Swan of the East: Considering An Early WW1 Naval Campaign

 Some years back (2018 seems almost idyllic when viewed from the present) I had the good fortune to take some leave in Australia following a brief assignment at the Australian Forces Chaplain School in Canberra.  It was enough time to get to know Melbourne and Sydney and to generally fall in love with Oz.   Our hotel in the Sydney business district was beside Hyde Park, and strolling one day I came across both the Anzac Memorial and this trophy monument, a Great War naval gun.

At the time I knew enough about the Great War at Sea to recognize the name of SMS Emden, the famous German raider that gained a piratical but chivalrous reputation before being finally cornered and sunk by the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney.  This 4.1 inch (10.5cm) gun was one of several recovered from the wrecked German light cruiser and was presented to the City of Sydney in 1917.  

At the time I made a mental note to learn more about the Emden, but it had to wait for six years until I went down a hobby rabbit hole of naval gaming.   That lead me to start collecting 1/2400 scale naval models from both world wars from GHQ.  Of course at some point I was bound to order an Emden model, which is currently almost painted and nearly ready for basing.

While this and some other GHQ Great War models were on order, I picked up this book by Wes Olson when tempted by a Naval and Military Press book sale, and it did not disappoint.  

 Olson's account of Emden's brief career is gripping, and his blow by blow account of her duel with Sydney was very conflicting, as I was cheering for both sides.   Of course he tells the amazing story of how Emden's Number One, von Mucke, who was ashore on a raiding mission when the battle started, led his party across the Indian ocean in a leaky sailing boat, how they fought Bedouins in Yemen, and were finally feted when they reached friendly Constantinople.  I realized that Olson provided more than enough material and inspiration to think about a WW1 naval campaign based on the Emden's career.  But how to structure it?

I then recalled that my gaming library's shelf of shame had a small game published by Avalanche Press called Cruiser Warfare (CW).  I've played other Avalanche naval games and found the tactical system wanting, but I had a second look at CW and realized that it could give me the framework for a campaign game.  CW provides an area map for ALL THE SEVEN SEAS!, simple rules for searches, raiding, convoys, coal supplies (vital in this period and the Kriegsmarine's Achilles heal), and a complete OOB for the German raiders and for the RN and allied fleets that hunted them down.  Of course the game includes Emden:

And her nemesis:  

The objective of the campaign game for the Germans is to rack up points by commerce raiding and knock off weaker allied warships, while the Allies want to protect their convoys and run the Germans down, focusing of course on their most powerful foes, Von Spee's East Asia Squadron.  

While the whole campaign is tempting, I concluded that a simple proof of my concept would focus on the Emden, starting with the outbreak of hostilities when she was in the German colony port of Tsingtao.   Her task is to escape Tsingtao before the Royal Navy blockading force arrives, find Von Spee and receive his orders for solo raiding.   The Allied goal is to find Emden (SOS calls from merchant ships are clues to her location) and sink her before she can do too much damage.   Any encounters between Emden and allied warships will be played out on the tabletop using Naval Thunder Clash of Dreadnoughts rules, although the game will likely end with one battle, as Emden is a gallant but fragile light cruiser, and naval warfare in this period was a pretty bloody rock paper scissors affair where speed and gunnery advantages were all (as proven by the Coronel and Falklands battles where the Germans outclassed the RN and then were in turn outclassed).  

I think there's the potential for a good internet-PBEM game here, with one player playing the role of Emden's Captain Muller and other players commanding various allied squadrons in a cat and mouse game.  A more complicated game could add two more German players commanding the solo raiders Karlsruhe and Dresden, but that's too ambitious for now.

So that's the concept, and once my Holy Week obligations are over, I hope to tinker with it some more and report on Emden's progress in a test game.  Stay tuned, me hearties!

Blessings to your gaming,

MP+

Sunk Hopes for Avalanche Press' Russo-Japanese War

My old friend and gaming adversary James (@JamesManto4) recently observed on social media that he’s puzzled by my fascination with extremely granular hex and counter war-games.  It puzzles me too.   I fell into bad company as a young teen and got introduced to SPI monster games by older, debauched boys is all I can say.

It’s generally true that I divide my time unprofitably and inefficiently between paper hex and counter games and miniature games, and that I probably have more unpunched cardboard than I can get through in whatever years remaining that the good Lord graces me with.   I find that operational and strategic level paper games afford a vantage point and level of interest that most miniatures games can’t give me, and when I want a good skirmish or tactical game, out come the minis.   Also, both types of games have their own kinds of aesthetic appeal for me.  

Are you still reading this?  I haven’t even gotten to my main point yet.  So here it is.   I gave up half way through Russo-Japanese War by Avalanche Press.  I just couldn’t pretend that I was enjoying it any longer and having recently turned 58, I am more and more aware that life is short.

