New Mini-Series: Comparing WW2 Naval Rules

During the last two years or so, naval wargaming has become one of my main interest when it comes to miniature games. I really like that the investment in time and money is rather limited, as usually a few ships are sufficient for a game and ships can be painted quickly, especially in the small scales I’m gaming with.

I have already written about my taste when it comes to naval wargames rules in general. During the course of this year, I’d like to present a couple of rules in depth and compare some of them.

I want to start with two World War 2 rules that have a similar scope, namely Find, Fix and Strike by David Manley and Nimitz by Sam Mustafa. I’ll play the same scenario with both rules, see how it goes and then compare the outcomes, the rules mechanisms and other aspects.

I think that the rules are a good match for comparison as they have a similar scope: both aim to deliver fast games, both are heavily abstracted, especially in their shooting and damage mechanisms, and both are accompanied by a campaign system and encourage the players to use the tactical rules in the context of campaigns.

Although I will refrain from tinkering with the rules and play them stricly as written, there will be one aspect where I will add something that is not in the rules as published: namely ship data. I want to use my Spanish Civil War collection, and neither FF&S nor Nimitz provide data for Spanish ships. However, as I think that using your own research to create historical scenarios is an integral part of wargaming, this will already provide a first test: namely how well do the rules lend themselves to such amandements?

The Scenario

I have taken this what-if scenario called “Barcelona Payback” from the excellent Shattered Armada book, which is a splendid collection not only of scenarios, but also of background material and ship data for the naval side of the Spanish Civil War. It is published by Admiralty Trilogy Group and intended for their Command at Sea rules, but even if you have no intention of playing those rules, their scenario books are excellent and highly recommended.

The scenario takes a historical event as a departing point: In January 1938, the Nationalist cruisers Canarias, Baleares and Almirante Cervera roamed the Catalonian coast, hunting blockade runners and bombarding harbours. In reality, they were shadowed by Republican aircraft, but no effort to attack them was undertaken. The scenario assumes that the Republican fleet makes a sortie in force to confront the cruisers. The Republicans have the light cruisers Libertad and Méndez Núñez and two destroyer flotillas, a total of eight ships, as well as a flight of four Vickers Vildebeest torpedo bombers. The Nationalists have the modern heavy cruisers Canarias and Baleares as well as light cruiser Almirante Cervera. The scenario assumes that the Cervera was damaged by an air attack which reduced her speed. The victory conditions are equal for both sides: cripple at least two enemy cruisers for a decisive victory. 

Unit stats

Cruiser Libertad.

My main sources for devising the ship stats for FF&S and Nimitz were Shattered Armada and Angus Konstam’s Warships in the Spanish Civil War. Most of the Spanish ships were based on British designs, e.g. the Canarias class heavy cruisers were adaptations of the County class, while the Churruca-class destroyers were of the same design as the British Scott-class flotilla leaders. So I first tried to find the British ships in the respective force lists and then adjusted them to fit the data given in the sources. FF&S contains short guidelines on how to adapt ships to the types listed in the rulebook and a comprehensive list of stats for the fleets of all of the major WW2 powers (and Sweden). Nimitz includes a number of design notes which can be used to extrapolate ship stats, and on Sam Mustafa’s homepage, fleet lists can be downloaded. However, Nimitz uses a more intricate ship data sheet and there is no official editor available to create your own. Fortunately, someone has made their own editable data sheet in PowerPoint and shared it in the Official Sam Mustafa Publishing Group on Facebook. Hurrah for resourceful players!

The scenario contains one complication: namely the flight of four Republican Vildebeest torpedo bombers. FF&S and Nimitz handle aircraft in a very different way and it will be interesting to see what this means for the game. Incidentally, neither ruleset contains data for the Vildebeest. However, it seems to have been quite similar to the Swordfish when it came to role and performance, so I will use the Swordfish stats, which are provided by both rulesets.

I will provide the data sheets for the ships in the respective play-through articles.

In the next installment, I will present the play-through with FF&S. After this, there will be one with Nimitz, followed by an article providing my opinions and conclusions. I hope that you are interested and that you will find the comparison useful!

Solo Sci-Fi Rules Tinkering

For my first game, I used 5 Parsecs: Bug Hunt straigt out of the box. It worked well, but I wasn’t completely happy. I also purchased 5 Parsecs from Home, which contains a good campaign system, and I unearthed Guy Bower’s Black Ops, which I bought last year.

The more I read the rules and thought about it, the more it became clear what I want out of my sci-fi gaming – or at least, what I want at the moment. I don’t want the classic Starship Troopers-style Vietnam-in-space, were your poor grunts die like flies. However, I still wanted to keep the military focus, as I have already cool figures and vehicles, so no Firefly-like band of rogues, either. Back in the day, I read a lot of BattleTech novels and I like the idea of mercenary companies as developed there, so this will be the focus of my games.

Having settled this, what rules would be best to portray heroic mercenaries? There were several things I liked about 5 Parsecs, among them the simple combat rules, the contact markers (akin to the blips of Space Hulk) and the campaign system. There are also several things I like about Black Ops, especially the stealth phase and the card activation. So I started to combine those two. However, I did make some prety extensive changes. First of all, I found that, for my taste, my characters die too easily in 5 Parsecs – after all, I want to replicate the heroic feeling of an RPG. So I replaced the D6 with the D8 to resolve combat and other actions. This allows for a wider range of modifiers and makes it possible to skew the whole thing in favour of my crew, giving them better combat abilities and armor. Secondly, I showed my true nature as a child of Lard and introduced a turn end card and random events. Actually, there are two turn end cards and only when the second one is drawn the turn ends, so it’s not as radial as Sharp Practice. In my opinion, every game is better with random events and especially solo games profit from unpredictability (a point my mate Sigur made in his latest rules review).

