's commission from one of our own.
This was one of many games put on at Bayou Wars by the Jackson Gamers. In this case, they not only ran the game - they also wrote the rules! Surface Warship is their set of WWII naval rules (available online).
The rules are intended for a fun game rather than a painstakingly accurate simulation, and the scenario was designed to match: an Allied and a Japanese fleet make contact somewhere in the Pacific. Each side was divided into three commands (three players). The Allies (at left in the photo below) had two small islands on their side of the table; the Japanese had a long, narrow island between them and the enemy.
I volunteered to command some Japanese destroyers. None of my fellow Japanese players wanted to worry about strategy, so I came up with my own plan: I'd take my destroyers up the middle, then veer left between the islands and combine with our leftmost task force to take on the isolated Allied task force. So my destroyers zipped up the center of the table on their glory run...
The big green disk in the photo isn't an island - it's a turning guide, used when maneuvering the ships...