Changing the Rules of the Game

 

A quite splendid book and one that I need to add to my collection - especially as my copy seems to disappeared into the ether....(along with the Conways titles mentioned previously...)



How many of us, I wonder, have 'tweaked' a set of wargames rules? I am willing to bet that most of have at one time or another and I for one am an inveterate 'tinkerer'. I mentioned briefly in my last post about the ongoing gridded playing area for my forthcoming refight of the Battle of the Denmark Strait. I have the MDF board required and merely need to paint and grid it or I can use the cloth I have and just grid that as a stop gap.

Well, at this stage I am going to do neither.

I shall refight the battle on a normal playing surface - I say normal but perhaps for me that should be abnormal as pretty much all of my games these days are on a grid of some kind - using a scale of 3" to one square. This would give an average WW1 dreadnought a move of 9" whilst the 18" guns of Yamato would reach 27". For the size of models and playing area I am using that would be fine but with a critical advantage over the grid based version.

Manoeuvring. As in being able to - rather being able to more effectively.

At this stage all I would need to do is to change the rules for turning and think about how to tackle submarines and minefields though the latter two are hardly essential at this stage.

The biggest advantage of doing this for the Denmark Strait refight is of course the angle of approach between the two sides at the outset of the action. I can accurately set the forces up at the correct heading far more readily than using a square grid. It also means that considerations concerning firing arcs can be better reflected. I am not saying that I have abandoned the idea of using the square grid for Barry Carter's rules but in the interests of getting the action fought I may well use the non-gridded option.

In respect of the models I am using I shall be basing the remainder of the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine ships over the next few days and the plan is to have them all painted (there are 52 ships remaining of which 28 are destroyers) ideally by the end of next month.

The range of ships available is limited and the quality variable (as are the scales between types) but for all that they scrub up rather nicely. I am looking forward to adding some missing ships from the Historical Boardgames range to increase the choice available but the big addition will be the Italians in due course. This will consist of ships, aircraft, tanks, artillery and infantry.

The key part of that last sentence is "in due course...."

Of course it is....