Morschauser Afloat - Back to (very) Basics

After having considered the entire Morschauser Naval rules situation over lunch today I came to a number of decisions about how I want to take this forward. The first point was that I needed to ensure that the rules maintained the simplicity of Morschauser's concepts and this means moving away from the rivet counting so beloved by most naval wargames rules. Originally I had wanted to model ship specifications for individual types in some detail but this is, on reflection, contrary to how Morschauser would have tackled the subject. I could imagine that he would have had generic ship classes i.e. Battleships, cruisers etc which is fine where the types are broadly similar within a category but we all know that one man's Queen Elizabeth class dreadnought is most certainly not another mans Nassau class. With this in mind I have opted to have generic classes for ship types but to reflect the differences with numbers of attack and defence dice rather than the superior, normal or inferior ratings. I am currently compiling a list with the dice ranges per ship type of main, secondary, torpedo and tonnage/armour ratings. I have taken some liberties with some of the assumptions in my thinking but overall, as long as the relative differences between types are maintained then I should be only fairly solid ground. A example would be that I am giving the aforementioned QE class dreadnought 10 attack dice for its main battery of 8 x 15". An Iron Duke with 10 x 13.5" will have 9 dice; as will those 12" armed later dreadnoughts with 12 guns or more. Ships with 10 x 11" or 12" will have 8 dice and so on down to those with only six guns on a broadside having 6 dice.The number of dice is sometimes the same as the number of barrels but this is coincidental rather than planned! the same process will be applied to all the other ship classes as well as for the number of defence dice so all I need to do is to 'shoehorn' ships specifications into the number of dice of the range in question. It sounds a lot more complex than it is.

I am absolutely happy about movement - it works and is effective and when the use of 'blind' cards is introduced it will make it a whole new game.

Firing has been simplified in that paired 6s at a ships extreme range, 6s at interim ranges and and 5 and 6s when close in are the order of the day. DD and TB are now harder to hit - especially with secondaries - which will give them a little more survivability and ensure that players will need to be alert to the THREAT of torpedoes.

I rationalised that big ships would not be so good with secondary fire as the main focus would be on the big guns. Smaller ships would be better dealt with by the use of smaller ships as they would have more appropriate training in small scale actions - tenuous I know but logical if you think about it.

Torpedoes are deadly but are not easy to hit with and undamaged ships at speed can usually avoid them assuming they can see the attacking ships. As a battleship captain seeing an enemy destroyer flotilla looming out of the smoke at 5,000 yards will mean evasive action and a deluge of secondary fire which may or may not be effective but will certainly look good!

So the work to re Morschauser the rules has not been difficult but it has needed a fresh approach to try and dovetail with the level of ease of use of the system. More to follow in due course.

Morschauser Afloat...and Sunk!

I tested the Morschauser derived naval set today using my Balkan Wars Fleets and sadly it did not go too well. Movement was fine and the use of 'blind' cards will make a huge difference - they will ensure that any 'kamikaze' tendencies will be kept firmly in check as a player will not know what is moving and when! Main gun firing was OK but secondaries were lethal and it was way too easy to hit with torpedoes although ironically the damage inflicted was about right.

The problem with secondaries was they they were being used 'en masse' against single targets and in retrospect should almost work on an area effect basis. For the most part secondaries (and tertiaries) were designed to hose an area with fire with the idea that if enough metal went down range then anything in the way would have a thin time of it. I think that it is correct to represent the quantity available to a given ship but it is unrealistic to expect that every barrel will be pointed at the same target. I need to give this some thought and one of the ideas I am considering is to count pairs of 6s as hits at long range rather than 6s, 5 or 6s at interim range and 5 and 6s at close range (with 6s counting as two hits).

Torpedoes hit too easily at close range - I had a 4, 5 or 6 counting - and this needs revision as well so I may adopt the 'need a 6 at whatever range' technique in the interests of simplicity with a saving roll for undamaged ships, a slightly worse saving roll for damaged ships and no saving roll for crippled vessels.

The biggest problem with this period is the sheer diversity of old and new ship types and how they fit into a set of rules. I want to show the differences between ships but what is the best way of doing this WITHOUT using ship cards?

Despite all of this the test overall went pretty well - I just need to stand back from it for a few days and clear my head a little. Over egging the pudding is a natural tendency methinks and so I need to think about how Morschauser would have tackled it and act accordingly - that means acquiring a copy of his book tout suite!

