Naval wargaming?

[3rdCrucisLancers]

Anyone else here do any naval wargaming? I do, obviously, but more in theory than in practice, these days.

I've played the Avalanche Press hex and counter games, and own a few other naval games of that sort; for miniatures, I've played Command at Sea (and own the WWI version, Fear God and Dread Nought) and General Quarters 3, and own various other systems I've never used. I also have a ludicrous number of 1/6000 WWII naval miniatures: every major British (and Free Polish/Dutch/Greek etc.) surface unit and fleet destroyer; virtually the whole of the Kriegsmarine; most of the Regia Marina; most of the French Navy; and the same for the USN and IJN up to late 1942.

What about you guys? Anyone else play?

[Arvanna]

The only modern naval combat game I have played was a card game simply called Naval War by Avalon Hill aside from a couple of very old computer games. Now all of the table top miniature games I have played have been mostly Age of Sail types but for awhile was rather fond of Civil War naval games Ironclads being the one I ended up buying and running a number of games with at my local game store.

[Blacknova]

Love it. Played alot of Cold War Naval Battles, a card game, Harpoon, both computerised and table top and have just ordered Modern Naval Conflicts, which looks like it should be great.  They are just boxing the first print run now.

Also designed a bunch of knock around games for naval warfare that I have played at home a few times.

[ANS Kamas P81]

It's something I've wanted to get into, and if I ever get off my rear end and rebuild the fleet I had going at one point, I'd love to find a game and a way to play.  Something like eight or nine ship classes plus a sub, so I'd be looking for a fairly detailed game that I could create my ship's stats in and game out potential effectiveness.  I guess a computer game/sim would work, but I'd like to get my hands on a proper board game too...they tend to be a lot easier to add units to.

[Crunch]

I really miss having the time and space to play Harpoon table top.

Recently only Wooden Ships and Iron Men and that rarely.

[Challenger]

Used to play Shipwreak quite a bit.  Very enjoyable but kinda resource consuming, as detection and misdirection are everything we had to play double blind with two tables divided by a third put up sideways.

The irony was as it was my game and my minatures I never got to play.  I was always the GM.

Challenger

[GreyWolfActual]

I play Avalon Hills' Midway as often as I can, which is not that often since it works best with a neutral GM for the doubleblind rules.

[Prillotashekta]

I've played Axis & Allies War at Sea. Haven't in quite a while, though.

Got a question:
Any recommendations on a good Age of Sail era game? Preferably one that is not overly "complex" or takes half a day to play. (whereas I can handle complex rulesets, the folks I play with are generally turned off by them and prefer shorter games).

[GreyWolfActual]

I've played Axis & Allies War at Sea. Haven't in quite a while, though.

Same here.  I collect the ships, but won't play the game.  It's a really bad game.

[worktroll]

I love the old classic Avalon Hill "Wooden Ships & Iron Men". Been playing it for what seems like 30 years, still enjoy it. Small battles with a half-dozen ships per side can be a couple of hours or less, but Trafalgar's a 6-hour epic (which I've loved playing over & over ... still trying to make the Santissima Trinidad useful  :D )

For WW1, AH's "Jutland". The game for people with access to a school hall  :) But when played with subs & zepellins, and you can get things right, a great load of fun.

Yes, old-school, but then so am I ...

W.

[Stormlion1]

Same here.  I collect the ships, but won't play the game.  It's a really bad game.

Same here, ships are good for use in other games though. Still waiting for a USS New Jersey to be released. Used to play Harpoon but its been a few years since I last looked into it. Me and some friends do still play the old Pirate of the Spanish Main though.

[nerd]

Played the old Avalon Hill card game "Naval War" as a kid.  It's a lot of fun, and everyone likes the old battlewagons coming out to play.

I've played a very old computer version of Harpoon, and had the re-release of a modern commercial simulator a few years ago.

[GreyWolfActual]

Still waiting for a USS New Jersey to be released.

They've released both the Iowa and Missouri (same sculpt, different paint jobs).

[Highball]

Axis & Allies War at Sea for me. It is really nice because the ships are lightweight plastic and easy to transport, but they look sharp. I could easily see it dominating the naval scene if they were produced as singles instead of the collectible box sets. I love my world fleet!