Here’s the problem.   Even through pre-dreadnoughts, those ungainly, smoke-belching, baroque iron castles of the sea, have their own fascination, and even though the Russo-Japanese naval war has its many fascinations - doomed fleets of a doomed empire, valour, technology at the cusp of change - the game itself is less than fascinating.   How could it not be inspiring?

                                            So inspiring!

The problem is that it’s not a very interesting war to game because the quality of the two sides was so varied.  The Japanese were a highly drilled, efficient and well-led naval service, and the Russians, well, were not.   Any game which wants to model this qualitative asymmetry has to penalize the Russians, so in this game, while you hit on a 6 on a d6 at long range (5 o 6 on a d6 at close), if you’re the Russian player you then have to roll a second confirmation roll (5 or 6 a d6 for each hit) to see if the shell actually hits its target.  The Russian confirmation gets slightly easier (4-6 on a d6) after eight rounds of combat, but the handicap against the Czar’s ships is still very severe.

RJW follows Avalanche Press’ Great War at Sea rules system, with a host of variations for the pre-dreadnought era.   With two players, the strategic game might be interesting as both sides have to secretly plot their moves, though the general objectives are fairly obvious - in the first phase of the war, the Japanese are guaranteed to show up at Port Arthur in force at a certain time after sailing from their home ports because that’s the main prize.  I suppose the Tsushima part might be more interesting for two players, but as a solo game, even with some random directional die rolls to make things fun, the COAs for both sides were fairly obvious.  There is some strategic challenge for the Japanese because their total fleet numbers are inferior and so their margin for error is slim, but realistically and historically, they can sink the Russians in two job lots with little fear of disaster.

As a tactical game, RJW isn’t that much fun, to be honest.  I decided to sortie the whole Russian fleet from Port Arthur to try and stop the Japanese from landing troops on the Korean peninsula, which meant that they ran into the main Japanese force early on.    I then deployed all the ships to the tactical map.

                       Not so inspiring.

The tactical phases are IGO/UGO start with random determination of initiative, through logically the Japanese, being better sailors, should always have initiative.   Ships of different speed classes are then moved in sequences,  each speed class getting its own sequence with fastest going first, and between each sequence there is a round of gunfire and then torpedoes if close enough, and the incentive to get close gives the game a sense of Age of Sail. There is a stacking limit of capital ships per hex, and the movement rules are too abstract to allow for subtleties like trying to cross the enemy’s T as in Jutland.  You just get in close and then it’s Fire Away Flanagan.  Ships have Primary, Secondary, and No armour ratings.  Likewise there are three gunfire ratings: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.  Primary shells penetrate all armour and do extra damage for lightly armoured ships.  Secondary shells only penetrate secondary or no armour, and Tertiary shells only damage unarmored ships such as destroyed and torpedo boats.   Torpedoes are bow mounted (less effective) and hull mounted (more effective) and are basically close range weapons with a more destructive effect.

Damage is marked off as Hull hits, Gun hits, Torpedo hits, and occasionally critical hits, using ship logs.  For a large action like my Port Arthur battle, it becomes a dreary round of checking the firing ship to see if it has lost any gun factors, rolling dice, and then marking off boxes on the target ship as necessary.   I remember playing with ship logs as a kid with Avalon Hill’s Wooden Ships and Iron Men and that didn’t seem a bother then, but as I said earlier, life is shorter now.  It boils down to lots of die rolling, lots of paper consulting, and lots of marking off boxes.  To make a long story short, the Russians were getting the worst of it and their battleships were generally in a bad way, with one sunk.   There was some prospect of the Russian torpedo boats getting into the IJN line of battle, but it was a faint hope.   Honestly I couldn’t be bothered finishing it.

To be fair, the RJW scenario book as a ton of history and detail, and the full OOBs for both sides are represented in the counter mix, so the game could be a great resource for someone who wanted to play this era using miniature ships.   Smaller actions might be fun, particularly if you abandoned history and made both sides equal in capability.   It might also be fun to introduce British, German and American ships.  However, out of the box, as is, my hopes for RJW sadly foundered and then sank under the waves.

Image:  the author’s hopes for a fun game.

Office War-game Thursday: Red Vengeance

I’m a fortunate chap in that I have my own office at work, with space to layout a small game to noodle away at during my lunch hour.   Somedays I’m too busy, but some days I get to push some cardboard and roll some dice.

Currently I’m playing an OOP Avalanche Press title, Red Vengeance, which is a little gem I found in an estate sale purchase I made this spring.

Red Vengeance is a simple, high-level (armies and corps) operational game focusing on the Eastern Front 1944-45, a “Bagration to Berlin” approach .  The designer is William Sariego, not exactly a household name in wargaming circles but he has a respectable CV posted at Boardgame Geek.  Sariego designed a Barbarossa game, Defiant Russia, using the same system, which is still in print.

