First Time Playing Snorkers: Good Oh!

Just before I went on holiday this month (St Vincent in the Caribbean, quite nice) I had a chance to drive the two hours to Stratford (Ontario) and have a rare gaming day with old chum James.   Having both been bitten with the nautical bug, we wanted to play a game James has been quite obsessed with, Snorkers! (Good Oh!), which is billed as "an exciting, fast-paced WW2 naval wargames ruleset".  

James has a number of games under his life-vest and agreed to teach me the rules.  He pulled no punches!  For our first game we decided to use models from my 1/2400 collection and pitted two RN cruisers (Ajax and Achilles) and three Tribal class destroyers against two German CLs (Koln and Nurnberg) accompanied by three Karl Galster class DDs.  Here is the RN force steaming ahead out of a mistbank at full ahead.  The game tokens are 3D prints.  The ships are all metal models from GHQ.

 

The Kriegsmarine prepares to accept battle.   I put all that work into painting the ships and bases and none at all into preparing some nice labels.  Mea culpa.  At least the three GHQ Galster class ships look good.  The CL in the background is a rather old Panzerschiffe model, though still available for purchase!   The white cotton in the background represent mistbanks which obscure LOS and which can move randomly or dissipate.

One of the adjustments I had to make to these rules is the way they handle speed.  Ships can go from stationary to full speed in a single turn, whereas in other naval rules I'm accustomed to, there is usually a "throttle" rule where ships can only increase or decrease speed by so much per turn.  Not a criticism, just an adjustment I had to make.  And since lighter ships like DDs can move some 20" on the table, and then shoot, there's not a lot of time for fancy maneuvering.   An aggressive player can launch a devastating attack in one turn.  Here I managed to launch a torpedo at James' lead Tribal, but I don't recall it exploding.  German and USN torpedoes in the early war can be duds, which can be quite distressing.

Torpedoes in this game are wicked and deadly.   Launch and impact occur in the same turn, regardless of range.  Targets get a chance to evade, but if a ship is hit by one torpedo, its usually crippling for a bigger ship, and fatal for a smaller one.  Here a torpedo is about to find its mark and send some Nazis to the bottom.  One of the things I learned about torpedoes from this game is to use them before you lose them.  If you have a ship in range, its best to launch everything you have rather than to sink with fish in the tubes.

Of course gunfire is important, and I found the system fairly simple and workable.   Unlike crunchier games which require rolls to penetrate, Snorkers works in a fashion reminiscent of rules like Dan Mersey's Dragon Rampant.  Depending on the defence rating of a ship, you need so many hits to cause damage, and of course there is the possibility of exciting critical hits.   

After our Saturday night game had chased the Nazis away from Narvik, we decided to play a game set in the early Pacific.   For this game we used James' models, which are all 3D prints done in 1/1800 scale.  Even with the larger scale there is just not as much detail as there is in the GHQ models, but the overall look of the larger ships on the table is quite impressive. 

In this game I took the USN and put two CLs and a CA, with about ten Fletcher class DDs, up against James' similar IJN force.  We also gave ourselves an air wing so we could see how airstrikes and AA fire went.  Here the Japanese split their focus on the USS Quincy and some of its escorts, and did no damage to speak of.  I was a little luckier, getting a torpedo hit on one of James' CAs.

Once again, James showed me how deadly the torpedo can be in these rules.   I had been content to hold my main force back while sparring with James' most advanced DD squadron, and was getting the best of it, but in that time James brought the rest of his DDs up and raced them through a mistbank, at which point there were fish in the water everywhere.  An IJN DD can carry multiple centre-mounted launchers and can fire torps through wide port and starboard arcs, and so my three cruisers all blew up and sank before they could engage James' heavy cruisers.    We called it a game and it was a good learning experience.

So this isn't an exhaustive review of Snorkers, but I would say that it is true to it's billing in that it's true to its billing as "an exciting, fast-paced WW2 naval wargames ruleset".   It has a minimum of dice rolling, but when you do throw dice, you can be throwing a bucket's worth.   The maneuvre rules are simple (there is the obligatory template for turns) and things happen very quickly.  The turn sequence is somewhat randomized by card draws, which is arguably a more playable approach than simultaneous movement plotting, and thus makes Snorkers more suitable for solitaire play.

 The core rule book provides lists for most ship types that featured in the early war navies of Britain, Germany, Italy, the US and Japan, and it can be argued that for surface actions, WW2 naval gaming is really only interesting from 1939-43.  After that, most battles are just aerial massacres.  There is also an expansion for the French Navy and a new one that provides more focus on the early Pacific war.  In short, if you are looking to wet your feet in WW2 naval gaming, Snorkers would be a good place to start.

Finally, to end our gaming Saturday, I wheedled James into trying the MMP Siege of Jerusalem game I've touted in earlier blog posts.  James took the ruthless Romans, and benefitted from cards that allowed him to build siege ramps against the two key locations I had to defend to have a hope of winning the game.  Without my lovely wall defensive modifiers, it was a long struggle but late in the game the Romans achieved a sudden death win by capturing both Herod's palace and the Temple.   Kudos to James, he's not that interested in boardgames, but he is quick learner and an excellent tactician, as well as a great host and good friend.

You can read James' account of these games here.  Thanks mate, you're a grand friend.

Thanks for reading and blessings to your die rolls!

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