We gamed a 1930s naval game using a variant of Great War at Sea that my buddy found on the internet. I don't know what it's called, but it was simple enough and interesting enough to try it again a couple weeks later. Here's the write-up sans photos I did for the newsletter I send around:
Thrilla Off Manila
by Russ Lockwood
The USS Texas rode the waves somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, circa 1935, searching for the Japanese task force that had launched a sneak bombardment of Manila. US warplan Orange Marmalade was in effect, with my Salt Water Taffy One -- Texas, two cruisers and three Benson-class destroyers -- leading Sam's Salt Water Taffy Two -- two battleships, a cruiser, and three John Paul Jones-class destroyers.
Finally, contact! Two Rising Sun forces -- under Jay and not so silent Dave -- of about the same number and type of ships.
Great War at Sea
Dan umpired a naval game using a clever variant of the Great War at Sea boardgame rules he found somewhere on the internet. The main difference was a single gunnery table with gun factors across the top and 3d6 results down the side. The intersections contained the number of hits on the target, with each hit generating a 2d6 roll on a Hit table that told where the hit occurred (primary guns, secondary guns, tertiary guns, hull, or speed). A quintet of die modifiers added a little spice. The extremes of the die roll hit spectrum contained critical hits, which were resolved on a separate 2d6 table.
In the original GWAS game, my swiss cheese recollection was a bucket of d6 rolls, the number depending on the gunnery factor. This 3d6 variant proved faster, if less nuanced than rules such as Panzerschiff or General Quarters. No calculator required like Panzerschiff.
Gun ranges were in increments of 15 inches: primary guns out to 45 inches, secondaries out to 30 inches, and tertiary out to 15 inches. The boxes that made up the ship charts required a certain caliber of gun to penetrate certain ship areas. Primaries destroyed armored box types, secondaries only the partially armored or no armor boxes, and tertiaries only the no armor boxes. General Quarters has a similar armored mechanic.
Movement was anywhere between 5 or so inches for a battleship to 9 inches for a destroyer. We used turning templates from another game and each ship was allowed one turn per movement -- i.e., no S turns.
Torpedoes used 1d6s, one die per torpedo, with a 6 indicating a hit. If torpedoes missed one ship and ran into a farther ship, the torpedo owner rolled anew. If a ship lost a speed, the torpedo roll got a +1. No modifier for distance that I can recall.
Day of the Long Lance
Of note, unlike other naval games, you didn't lay down a torpedo angle, move ships, and then move the torpedoes. In these rules, torpedoes moved instantly, like a gun shell.
As we found out, this gave the Japanese a considerable advantage because US torpedoes moved 15 inches and Japanese Long Lance torpedoes moved 27 inches.
As Salt Water Taffy One found out, many torpedo rolls means many torpedo hits. I lost a cruiser to an end-of-range torpedo and my other one was crippled instead of sunk only thanks to a miserably low torpedo hit roll.
In the exchange of gunfire, two of my three destroyers sunk (they only have one hull box) in exchange for one of the Japanese. My third DD soon went to meet Davy Jones. I had only a crippled cruiser (which was also on fire -- -1 to hit) and a pinged battleship left after five turns. The cruiser laid smoke to try and get the Texas away.
Sam got it even worse. One battleship (courtesy of a critical hit on turn 5), his one cruiser, and all three destroyers were glug-glug-glugging it.
As for Jay and Dave, each lost a destroyer and suffered about half damage on a battleship and some scattered damage on other ships. The Emperor would be pleased…
Quick and Quicker
We called it after five turns. Gadzooks! Plan Orange Marmalade had turned into Plan Lady Marmalade and were sleeping with the fishes.
The game was over in about an hour and a half. Granted, we only had four players instead of the usual six to eight, but man was that fast! We liked the speed and didn't worry overmuch about the simplicity. The Japanese torpedoes cause some concern, as the first targets for all US ships in the next game would be the Japanese destroyers.
One rule we used was that torpedoes had to be fired from broadsides -- you could not rush bow first and fire torpedoes straight ahead. I'm thinking that might need a change so we can get the DD charge back. I'm on the fence about the torpedo angle mechanic. It's great not to deal with protractors, but torpedoes acting like gun shells don't strike me as an improvement -- maybe a little too simplified. Guess we can always try a game with the torpedo angle mechanic.
All in all, this was a nice little variant for a first try.
experiments to find a better way to mount aircraft for wargaming.
