"Photographs of naval game" Topic

link
This will take you to photographs of a WW2 naval battle my group fought last night using General Quarters III.

A British cover force was interposed between an oncoming Italian task force and a convoy to Malta. The Italians needed to get sufficient ships past the cover group to destroy the convoy.

For this they had one Littorio class battleship and two Doria's. Two 8" gun cruisers, a light cruiser and four destroyers.

The British had to two old Battleships Malaya and Barham, the 8" gun cruiser York, the light cruisers Mauritius and Sirius, plus four destroyers.

The Italians needed to close the range as quickly as possible in order for their two smaller battleships to penetrate the British Battleships armour. At first they went well with the Italians continually hitting the Malaya and the York. Because we were playing it on one of the naval mats from "Terrain mat" for the first time, the players found to their delight, that the camouflage schemes of both sides blended in with beautifully painted surface. As a result there were several instances of players engaging ships that were not what they thought they were. I might point out here that the players were not green, but very experienced naval gamers of some years practice. Therefore for them to be fooled was quite a surprise to all.

One result of this was the British 8" gun cruiser HMS York came under 12.6" gun fire from an Italian battleship and suffered very badly. Her best armour was CL and there was no way she could keep out the incoming hits. This caused her to be the first major casualty for either side and she soon hauled out of line on fire and flooding. Further hits caused major engineering damage and she ended up immobile.

Meanwhile the two British Battleships each engaged one Italian battleship, while the British cruisers kept the other one under fire, even if ineffective. Several serious hits were swapped side for side, until the British battleships gained the upper hand and achieved damaging hit after damaging hit. Littorio, on fire, with two turrets knocked out, was forced to turn away, and was followed by the other two. As this took place each of the smaller Italian battleships took hits that caused fires and other damage.

The Italian cruiser line, with the destroyers behind, tried to force a passage past the British battleships while they were heavily engaged by Littorio and her consorts. The York was incapable of engaging as with a total engineering failure she was unable to fire and was stopped dead in the water. York was not in immediate danger of sinking and made a sitting duck target for the oncoming Italian cruisers.

However at this point the British commander detached his two remaining cruisers to cut off the oncoming Italian detachment. In addition he was able to spare two salvoes from the Barham as it was temporarily masked and unable to engage its main target. Some 15" hits made a mess of Pola, which slowed almost to a stop, but then a devastating rapid fire sequence from the Mauritius resulted in numerous hits all of which defeated the armour of Pola, inflicting fatal damage from flooding, but before this could take effect another hit set off the forward magazine and the Pola blew up. At the same time the light cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli was badly hit by the 6" secondaries of the two British battleships and forced to retire from the battle. However the Bolzano steamed past the sinking Pola at full speed leading the destroyers in to attack.
This looked dangerous for the British as the Malaya was by now, badly hit, circling out of control to port and only steaming at half speed.
None the less the Mauritius proved to be the 'Malicious' and under rapid fire from her 6", the Bolzano was hit repeatedly. Barham also joined in briefly, and the Sirius added her lighter 5.25" salvoes. Within a couple of moves the Bolzano had stopped dead in the water with all guns out of action, and under the morale rules her crew abandoned ship.
The Italian commander decided he'd had quite enough by now, so he turned his battleships about and withdrew, while his destroyers tried to steam across his rear laying smoke. One succeed in doing this and escaping, but three others were engaged one after another by the British cruisers, and then their accompanying destroyers. Rapid fire salvoes took their toll. One blew up, one capsized and sank, and a third was scuttled after its engines were wrecked and it was left wallowing helplessly.
Under the cover of smoke, and the sacrifice of the cruisers and destroyers, the Italian battleships were able to withdraw. Their speed was greatly reduced, but fortunately for them the British battleships were in no condition to chase and also broke off.

In the face of impending air attacks the British commander realised it was impossible to save the immobilized YORK and the cruiser was scuttled after her crew were taken off.

Italian air attacks caused further damage, but the British fleet was able to withdraw safely to its base. The score was a decisive win to the British commander who was promoted and declared a national hero.

The Italian commander was demoted and sent to command a remote land base.

The photographs on the link show most of the battle highlights.

Mal. Wright.

Interesting report and very nice photos!

How does GQ3 play compared to the original? i've got the rules but not had a chance to play yet….

Very interesting battle report! I never saw that type of presentation. Very good! :)

Very nice presentation!

The rules look daunting, but are so easy you will feel silly for thinking so, once you play them! Very easy, everything is at your fingertips. Pretty straight forward really. I would say as easy to play as the originals were, but they now have much better detail, such as knowing which turrets you have hit, better engineering rules and so on.

My group had the pleasure of a demonstration from Lonnie Gill while he was visiting Australia early this year and I was involved with them myself.

My group picked them up very quickly and were playing as if they'd been doing it for ever within a couple of moves. They are great fun to use.

Mal.Wright.

