"Battle Stations! FAQs If You Have Questions Just Ask" Topic

Bulldog, I'm not one of those "deep discounters", but if you don't find a copy, let me know .

Paul,

Just a quick question about the roll required to get a critical hit. The combat table lists the numbers twice, once in the D1 space and once in the Critical space; the question came up today as to whether this means that if the die roll is within the necessary range after modifications it produces D1 while a natural roll produces a critical. The rulebook doesn't specify, so consensus of opinion was that a modifed roll that falls in the critical hit range counts as a critical and that's how we played it. Requiring a natural roll would certainly cut down on the number of critical hits but after eight games (I think) I'm still not sure whether I think that's a good idea. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure we were correct.

By the way, the ABDA fleet took on the Japanese at the National World War II Museum this morning and, although they ultimately lost, did far better than their historical counterparts did, sinking Naka and heavily damaging Jintsu and three destroyers while losing two American four-pipers(Alden and Edwards) and a Dutch destroyer (Witte de With) and taking damage to Perth, Exeter, and Java but losing no cruisers at all.

Several passers-by ended up playing a turn or two and a couple seemed interested in repeating the experience, so it was a pretty good day all around.

LT

Hello Brass1,

Well it sounds like the Allies gave as well as they got and probably did the best they could hope for. I suspect that the Allies had some really sharp players or that the Japanese had some really bad rolls. Did the Japanese successfully launch an attack with their long lances? Typically Allied players forget that the Japanese have a really long range with their torpedoes.

Yes, you are correct modifiers can push the roll into the critical hit category so your consensus opinion was correct. This was intention because otherwise critical hits would be very rare indeed. From the hit table you roll on the critical hit table which determines damage instead of the usual damage inflicted on the combat table. By the way the automatically sunk result means the hit ship performs an HMS Hood and quickly sinks beneath the waves. Sounds like you had a great time wish I was there.

I am getting ready to run a hypothetical surface action battle game which would have happened historically except Kurita lost his nerve and failed to push aside Taffy 3 and engage the US invasion force off Leyte, should be a very interesting game with Yamato going up against the same US battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor.

The scenario book is almost complete, I am working on the plane stats right now, and I plan on including this scenario along with eleven others some historical some hypothetical, plus some new rules like degradation of damage repair ability as damage increases on the ship.

Regards,
Paul

Paul, something to consider in fighting a battle between the Japanese Center Force and Oldendorf's old battleships is that they had expended part of their AP ammo on Nishimura's Southern Force the previous night. Only if your game considers ammo would this come into play, but here is what was available for the U.S. battleline. Maybe it's more for trivia sake than for game use, but here it is regardless:

Ammunition After Surigao Strait :

BB-38 Pennsylvania
* AP : 360
* HE : 93

BB-41 Mississippi
* AP : 189
* HE : 543

BB-43 Tennessee
* AP : 327
* HE : 268

BB-44 California
* AP : 177
* HE : 78

BB-46 Maryland
* AP : 192
* HE : 445

BB-48 West Virginia
* AP : 107
* HE : 175

You'll notice that West Virginia only had a total of 107 rounds of AP projectiles, and it would be fun to ration the U.S. player to these historical numbers. You as the author would know how to calculate the time slices you used per game turn and the various rates of fire per broadside to estimate ammo usage per turn (probably around two rounds per minute per gun for the USN BBs).

I have read a little about why the Pennsylvania did not use any ammo during the Surigao Straight action (supposedly inefficient fire control) but some sources are saying it was due to the Maryland doing a mistake in navigation and thus blocking (and nearly colliding with) the Pennsylvania that 'saved' all of its ammo for later use (like in your battle).

Paul,

In the most recent Java Sea excursion, the Japanese players were more conservative than in previous games. The Japanese squadrons maintained formation and concentrated their fire on priority targets while the ABDA force quickly broke down into small groups of two or three ships. Thanks in large part to marksmanship that was at least as bad as that displayed in the real battle and may well have been worse, neither side was able to do much damage at long range; the battle quickly became a short-range knifefight with torpedoes and even then, between the Japanese ability to recover from hits (good dice) and their lack of ability to inflict any (really, really, really bad dice) casualties remained low.

LT

I am a teacher at a high school in the Philadelphia suburbs. Last year, I used Battle Stations to introduce several young men to the wargaming hobby. With fast play and simple rules, with players actually having to make appropriate command decisions, they were hooked. We now have a full-fledged club with over a dozen members.

So…Thanks!

While we have not yet played any scenarios with carriers, I have made counter sheets for the more common US/Japanese planes of WWII. If people are interested, I could post them to my web site.

Aw, heck. Who cares if there's interest?

Here's the link. The counters are near the bottom of the page.

maddrmark.googlepages.com/home

MadDrMark, Nicely done!

Can someone post the link for the FAQ? I went to Decision's site and I couldnt find it. I even tried to use google-fu and I have failed to locate it.

Thanks in advance for your time,
Jay

Persistance pays off.. <Grin> I found the FAQ on another thread.

link

Jay

Great set of rules! VERY enjoyable. Players can handle a large number of ships and the action can reach a conclusion in an afternoon. Highly recommended.

Is there a dedicated website supporting the rules yet?

When can we expect the WWI edition?