Turn 1: June 1944.  Here’s the opening setup, with the Germans opposing the Russians on a solid line running from the Baltic to the Black Sea.  This is a mandatory setup, with the German infantry deploying first along an indicated line of hexes, then the Russians, then finally the German armour.    Armour units have a higher combat value and movement, and also get to move and attack again during an Exploitation Phase, along with certain other types of units such as Soviet Guards.  The logical setup for both sides is to mass the armour in the centre, either north of south of the Pripet Marshes.

The game mechanics require Soviet units to attack Axis units in adjacent ZOCs.  German units do not have to attack units in adjacent ZOCs in their turn.   This rule means that on Turn 1, all hell breaks loose as the Soviets attack every single hex on the German front line, guaranteeing a huge bloodletting for both sides. One Turn 1, the German defensive rolls were generally poorer than the attackers, so the Wehrmacht was roughly handled and it has been going badly ever since.  When my son and I tried the game, we found that the first turn went slowly as it was a LOT of die rolling, but the game picks up speed thereafter.

Three months later, here’s the situation at the end of Turn 3, August 1944.   Not good for the Germans.   Warsaw is threatened, and the Germans are practically broken into northern and southern pockets with little linking the two.

Army Group North is in falling back and is in serious trouble if Warsaw gets taken.   The Panzer reserve was thrown against the two Soviet Shock Armies at 0708 but that fight ended with no casualties on either side.  A reduced SS Corps grimly hangs on to Riga as a distraction, Combat in this game is very simple.  Each unit throws a number of device equal to its combat victory and each 6 causes a step loss on the opponent.  It’s that simple.   The number of dice can be slightly modified by terrain, or goosed upwards if leaders, air or naval support are present.   Provided that a stack takes as many hits as it has steps, it can lose one step and retreat a number of hexes equal to the remaining number of hits.  If the hits are one or more above the number of steps, the stack is eliminated.   Attackers and defenders shoot simultaneously.   

Meanwhile Army Group South is falling back on Bucharest, leaving that one poor Hungarian unit at 2313 to hold the mountains against the Red Horde.  On the southern flank there are two hexes with oil wells which are quite strategic.   For each one that the Axis hold, they get one additional armour step replacement.   It is possible to build up and even reconstitute lost units in this game, but there are never enough step replacements, generally just 4-6 per turn, and the armour step replacements dry up in 1945.  There are some reinforcement units that arrive, so the German strategy as I can see it is to counterattack where possible, fall back, trade land for time and hope that the reduced movement in the winter turns slows the Soviet juggernaut.  

Red Vengeance is a small game that is well suited for solitaire play.   There are a few chrome and optional rules to experiment with, but the joy of the game is how simply it plays.     It certainly keeps my mind diverted on those rare days when I have a free lunch hour.

I’ll check in again next Thursday and see whose flag is flying over Berlin.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP

Life Goes On

A dear friend of mine whose husband died of cancer a week before my own beloved Madame Padre passed away last November said something wise to me.   “You and I are still in the land of the living”, she told me, and I have tried to live by those words for the past five months.

 

 The support of my wargaming friends has been wonderful and I have leaned on several of you, as you know.  Thank you all.  I’m in a better place now, and do indeed want to dwell in the land of the living.  I’m eating well, working out regularly, have lost some of the weight I put on as Kay’s caregiver, and am fully engaged at work and as the volunteer honorary priest of my local parish.  A lovely lady, a cancer widow, has entered my life, and made it much richer.

 

So my life has changed in many ways, but some constants remain.  I have only touched a paintbrush a few times since Kay’s death, and I have rolled dice a few times.   I am however slowly coming back to the wargaming hobby via my first love, boardgames.  A few months ago I had the opportunity to take a longish drive to buy five boxes of games from someone’s estate.  They almost went to the garbage dump, but someone had the sense to take them to a thrift store, and the thrift store owner knew someone who got the word out into the local gaming community, so that was a close run thing as someone once said.  Here are some of the games, mostly classic Avalon Hill titles.

It me, reading rules.

Besides the AH titles, there were some happy surprises, including seven of Avalanche Press’ Panzer Grenadier series, which looks like an interesting tactical game in the vein of AH’s Squad Leader.   I hope to explore PG in the near future.  

Currently on the gaming table is GMT’s game Churchill: The Struggle For Peace.   I’m playing i solo, as the Americans, and the other sides (USSR and Britain) are played by decision trees or “bots”.   The game is an interesting take on WW2, and certainly works as a history lesson, but not really sure yet whether it works as a game.   More to follow.    Also, my gaming friend James came by recently for a weekend of miniatures fun, in our ongoing OPERATION THUNDERING DICE series of irregular weekends, so I will have a report on that soon.

So it’s good to be back, I hope someone reads this, and I hope to be more active in the hobby again.

Blessings to your die rolls and paintbrushes,

MP+