Back in September I said that I was going to experiment with WW2 naval gaming, using the Battle of the River Plate as a test project. Working relatively quickly, I've been able to get my initial order of 1/2400 ships from GHQ painted. Here is "the Beast", the Graf Spee, sailing serenely on a Geek Villain mat.
Leander-class light cruiser:
HMS Exeter:
Commodore Harwood's squadron in search of the Graf Spee:
"I say, sir, I do believe we've found her!" Litko splash markers.
I had a very positive experience with the Naval Thunder: Battleship Row rules by Harry Pratt, which I found for purchase as a download from Wargames Vault. I'm grateful to Keith who runs the excellent Across the Table blog for putting me on to these rules. Since NTBR uses a written orders and simultaneous movement system (seems to be a hallmark of naval rules!), it is not ideal for solo play, but I suspect with some more thought I could write some general battle plans for both sides with some die rolls for the commander's likely reaction as the situation evolves. An even better solution would be an opponent!
I was only using the basic NTBR rules and found them easy enough to learn. The d10 system provides for some unpredictability, and shooting is not easy at the larger ranges. When a shell does hit, there is a step to assess penetration vs armour (each ship has a data card which can be printed before the game and which provides this information readily). Penetrating hits cause damage (different shells have different damage ratings, and each hit reduces a ship's hit points) but also cause critical hits, which can be quite dramatic. There are advanced rules for crew quality, torpedoes, aircraft, etc, but I kept the first game simple.
The RN player has to put his head down and run at the Spee to get within effective range, and this means the Spee has several turns to inflict damage, as happened in the actual fight with the crippling of Exeter. In my game, Achilles in the lead followed by Ajax attacked on one side, while Exeter tried to get on the other side of Spee. This gave the Germans time to hammer Achilles with 11" shells, crippling her gunnery and causing a fire. Here we see Achilles turning away from the fight and on fire, making smoke to hide her escape. Her brave New Zealand crew never did get the fire under control and she soon sank (more Litko markers).
However, Ajax was relatively unharmed and struck a blow, causing a fire amidships. Spee's crew could not extinguish the fire, and it spread, detonating a secondary magazine and causing significant damage. Captain Langsdorf was now seeking to withdraw and fight another day. By this time, Exeter was adding her fire, though reduced because her aft turret had been knocked out. Her first salvo missed, but a second landed two fatal hits. The first caused flooding damage, but the second hit the main magazine (two "O"s on 2d10) and the mighty pocket battleship blew up with few survivors.
At least in this encounter, German propaganda can say that she died fighting, rather than being ignominiously scuttled!
I'm now debating whether to mount my ships on bases, which would minimize wear and tear on the models from handling, vs leaving them as they are. The Geek Villain seascape map is quite nice and I like the look of the models sans bases. This requires a good ponder. In the meantime, another order from GHQ will soon allow me to fight the Battle of the Denmark Strait, although that order is currently in limbo due to a Canada Post strike.
Thanks for reading. Cheers, and blessings to your die rolls!
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