's.

With regards to Habakkuk I have one in 1/6000th scale and it dwarfs everything including the H-44.

I just remembered Shapeways doing the British Incomparable class Battleship.

I think if Shapeways weren't around many of the Never Built ships would never see the light of day.

I've recently purchased a few never-weres to flesh out my interwar and early-ww2 fleets in 1/4800. All from various Shapeways shops, and all have been of excellent quality.

I love, love, LOVE them, game with them in a alternate history timeline where the US and Axis are fighting for the Atlantic.

To support my old school 1/1200 gaming I also produce resin models of what ifs. Not the run-of-the-mill Super Yamatos, Montanas and such mind you but things never modeled anywhere like a 1934 US battleship design with 20-12" guns, a US sub with 4-12" guns, an Italian pocket battleship, Italian UP-41 with 9-16" guns, four unbuilt US destroyer designs and many more. Probably over 20 different ones.

Link here:
link

Dave G,
The PT Dockyard

I can understand the desire to use them, but personally I'm not interested in them. The performance tends towards being 'super units' which, as mentioned above, is probably an over estimation of how they really would have fared.

Building ships often leads to compromise and disappointments in the design and designers will make all sorts of claims for the capabilities of their designs which can't be delivered in reality. The building process lays bare the faults, which are never exposed in the case of hypothetical or never-built designs.

Still – the point is to have fun though so if they can add another dimension, great. I like totally hypothetical conflicts for the same reason.

Nick

Minor threadnomancy. I intend to use 2 GrafZeppelin class carriers and an Italian Aquila in my Mediterranean naval campaign. It's a little funky but what the heck!

I suggest looking at some air group alternates as well. For your GZ look at the HE-100 for a compact little fighter, a wheeled version or the AR-196 for VT or the FW-190 as a combined VF/VA/VT. Think of using the JU-187 maybe instead of Stukas as well.

For the Italians may have the RE-2001 or even the G-55 or G-57. Use of the German JU-87T is a possibility too.

I'm doing a little of that. The British carriers are using Fairey Fulmar's for fighters and Swordfish for TB's. The Italians carrier planes are all RE2001's. The Germans have BF-109T fighters, Fiesler Fi167 TB's and JU-87 DB's. For land based planes the Italians are using Fiat BR.20 Cicogna bombers and the Germans He-111's.

I build my own "never builts." Actually I built a lot of 1:1200 never builts and historical ones as well. As for the REAL never builts they never had any great allure. Super Yamato's, Super Bismarks etc., turn into rather boring situations.

What I did do is build a fair number of ships that never were even dreamed of, completely mythical. Like a set of six armored cruisers to go with the 4 Viribus Unitis battleships of the World War One Austro-Hungarian Navy. I also built a several times refit model of HMS Agincourt as if she had been given to the Brazilians and fitted it out as a diplomatic ship. Not really combat ready, but with all the grace and amenities to wander around the world, showing the flag and impressing people.

Of course I did most work of this type in my 1880's epoch of the crazy and incredibly ugly ships of that era, which I gamed with in a set of rules I called "If you build it, it will sink."

Otto wrote – "Of course I did most work of this type in my 1880's epoch of the crazy and incredibly ugly ships of that era,"

Which suggests to me that you must have studied in Paris.

;-)

B

Recently I acquired for a friend some 1/1200th scale Never Built ships and they include:

UP 41 Italian Battleship

Italian Pocket Battleship Project 770 I think

USS New Hampshire 20-14inch guns

The minis were made out of Resin and they look real good and for myself I've had the chance to use some Japanese and German Never built ships in a game many years ago and it was great to see H-class Battleships and other ships go up against the Super Yamato,13-Class and other Japanese ships.

The scale we were using were 1/6000th scale so it was a fun game had by all.

Now if only I could get these in 1/2400th scale then I'd really pleased.