Finally, I also introduced home-made rules for cyberwarfare, as sci-fi combat without hacking seems anachronistic to me. Basically, hacking works like magic would in a fantasy setting – there are a number of cyberwarfare actions available and the hacker has to roll a target number to achieve success. Like magic spells, some of them are a bit overpowered, but a natural 1 always means that the terminal crashes and the hacker will be unable to make any further cyberwarfare actions – so it is important to prioritise and stay focused on the mission objective.

So far, the rules seem to work well, but I haven’t tried out all the options in all their combinations yet. The next mission will be against alien critters, so I will see how the blip rules work within the framework of my modifications. I’ll keep you posted.

ACW Rules Kickstarter

At the beginning of the year, I had the plan to upscale my ACW gaming to Regiment/Brigade level. I’d really be interested to fight some smaller actions, comprising one to three brigades per side, on the tabletop. I even painted flags and commanders to be able to use my Sharp Practice units as regiments.

But which rules to use? I’ve tried out several and read some more, but none of them have completely captivated me. My game of Black Powder was fun and I subsequently bought the rule-book and the ACW supplement. However, I didn’t like the books at all – they are, for lack of a better term, reactionary in every sense of the word. Kugelhagel, another set I tried at the club, is a more dynamic game insofar as it breaks with IGO-UGO. In fact, I find it too dynamic, playing too loose with historical plausibility for my taste.

Longstreet is the game favored by my chums Virago and Sigur. I really liked the game I played, but upon reflection, there are a couple of things that keep me from getting it. First, the price – I’d need the rule-book plus two sets of cards, which would set me back about 100$, and although I’m prepared to pay a price for a rule-book, this is too much. Second, it’s geared towards one brigade per side, and I’m not sure how it would do with two or three. And third, while the card mechanism is fun, it feels a bit too abstract and gamey for my taste.

I then got Pickett’s Charge, which looks very good. I was impressed by the historical depth and by some of the rules mechanics. However, the level of battle I’m looking for might be a bit too small for those rules. Also, I’ve watched a game being played at our Gettysburg Battle Day and it looked like hard work. I think I’d prefer something that is a bit more streamlined.

Being a wargamer, I then decided to write my own rules. I even had three test games. They worked ok and I’ll continue working on them, but still, they didn’t give me the experience I was looking for.

Some time ago, Mike Hobbs mentioned Over the Hills on the Meeples&Miniatures podcast. This is a set of regimental level napoleonic rules produced by Stand to Games and has become his go-to rules for the period. I liked what he said and thought that I wished they were available for the ACW.

Guess what? They will be soon (hopefully)! Stand to Games has just launched a Kickstarter for Over Malvern Hill, an ACW variant of the rules. They seem to be geared just towards the level of engagement that interests me. They furthermore seem to play fast while still retaining a feel for the period.

This is what the authors say about their design goals:

“We wanted to produce a fast paced easy to play game where the psychological effect of warfare was strongly reflected throughout the game and the rule mechanics.

Command and Control and ACW tactics should be firmly rooted in the game.”

To model the psychological effect, they use a fatigue score which diminishes as the unit takes casualties. They also have an interesting turn sequence which enables to non-active player to react. And they even include rules for sieges and balloons!

Perhaps they’ll be the rules I am looking for? Let’s see – I backed the Kickstarter and hope it will be successful, as I’m eager for a chance to try them out.

My Wars of the Roses Adaptations to Sharp Practice

When I started the project, I researched how other people had converted Sharp Practice to play games set during the Wars of the Roses. My inspiration and point of depature was the blog of Silver Whistle, who got the whole thing going and had his rule adapdations published in the TFL 2013 Summer Special. I also looked at the variant by Maxamillian Walker and the interesting thoughts by Jim Hale. Then I wrapped up my own thoughts on the topic and put together a Quick Reference Sheet.

My adaptations basically follow Silver Whistle’s. At first, I was a bit sceptical about the additional dice roll of the armour save, as Sharp Practice already has two rolls for shooting. After pondering a while on Jim Hale’s mechanics, which condenses the three steps of ranged combat (rolling to hit, rolling for effect, saving) into two, I decided against doing this as I felt it would upset all the probabilities and thereby the balance of the shock point mechanics. Having now played the game, I can say that the three dice rolls are done pretty fast and are no hassle.

Come on you coward, roll another dice!

Another thing I did was something I have already done with SAGA, namely scale down all distances by one third. We play with 15mm figures and our playing space is limited, so this is an easy solution and the distances still look good. Continental chap that I am, I also converted the distances to centimeters. For movement, 1 pip now equals 2cm. This means that movement is a bit sped up in relation to the ranges of missile weapons. I felt that this was ok for the medieval period, where battles tended to culminate in a melee anyway. I also made some minor changes to the weapon ranges, based on my own research, which incidentally turned out to concur with the deliberations of Jim Hale.

I decided to keep signaling, as it’s a fun part of the command mechanism, but reduced it to simple trumpet signals, as medieval armies certainly were not capable of parade ground manoeuvers. I also kept the formations.

For the random events and bonus cards, I followed Silver Whistle but added some additional cards which I adapted from the SP national characteristics. One of them is ‘Once more unto the Breach!’, which allows a Big Men to remove 1D6 shock points, another is ‘The sun lost its brightness’, which doubles the number of shock points inflicted by archery.

We have now played the game a couple of times and everything works fine. It is a testimony to the clever design of the rules that they can be adapted to late medieval skirmishing without much hassle. After these minor tweaks, they certainly give the right feeling for the period!