Vietnam Additions

You may recall a short while ago I managed to acquire six boxes of Revell US and NVA 20mm plastic figures during the recent Modelzone sale. the boxes have sat on my desk in the same place as when I brought home and I was all set to consign them to the cupboard for a rainy day. I also mentioned about tackling a Memoir 44 variant for Vietnam as it would be farely easy to put together. Well the variant exists as a scribbled side of A4 but has gotten no further in the face of Balkan 15mm figures, Morschauser games and cobbling together a naval version thereof. However, I popped over to Othellos - a secondhand bookshop in Leigh and well worth a visit if you are passing - with a selection of titles to exchange and came across the three titles in the picture. It is fairly safe to say that these three have pretty much given me sufficient background detail to be going on with.

The first book is Vietnam by Stanley Karnow and is described as the 'First Complete Account of Vietnam at War'. It is a great doorstop of a tome and accompanied the TV series (I missed that one for sure!) and so is as good a place as any to get the background to the war. Aside from the American involvement the book also covers the French side as well so appears to be fairly complete in its coverage.

The second is Armoured Combat in Vietnam by General Don Starry. This traces the evolution of US armoured tactics in Vietnam and is full of all the detail that you would want in respect of organisations, equipment, tactics and analysis of selected actions with maps. It also covers the unhappy French experience of armoured warfare and how this coloured the US view in the early stages of the war.

The third book is The Vietnam War Handbook by Andrew Rawson. this book is nothing less than an encyclopedia of the just about everything US associated with the war. It covers organisations, what units were where and when; the role of the air force and navy as well as brief looks at the free world allies and both the armies of South and North Vietnam. Certainly worth having on the book shelf.

The final acquisition came from a local toy shop and is the Airfix 1:76 scale kit of the M113 ACAV. This is a nice little kit and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that you could build it as a standard M113; not just as the ACAV variant. I was also pleased to note that this model fits nicely on a 3" RAFM hex transfer so perhaps the Memoir 44 variant may have a little more chance of being realised sooner rather than later...................;-)

Morschauser Afloat Part 2

I have completed the first draft of the rules and am now ready to play test the result. as mentioned previously, all that remained for me to do was to then tackle the amendments to the existing ship specification charts I had already compiled for use with mt DBSA Great War variant. I duly sat down to revise the Balkan Wars ship lists when I was suddenly reminded of just why I tackled the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet first before venturing into the Eastern Mediterranean. They are bigger, much bigger and as a result have a lot more ships so establishing a base line for ship classifications of a particular type is easier and more meaningful by virtue of the available choice of vessels. Unfortunately, both the RN and the Germans were the first ship tables I tackled last year at the start of the DBSA project and the subsequent various rethinks I had as the set evolved were not reflected in them as I concentrated exclusively on the Balkan and Black Sea fleets. The upshot of all this is that I will have to tackle the RN and High Seas Fleet first and they will need proportionally more work to bring up to the current standard than the more modest Greek and Turkish fleet lists. It serves me right really, I should have kept them up to speed with what I was using on the table top!

Morschauser Afloat

It is fair to say that most, if not all war gamers are inveterate rule tinkerers. From simple house rules added to an existing set through to home made versions or even unofficial supplements or variants we are always ‘fiddling’. Readers of this blog will have no doubt seen the various degrees of tinkering I have taken part in – most significantly with the DBSA WW1 Naval variant (which is in fact a variant of a variant!) – so it will probably come as no surprise to learn that I have been ‘at it again’. The target this time was the grid based rules of Joseph Morschauser that have been given a new lease of life by Bob Cordery via his blog: http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/. As things stand at the moment, Bob has developed both 19th century and Modern (primarily aimed at WW2) versions and very good they are too – simple, challenging and a lot of fun to play and once again much thanks and appreciation to Bob for his efforts with this. The rules work so well (a tribute to the soundness of the original concept) that I plan to use them for my Balkan Wars project and indeed many other, as yet uncharted ideas.

I was thinking about the rule system as a whole when it occurred to me that the mechanics could be very easily used for naval games. After the relative torture I endured (as did the long suffering members of SEEMS during the play testing!) making a grid based version of DBSA for the WW1 era, producing a set of Morschauser style naval rules was happily much simpler. The mechanics of combat are very straightforward requiring numbers of d6 rather than the use of factors. This makes for a more ‘fun’ aspect as most gamers (including myself) enjoy rolling handfuls of dice in the heat of combat! There is no record keeping and best of all – the ship details I have already tabled for the DBSA set are usable for this version so I will not have to immerse myself in Jane’s or Conway’s for hours at a time! Of course a few details will need to be checked but mercifully not that many and, to be honest browsing through either of these tomes is hardly a trial! An unexpected bonus in respect of using the dice driven Morschauser combat mechanics is that by using differing numbers of d6 for a ship’s vital statistics in conjunction with having superior, normal and inferior categories I am able to better reflect the differences between ships of the same notional type. This is an important consideration as most naval gamers are very well clued up on their favourite warships and any attempt to fudge the detail will be quickly identified and challenged!

