Regular followers with have spotted I picked up a few secondhand Dreadnoughts over the last few months and painted them up. After searching for some suitable rules I picked up a copy of “When Dreadnoughts rules the Seas” by Brian DeWitt and available through Amazon via Little Wars TV. The rules are only 4 pages and you can download ship cards and the booklets comes with background info and several scenarios.
Anyway having played a number of more traditional battles we thought we would give these a run out for fun, see if we like the rules etc….
Pretty easy terrain to setup this is my ‘sea’ cloth for our planned Cruel seas game in the spring. The rules come with some turning templates and the ship cards can be downloaded and printed off. There is as to be expected some record keeping, and we soon discovered we could simplify the speed into five steps rather than a complete sliding scale which is hard to keep track of.
Our initial battle sets out, one dreadnought, a light cruiser and a Destroyer squadron each side. The destroyers can deploy smoke so why not !
After some manoeuvring and with both the Cruisers and destroyers sent to the bottom of the sea the Dreadnought pound it out.
Despite being hit and damaged the Derfflinger scores a critical hit on the Queen Mary with their poor fire control the crew are unable to put it out and she explodes !💥💥💥 unexpected but I believe this is exactly what happened historically. We had lunch and pondered a bigger battle in the afternoon.
The added complexity of Mist now drifting across the North Sea, two pretty equal fleets now faced off against each other. We were probably too ambitious and should have limited the number of ships to about six ! Lesson learnt.
Anyway the two fleets steam towards each other
The Germans attempt to cover their attack with smoke but a couple of the British Battleships break through hunting the German fleet.
As I guess is probably the way of these things both fleets swing around attempting to get the advantage and use the mist and smoke to hide any attack. The British got the better if the encounter and although the British had taken quite a pounding by the end the Germans had lost two Battleships and were forced to flee back to port.
A fun day gaming and nice to try out the ships. The rules worked well and are pretty quick to pick up, we had a couple of questions on things which weren’t quite clear (like the number of Torpedos each ship carries) but we sorted these out as we went along. We were over ambitious with the number of ships in the afternoon and would have been better with a smaller but focussed scenario. When we play it again (sometime) we will focus down a little. But as a change it was quite fun and I have always wanted to give this scale of Naval gaming a try out. Huge benefit is the storage space and the speed a battle can be set up…..
Thanks for checking by…….back to AWI and WW2 in the next few days
Matt ❤️
Interesting looking battle
ReplyDeleteThanks Martin just a bit of fun 👍
DeleteThis is an unexpected turn of events! I am not sure I even recall you picking up a 1/3000 collection. Looks like a fun and fast game. Only four pages of rules? That is a bonus. You remain quite busy on the gaming front.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jon the rules work pretty well but there is some inevitable record keeping with this type of gaming. Just keeping the hobby activity ticking over
DeleteA nice change of scenery there Matt and these small scale ships combined with the playing space do give the sense of a naval battle fought at distance:).
ReplyDeleteScenery change lol……a fun game and always good to try something different for a change, back to normal soon ?
DeleteLike Jonathan I have no recollection of these ships arriving in the dungeon. Nice to see a naval game, a genre not much played hereabouts.
ReplyDeleteThanks David, the ships are tiny so easy to miss, I do like to have a wide range of gaming in the dungeon, variety being the spice of life and all that 👍
DeleteGreat looking game Matt!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michal 👍
DeleteThey do look good in this scale Matt. I am not a huge fan of naval games but they are always pretty to look at!
ReplyDeleteThanks Keith certainly not our normal stuff, but fun for a change and the ships are very effective, they work out well in the game so we might see a scenario played sometime ?
DeleteCool looking game, Matt!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ray
DeleteThey look like a nice succinct set of rules that gives a fast-flowing game. I think may have temporarily killed off our enthusiasm for WWII Naval by going too large with a USN v IJN game which turned into a slugfest so I'm glad that .
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'm still struggling with is the propensity to want to close and cross the T as though it were a Napoleonic naval game, not just with destroyers but the whole fleet. The rules we have played lately seem to reward that kind of action rather than standing off in parallel lines and pounding away, but then if that's all you do it makes for a less interesting game anyway.
Thanks Lawrence , you obviously have more experience than us and you are absolutely right the crossing the T tactic was prevalent in our game which doesn’t feel right. Thinking about it I might place a larger exclusion zone between ships in future battles as this would reduce the likely hood of the jumble of ships which is so chaotic ? The game was fun for a change though and we might play a scenario sometime.
DeleteOne thing Nimitz does well is reward the player for keeping ships in formation by allowing all ships in contact to fire together, before handing over the initiative to the other to respond. A pretty neat way of encouraging ships to stay together. I just haven't found a way around the crossing the T and think an exclusion zone is a great idea worth exploring.
DeleteInteresting these rules split the movement but not the firing so one side fires all ships then the other.
DeleteNaval gaming leaves me all at sea. Queue ramming my own sides flag ship I never got to grips with port and starboard 😂
ReplyDeleteA bit of fun for a change 👍
DeleteThanks Matt, that’s a set now on my radar, do you think they would work for a Battle of the River Plate type of affair?
ReplyDeleteThanks norm, the rules work well. They do a WW2 set of rules as well, with quite a larger range of ship cards to download. We only have the WW1 set, there may even be a River Plate scenario in the WW2 booklet. In future I think a maximum of say 6 ships per side would be the target and more scenario driven rather than a head on battle which is a bit too unwieldy.
DeleteNice Matt. All my naval stuff has now gone but I did enjoy the odd game. Not a big fan of Warlord rules but their Napoleonic set is really good, but I would not like to fight Trafalgar with them.
ReplyDeleteThanks George I have some other much simpler Napoleonic rules which work quite well for a bit of fun but I’m still waiting to have a go at Trafalgar this year perhaps.
DeleteLooks interesting , yes sometimes less is more
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave when did we wargamers have self control ?
DeleteSelf control and wargaming,of course not! Interesting interlude, Ive got some galleys, I might do renaissance but cant see me doing dreadnaughts, pre dreadnoughts are kind of interedting?
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
It’s certainly not a common trait in wargamers. Our naval battles are most likely an interlude, back to the Naps soon 👍
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