A Little Part of Jutland

The printed Jutland counters mounted on 3/4 sized Jenga Blocks. 

Tomorrow is the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. Back in 2016 I had planned to tackle a refight using 1:2400th scale models and indeed, I managed to get the capital ships from both sides completed using a combination of Stonewall Miniatures cast in metal and Panzerschiffe cast in resin, but was unable to push on to complete the cruisers and destroyers. The collection has long since moved on. Ken Reilly, of Yarkshire Gamer fame, did manage to fight the battle using GHQ 1:2400th models and very impressive it looked as well. As an aside is a great advocate for the humongous, Cecil B. DeMille style wargame and everything he does is in the grandest of manners!

British dreadnoughts from Panzerschiffe apart from H.M.S. Revenge and Marlborough which are Stonewall Miniatures

More British dreadnoughts - this time a mixture of Stonewall and Panzerschiffe

Panzerschiffe British battlecruisers

H.M.S. Tiger and the the three ‘splendid cats’ are from Stonewall whilst H.M.S. New Zealand and Indefatigable are from Panzerschiffe

5th Battle Squadron courtesy of Stonewall Miniatures

The first batch of German Dreadnoughts - all of these are Stonewall Miniatures

The earlier German dreadnoughts

The German pre-dreadnoughts - sadly I cannot remember where these came from. I have a feeling they may well have been Panzerschiffe. 

The German battlecruisers. The two Derfflinger class are metal whilst the remainder are resin.

Anyways, I was determined not to miss out marking the occasion this time and so have persuaded the two amigos, Messrs Fox and Huband to tackle an old favourite of mine - Avalon Hill’s Jutland or as I like to think of it, a board game without a board.

It would be nice to tackle the full Jutland operation - perhaps that will one for another day - but due to time restraints we are looking to tackle the opening phase of the battle involving the battlecruisers. The rules will be as written in the Jutland rule book but with a minor change. I do not have a physical copy of the game but I do have a series of PDFs that contain just about everything written about the game in the old Avalon Hill General magazine, along with scans of all the game components from each of the two editions of the game that were produced. The minor change I mentioned is that I have substituted inches for all the movement and firing ranges as the associated devices used in the game are unavailable.

Aside from playing the game itself, there is another reason I am keen to do this. I want to remind myself about the gunnery and damage system used and how this may help with the rules for the new book. So the game will be a bit of a test bed to an extent. 

I settled on the battlecruiser action as it is fairly compact in terms of the number of ships with the added bonus, at least for the Royal Navy that is, of the arrival of the 5th Battle squadron at some point….