Hits are scored by rolling the number of dice indicated by the ship specification chart for the ship and weapon in use with a hit being scored by the roll of a 6 at the final square of a firing ships range, a 5 or 6 for the interim squares and a 4, 5 or 6 when adjacent to the target. A ship may be able to save against any hits suffered depending on the quality of the firing guns and the targets protection. Movement is very simple and like combat is purely orthogonal – ships may turn up to 90 degrees in each square they enter and are allowed to face a corner in the last square of their movement but have to face either the port or starboard square off the ships bow before commencing their next movement. This allows two things – it enables ships to open their fire arcs and it also adds a little to the fog of war as the opponent will not know which way the ship will move off. I have included the long/short move mechanic (used in my DBSA variant and based on the system used by Barry Carter) as it means that ship speeds can be more accurately reflected when used on the grid. Damage is recorded by the use of white counters or shell splashes for hits; these are removed and exchanged for a black counter when a ship has suffered fifty percent damage. When the ship has but a single damage point left it picks up its second black marker and is counted as crippled. As yet I have not included any tactical modifiers, preferring to ‘let the dice decide’. Submarines, merchantmen, minefields, raiders and shore batteries etc thus far do not feature but I am sure can be slotted in as and when needed.
The version I have drafted covers the same time frame as the DBSA variant – roughly 1900 to the end of the Great War. I can see absolutely no reason why the core system could not be tweaked further to cover WW2 and indeed, I always planned to tackle that for the DBSA variant. The biggest addition will of course be the increasing use of air power. One for later in the year methinks – I have enough painting/modelling/research/reading etc, etc to be getting on with as it is!

I plan to play test the rules over the weekend and will look to give them a run out at the club very soon. I am very excited about the potential of these rules; probably more so than the DBSA variant as they offer a more 'gamey' experience.

The rules as they have been drafted thus far are probably only marginally more complex than Axis and Allies: War at Sea and so will be ideal for any solo or club night mini campaigns. Indeed, the success of Axis and Allies at the club was another reason why I was so pleased to be able to bring about this naval variant of Morschauser.

Balkan Intrigues

At long last I have completed the clean up of my 15mm Balkan Wars figures prior to undercoating and painting. The major decision reached as a result of the Morschauser play test (see the previous post) is that the figures are going to be based individually rather than in multiples. It also means that the forces I currently have will be plenty big enough and so no extra figures will be required for either the Turks or the Bulgarians. Now these are at this stage in the process I can also start to think about scenery etc. I am awaiting some wooden buildings from Amazon but am thinking about some other more theatre specific dwellings. Given the stylised nature of the Morschauser system I am seriously considering a radical approach to the whole scenery issue, in part based on the observations of various systems in use for buildings e.g. grid square sized boxes with printed buildings or woods etc or 2d style semi flat terrain. A number of ideas were discussed on this subject with Chris during the play test and they have given me much food for thought. Using the net as a resource means that many great pictures can be downloaded and manipulated into usable terrain and many gamers have done this both successfully and cheaply.

First things first though - I need to get the figures painted before worrying too much about the terrain!

Meandering with Morschauser

I was finally able to play test Bob Cordery’s 19th century adaptation of Joe Morschauser’s grid based figure game from the early 1960’s. The full story as to how these rules have evolved from the original can be found on Bob’s blog http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/ and it is well worth a read for this and many other items of interest. In a nutshell, Morschausers’s system made use of small units of figures on a square grid with all ranges and distances etc measured in squares. Pictures of his system in action can be found in Donald Featherstone’s book – Advanced Wargames and very nice it looks as well. Bob has been tweaking these rules for some time and the resultant version is available from his blog.

For reasons of my own (more of which later) I was very keen to explore this system and have been following Bob’s progress with great interest. After having constructed a grid using a piece of green felt marked out in 3” squares and measuring 11 squares by 11 I was able to think about a game. Initially I wanted to test the modern version of the rules (covering WW2) using Memoir 44 terrain tiles and figures etc until my long term friend and gaming acquaintance Chris Hardman kindly offered to bring his 28mm WW1 early war French and German collection to try out the 19th century version of the rules. With SWMBO making a very rare excursion out with her friends on Saturday night it proved to be far too good an opportunity to miss and so the plans were made for an evening of old school gaming.

