Thoughts on The Russo Japanese War

Part of the Avalanche Press “Great War at Sea” stable - 1904 - 1905 means of course the Russo Japanese War. 

The familiar GWAS approach - strategic moves on the map and the battles arising are fought on the tactical map.

A while back I acquired an unpunched copy of the Great War at Sea board game covering the Russo Japanese War. The game is lovely to look at - as are the rest in the series - but as yet it has not seen any action and so has sat, somewhat forlornly, on the shelf of shame in the man cave. 

I have a lot of ‘previous’ in respect of the predreadnought era, going back to the days of the old Newham Wargames Club when my French 1:3000th fleet regularly locked horns with the Austrians and Italians of Mr Fox. We used a set of rules called “Devil at the Helm” which gave a good, albeit complicated game. Using them for actions set in 1905 really pushed the system - meaning that the game s-l-o-w-e-d down almost to a crawl. It is safe to say that they were very much of their time!

DBSA - the naval version of DBA - works well for the period and the indefatigable Mr David Manley has, unsurprisingly, produced a set of rules for the Russo Japanese War called White Bear, Red Sun (available from the Wargames Vault under Long Face Games label) that builds upon them. They also include a rather nifty campaign system. 

A really good set of rules - both for the tactical and the strategic side. The PDF also has ship counters, a larger map and area control markers. In my opinion, it is one of Mr Manley’s best!

So between the above two I have the wherewithal to fight actions from the war with the advantage of using a campaign system to generate the battles. The counters from the board game could be readily used with White Bear, Red Sun although I would not be averse to making the models required. These would be easy enough to do but for the one thing I am sadly lacking - time!

In this case I would look to use commercially available models - probably in 1:2400th from Tumbling Dice although I have seen a number of other options that could be viable.

So what happened next?

Well, I was looking through eBay for books about the Russo Japanese War when I came across a rather interesting looking board game.

Available from Nuts Publishing - quite a small box

The contents. The Map is roughly A3 sized with the area divided into zones. The game is all about controlling them

The wooden ‘meeples’ used for the Japanese land forces

A close up of the map and the (two sided) counters. Only ships of cruiser size and above are represented and the flip side of the counter represents a damaged ship.

The game last for six turns with the Baltic fleet arriving on turns 5 and 6. The victory conditions are quite simple - if the Japanese do not have a ‘meeple’ in the Mukden Box of the Manchuria track the Russians win. The other way of winning is the position of the Control Point (CP) marker. CPs are gained by controlling sea zones so at the end of turn 6 whoever has the most is the winner. The game takes around an hour to play and fits handily on a normal sized tray. There are optional rules regarding minefields, the attack on Port Arthur and some additional ships.

Another game in the same series - “This is SPARTA!”

All in all it is a quick fix but challenging and it is one I shall look forward to trying out. If the previous game in the series is anything to go by (300: Earth and Water, a game covering the Persian invasion of Greece) then it will have been a great investment. For the record it cost £23 plus shipping!

There is a cunning plan with all this - more of which in a (much) later post….