Great pictures! How did you do them?

Very nice photos and writeup.

Thanks for sharing.

What scale and manufacturer of miniatures are you using ?

Nice pics+writeup--is that one of those mats from Terrainmat.com in the UK?

Am interested in GQ3 for naval battles,but how are the air rules in it? Are planes based as single a/c or in flights or squadrons? And how is aerial combat handled?

Thanks,
MD

What a great report Mal.

Dude, Righties did not lose. The current incarnation of the Republican Party lost.

As a Conservative Rightie, I do not feel the need to "get over" anything – main reason why I have not been posting much on the CA recently…

All the carp the Dem's are going on here about how the GOP is really gonna pay now just does not apply to me, so I don't take offense; no need to get over anything.

EHHHH????
WASSAT???
Thats not what I posted!!!!!

I had the pleasure of playing two GQIII games at Fall In courtesy of some great teaching by Mike Baluch and everything Mal says about the swift learning curve was true in our case. Great job of adding 'feel' of the different navies with separate gunnery and damage control charts for each navy.

On those terrain mats used, are they by Terrain Mat in the UK and how easy are they to care for/smooth. They are quite pricey and I'm sure shipping them to Oz was dear, are they worth it? (They look great!)

Mal, it looks like you got your armour penetrated by the infamous TMP bug. Here is what I do to protect my replies before posting. After writing a post, I highlight all of the text, right-click and "copy" into temporary memory. That way if I lose my reply to the bug, I can repost and not lose my work. At least it works as a band-aid until Bill hunts this thing down (it's his nemesis, you know- wink). BTW, you did a splendid job on your batrep and should be commended on the photo work. I used photobucket in slideshow mode and should have put on the theme from Victory at Sea , as it was surely called for. Where is your disclaimer however stating "No naval miniatures were actually harmed during production of this photoplay"?

The terrain mats seem darned near indestructible and I'm sure the maker intends it that way. However last Saturday night I did find something it doesnt like. DIET COKE. One of the players put a bottle on one corner without me noticing. It had a bit of spilt diet coke around it. This did NOT penetrate or remove colour etc but it did make the surface 'fluff up'. Its monday now and it looks the same so I have put something heavy and flat over it to see it that removes the patch.
Apart from that I have nothing but praise for terrain mat's 'ATLANTIC' mat. It looks great. In play the gamers all loved it and felt it added a new dimension to the wargame. It makes recognition of warships much more difficult because all those camouflage schemes that can normally make models even more visible on a plain blue surface, suddenly make sense. They blend into the tabletop scenery wonderfully. In the battle report I mentioned about a couple of cruisers coming under battleship fire. It was not planned although I have soothed their ego's in the battle report. In REALITY this was because players on both sides mistook cruisers for battleships and fired on them. As none of the two senior commanders has been fighting naval wargames for LESS than 20 years and are both very good on ship recognition, that gives an indication of how much it effected the game!

The models are all 1:3000 and mostly from NAVWAR via SPIRIT GAMES in the UK. A few could be Skytrex.

The aircraft rules are effective and simple. There are also two versions, campaign and tactical, so the players can choose which they want to use. We used Tactical and the air attacks were still not very time consuming.

The photographs. Hey….SciFi Gamer….do you mean YOUR ships dont blow up when they get a magazine hit???

"""""Dude, Righties did not lose. The current incarnation of the Republican Party lost.

As a Conservative Rightie, I do not feel the need to "get over" anything – main reason why I have not been posting much on the CA recently…

All the carp the Dem's are going on here about how the GOP is really gonna pay now just does not apply to me, so I don't take offense; no need to get over anything.""""

As for this post that appeared. What language is he speaking anyway????

If that is American English is he a prime example of American schooling?????

Mal, I was just kidding a bit about if you had "sacrificed" any models by breaking them up to make the FX, but I know you wouldn't do that, right? (Again, I'm kidding). It was a twisted way of saying that the photos were well received. Excellent series of photos. I might print them off onto cards, stack them and flip through them to animate the battle, hehe.

Well….ummm…. OK.
I didn't REALLY sacrifice my good models. But I confess I do have some old ones that have been….errrr…. sort of….violently re-arranged, to make the sinking ships etc. :-))) I was somewhat less than thrilled when my dog Merlin Mutt decided to 'help' with one of my British R class battleships, but even that has become useful… if a little chewed looking.

Well I hope the dog didn't die from lead poisoning. There are two kinds of lead poisoning, btw- the slow way and the "fast" method. I was just drawing some humor from the way that at the end of motion pictures in the credits they say "No animals were harmed during the making of this picture". It seems at least that you did what you had to in salvaging the BB. Good job on recycling, there. I'm sure your U-boat opponents were pleased, lol. Did you rechristen it the HMS Royal Oak?

No not the Royal Oak. But If I catch that mutt mauling one of my ships again he'll be the Royal Choke.

Nice pics!