[Arvanna]

Oh just recalled I used to have a computer game for my old Commodore 64 it was a campaign where you commanded the Bismark and the Prince Eugen and it was a hoot even if it was like 8 bit graphics. One could come up with some very interesting results aside from the historical results depending upon the choices you made. If you can catch the Brits in isolated engagements you can deal quite easily with them in detail, one game I managed to sink the Rodney, King George, Hood Prince of Wales, The RAMILLIES, Renown, Repulse and several cruisers and a couple convoys, granted the Eugen was on the bottom and the Bismark limped into Brest a wreck with only her aft turrets operational.

[3rdCrucisLancers]

Oh just recalled I used to have a computer game for my old Commodore 64 it was a campaign where you commanded the Bismark and the Prince Eugen and it was a hoot even if it was like 8 bit graphics. One could come up with some very interesting results aside from the historical results depending upon the choices you made. If you can catch the Brits in isolated engagements you can deal quite easily with them in detail, one game I managed to sink the Rodney, King George, Hood Prince of Wales, The RAMILLIES, Renown, Repulse and several cruisers and a couple convoys, granted the Eugen was on the bottom and the Bismark limped into Brest a wreck with only her aft turrets operational.

That's...a remarkable result, given that a single hit from Rodney's 16" guns left Bismarck virtually incapable of fighting at all.

[Stormlion1]

Theres also a olf computer game called Fighting Steel, WW-Iand early WW-II warships, no carriers or subs or airpower, nothing but guns, big guns, bigger guns, and maybe a few torpedoes. Had downloads for later warships too.

[ClarkeMarek]

Closest I've come to Naval wargaming is PTO II...and I barely know enough about naval tactics. :-[  Mostly I'd let the computer take care of the naval fights.

[GreyWolfActual]

I could easily see it dominating the naval scene if they were produced as singles instead of the collectible box sets.

See I've never thought that was a big issue.  Of all the collectible games, this is one where an uneven distribution makes sense.  There really were only four Iowas ever made.  There were only ever two Bismarcks.  However, there were 175 Fletchers made and fifteen Narviks completed.  Likewise, the number of battles involving three of either of the above destroyer classes are a lot more common than a battle involving any of the battleships listed.

For it to dominate the naval scene it would need to have more detail.  There's really no difference between most of the capital ships.  They have extended range, torpedo defense, a marginal flagship ability, and lots of dice.  You could very easily replace one ship with its' counterpart from another and it wouldn't really matter.  Speed is another ridiculously simplified statement.  The Iowas were capable of 33 knots, the South Dakotas and Washingtons were 27-knot ships.  In battle, those six knots were important.  How about in A&A:WAS?  The ships have identical speeds.

Furthermore, the game is quite inaccurate and, IMO, poorly researched.  The errors made with various ships, namely the Repulse/Renown switch, are rather annoying.  But what makes it worse are the degrees to which they go to try and make fleets interesting.  The Sovetskii Soyuz, not only one of the highest point ships at 67 (the Iowa is only rated to a 68), is given Torpedo Defense 1.  This is the same bonus given to the Richelieu.  The Italian Pugliese system was marginal, at best, whereas the Richelieu probably had the best system of any battleship in WWII.  Similarly, the KGVs had an absolutely horrendous system: shallow, very thin, and with an unfortuante tendency to funnel explosions into the ship.  It too is awarded a Torpedo Defense of 1.  And don't even get me started about the Main Guns and generic armor ratings.

The system is a simplistic system, at its best and most generous.  The game play does not encourage particularly authentic tactics, merely a "naval" recreation of the first thirty seconds of a dodgeball game.  The miniatures look nice, which is what, at least in Chicago, most of the people I've talked to buy them for.  I haven't seen a league play it at my FLGS in the last two years, and there used to be a very robust group.

It would take a lot more than non-collectibles for it to be the dominant seapower game.  For me, I'll stick with AH's Midway for double-blind, GQ3, and Avalanche Press, all supplemented with my A&A:WAS ships.

[3rdCrucisLancers]

PoW's torpedo protection system didn't vent explosions into the hull of the ship; this was caused because Captain Leach had ordered the voids to be flooded to correct the ship's heavy list developed from earlier hits; the water deliberately introduced into the voids vented the explosions, but without manual input, this was not a normal consequence of the system in action. I seriously doubt any USN battleship would have survived the punishment Prince of Wales took. That being said, it was definitely a system sorely limited by the beam restrictions on the KGVs.

