"A Different Way to Play Naval" Topic

I'm used to playing WW2 naval with one side all Axis ships and the other side all Allied, usually based on real battles. So when a friend suggested a four person free-for-all to entertain a youngster it sounded like a different thing to do.
I set up six fleets, US, UK, French, German, Italian, Japanese, German with each having two BB/BC, one CA, one CL and 2 DD totaling 100,000 tons. Some countries had slight changes to reflect the size of their ships, but for the most part it worked out. Then everyone started at one corner of a six foot square table and we went at it.
As in most cases in games of this sort two players on opposite sides picked on a third and left the fourth to catch up, and we didn't get to play as long as I'd have liked but the winner was the kid, who put down a German heavy cruiser.
I'm setting up the next one, one 7,000 ton light cruiser and five 2,000 ton destroyers per side. Probably some islands in the middle too…

Pics maybe?

I have thought about an all battleship confrontation, The best battleship from each nation. A naval cage match as it were.

I ran a game at Little Wars in which the players drew a card for their ship, one side axis and the other allies. The ships were from any of the nations on that side.

Kind of sounds like a miniature version of the old Avalon Hill card game Naval War except that it was only capital ships and ships of all nations were available.

Play World of Warships.

I've done this with age of sail, and we did something similar with previous dreadnoughtsection at the NHS many years ago. Great fun :)

To illustrate the nationality differences demonstrated by GQ3.3 (e.g. nationality-specific Gunfire CRTs), I did a scenario with up to 6 different squadrons from 6 different nationalities. Took place in 1936, and everyone's objective centered around the tramp freighter Bantu Wind.

Anyone get the reference?

Were there any "Top Men" aboard one of the vessels? My group does this fairly regularly. I've got most historical vessels for various potential conflicts in the 30's and 40's, and it can make for some interesting match-ups.

Correct!

"Who?"

"Top" … "men".

The intro that I give each player:
The year is 1936. In the United States, two agents from U.S. Army Intelligence inform Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones from the University of Chicago of Nazi German activities in archeology, including a massive excavation site in Egypt – a site that an intercepted cable indicates to Indy is the location of the lost Ark of the Covenant, the powerful chest bearing the Ten Commandments that the Nazis can use to obliterate any enemy. After almost a movie-full of action and adventure, Indy and Marion Ravenwood sail for the U.S. on board a small tramp freighter with the Arc.

For the purposes of this scenario, the Arc is just about the worst kept secret of all time, and several nations have dispatched squadrons to intercept the Arc. Every nationality has the same orders:
1. Capture the Arc, or
2. Make sure no one else captures the Arc.

What intrigued me was a pilot game we had about a naval armaments race. We used as a base the South American Naval Rivalry of pre WWI in which each team consisted of the President, (one more or less a dictator) one a strongman, and one a generally democratic government, a minister of he Interior, the Army, and the Navy. Each had to submit a planned budget for the years 1890 to 1914, with builds and programs. The aim was to balance the needs of national defence, the army, the nation at large. Do you for example build a battleship as part of next years naval program, or spend it on education and industrialization? The aim was to prepare for war. It was a pilot game in that we were fleshing out the rules and procedures. Went well. We never got to do the full game as the design outran reality, in that we realized that we had to include other persons on the team such as opposition leaders and other government functionaries including the church and we despaired of ever getting enough players.

In the pilot game though it worked rather well. Oddly enough it was the democracy that built an ambitious naval program, and the others more or less eschewed it for internal development and improvements. One power decided it was far better to build up its fishery protection fleet, exploration vehilces and a class of hybrid cruiser-carriers (seaplanes0 for use in patrol and in air sea rescue. If here was a fault in the game it was that we allowed players to do their own thing too much, and they wandered off into special projects that were quite realistic and suited hteir fancy rather than with great military utility. One country built the Rio De Jenairo (HMS Agincourt) but specially fitted it out as a "diplomatic ship" for sailing around the ports of the world putting on diplomatic balls, receptions and showing the flag. It had FOUR bands one of which a full orchestra for putting on plays and operas on the fantail.

We never did get into a war.

We had the second game a few days ago, one 7,000 ton Lt cruiser and 5 2,000 ton destroyers per player. We had an extra kid so I put the youngsters next to their dads to help keep their minds on the game, big mistake. The kids pounced on their dads and I ended up sailing across the board without anyone to fight. One dad got in close with torpedoes and sank his son's cruiser, the other dad executed a perfect torpedo attack with four destroyers and proceeded to miss with all of them (about a 10% chance). I was waiting for everyone else to run out of torpedoes then I was going to clean up two enemy fleets but we had to call the game before I started my run…
Next game is carriers. I've cobbled together a Sparviero to go with the Acquila and will try to make a Weser to go with the Zeppelin, then every TF will have either one big carrier, one cruiser and 4 destroyers or 2 smaller carriers and 4 destroyers. Should be fun…

Here's the Sparviero:
[URL=http://s275.photobucket.com/user/murvihill/media/100_1391_zpsxevjwofr.jpg.html]

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Two hunks of bass wood and a sheet of plastic…It's 3 1/4" long.

I did that last year at Nav Con with all cruisers from WWII- Axis vs Allies