I already had in mind how the game should go when Chris arrived – it was a play test after all – and so we were able to very quickly set up the playing area using a fairly sterile set up and the terrain tiles from Memoir 44. The terrain was set out with each side having a small hill and a wood fairly close to their deployment area diagonally opposite each other i.e. each wood faced a hill on the opposite side. Plum in the centre of the cloth was a small village. Each side consisted of the same number of units – 6 x 4 figures infantry, 2 x 3 figure cavalry, 1 x 3 figure HMG and 1 x 3 figure Field Gun. The Germans set up with all their infantry deployed in the centre facing the village with the cavalry on either flank and the artillery on the right and the HMG on the left of the central mass of foot soldiers. The French set up was broadly similar except for one critical difference – the artillery was deployed in the centre with the infantry on either flank of it. This meant that the Germans had a numerical advantage in the centre.

I do not propose to give a blow by blow account of the action – simply because aside from recording the casualties I did not make anything like detailed notes – rather I will describe the action in general terms and the points arising from it.

The Germans initially threw all their infantry at the village in the centre and parked their HMG in a wood on the left and their artillery up the hill on the right both with the cavalry tucked behind in support. There was a furious exchange of fire in the centre which saw the French infantry driven off as the Germans stormed into the village. Unfortunately, in an excess of zeal (no doubt as a result of their success thus far) a couple of units pushed on beyond the village and were met with a withering cross fire from either flank and the famed French ‘Soixante-Quinze’ deployed in the centre. The leading two German units were still around, but only just, being down to a single figure apiece. Meanwhile, the remaining French infantry began to work their way cautiously around either flank of the village, trading long range pot shots as they did. The French left flank cavalry appeared in the distance and the impetuous Uhlans tasked with protecting the German artillery suddenly forgot their duty and charged the enemy horse to their front. The resultant melee was short but desperate with all the German troopers cut down to a man, doubtless arriving at the enemy position on blown horses and in some disorder. The French horse on the opposite flank then took advantage of some dead ground and lurked menacingly near the German HMG position. With the German artillery now exposed on the hill the French were able to send both infantry and cavalry to force a conclusion with the stubborn gunners. A rump of an infantry unit was sent to bolster the flank from the village but its arrival in the face of massed French rifle fire and marauding horsemen merely delayed the inevitable. The sole survivor was cut down and the artillery attempted to withdraw from the hill but the order was given far too late and so they too met the fate of the cavalry and infantry supporting them. Fortunately for the Germans, the leading French infantry unit was not entirely unscathed in its struggle with the German artillery and it too succumbed to a spirited fire from the village in the centre. The French right flank cavalry meanwhile tried to sneak up on the HMG team deployed in the wood but was tackled with rifle fire again from the village. The German HMG then proceeded to shoot up its French opposite number as it came down from the hill opposite its position. The remnants of the German infantry that had impetuously charged ahead of the village then tackled the French artillery and succeeded in driving off all the gunners before being rendered hors de combat by the French right flank infantry.

After this frenzy of activity (and after the dust had settled) the Germans were clinging on to the village by their fingernails and the French infantry were moving up to force the position. The last of the French cavalry, despite being in disarray after having despatched the German artillery, was charged by the German Uhlan squadron previously supporting the HMG. Despite being outnumbered the French gave a good account of themselves and when the brief fight was over all that was left was a single German trooper.

At this point we decided to call it a day as the remaining Germans would attempt to withdraw whilst covered by the HMG, the French being too knocked about to do anything other than to occupy the village and to recover from their exertions. It was tremendous fun and the rules only threw up a small number of anomalies – all of which Bob has commented on – and so I will use the old wargaming standby of adding some house rules to the core system. Using 28mm figures on a 3” square was a little on the snug side but would be ideal for 15 or 20mm. I would prefer to have a rectangular playing area as well – perhaps 17 by 11 squares. Certainly the core system is sound enough to cope with some judicious tinkering which is always the hallmark of a good set of rules in my opinion.

Once again I should like to thank Chris for braving the elements and bringing his superb collection of figures (soon to be joined by the Belgians) along as well as his usual insightful observations and comments. I should also like to thank thank Bob Cordery (once again!) for all his work in breathing life into this system.