[mathesont]

Back in high school I loved naval miniature games, mostly Napoleonic and WW1.  WW2 and modern were okay but aircraft and especially ASMs took the fun out of maneuvering a ship.  Haven't done any of that in at least 25 years - sigh

[GreyWolfActual]

PoW's torpedo protection system didn't vent explosions into the hull of the ship;

Underwater Protection
Jonathan Parshall disagrees.  His assessment is that the lack of an continuous armor system between the underwater belt and deck armor created an unarmored space between the two sections of armor, above the belt and below the deck.  The belt armor then pushed the force of the explosion into the unarmored section which was unable to contain it outside of the ship.

[3rdCrucisLancers]

Well, he's wrong. I read the Admiralty damage report, and I've read V E Tarrant's book on the KGVs, which is pretty much the last word on them. The torpedo protection system certainly failed under stresses well below those of design, but having read a detailed description of what each torpedo hit did, I can assure you this wasn't the case.

[JadeHellbringer]

I did some A&A: War At Sea when it came out, but we quickly realized that the game was horrible if not monkeyed with first. Since then, however, I've found inspiration in 'Victory At Sea' (from Mongoose). It's VERY simplified- which is a turn-off for a lot of gamers, I know. But it also is very quick-moving game, which means that in the space of a couple of hours I can run a pretty good-sized battle without any trouble.

The game is supposed to use paper counters, but those War At Sea minis sure do work nicely for the job instead...

Anyway, it's not nearly as detailed as what a lot of you likely are looking for, but for an evening gaming get-together to have some fun for fun's sake, it's not a bad one at all.

[3rdCrucisLancers]

I've used Victory at Sea a few times for Denmark Strait, it's okay as a quickplay system.

[MemphisMark]

I still have my ORIGINAL copy of Wooden Ships and Iron Men. I played Guadalcanal and North Atlantic '86 on my Apple ][e. I still remember the bug in NA'86 so I could put 150 Tomcats on Iceland! There was another tactical one for the Apple ][ that I can't remember the name of. I still have my original Harpoon rules. Played Harpoon on the PC, and The Ancient Art of War at Sea for the Macintosh. I have a bunch of ships (US & Japanese) for A&A:WAS, and will play that if there is nothing else. I like Victory at Sea a lot as well, and play that with my A&A ships.

I don't do sail ships outside of WS&IM. Other than that, I'll play anything naval! I think that's why I spent 13 years in the Navy. ;)

[Wereferret]

I still play and like Harpoon, but it is EXTREMELY complicated, not the least of which because there are no abstractions, you're dealing with the actual units everything is occuring, so lots and lots of tables.  Working with aircraft in any sizable number is a POA.  However its a great training tool; I have two complete identical sets of charts for the Falklands and would have my summer Naval and Coast Guard Academy cadets on my ship fight double-blind scenarios against each other...they would just plot and write Combat/Night Orders and I would handle the background work, and there would be a new turn waiting for them each morning.  Its a unique and fun training tool.

Also one of the most fun experiences of my life was being a young CIC Officer aboard a frigate-like ship during a SAGEX...basically two groups of ships, one U.S. frigate per side and several smaller foreign ships we were training, hiding several hundred miles apart in high-traffic areas and trying to sneak up on each other and blow each other up.  The hits were controlled by, believe it or not a central coordinator rolling die for hits and locations based off of Harpoon, we would radio in when we wanted to make an attack.  Basically we got to play a big game of Harpoon with real ships and helicopters. 

[Weirdo]

No actual naval gaming experience aside from a handful of games of A&A:WAS and desiring to play a CBT all-naval game. I do own a copy of Shipwreck, and would love to play it, once I collect and paint more minis. (My goal is to collect the RFN's entire on-paper Northern Fleet, as well as a sufficient US and/or British OPFOR.)

[3rdCrucisLancers]

Also one of the most fun experiences of my life was being a young CIC Officer aboard a frigate-like ship during a SAGEX...

What ship was that?

[Phacade]

Theres also a olf computer game called Fighting Steel, WW-Iand early WW-II warships, no carriers or subs or airpower, nothing but guns, big guns, bigger guns, and maybe a few torpedoes. Had downloads for later warships too.

I remember that one! Good camne, but it seemed to be that it became very repetitive.