Portable Wargame Thoughts

 

Hammerin' Iron by Peter Pig in action. Note the 'free hex' system in use. For a fuller account of action take a look at Trebian to whom thanks are extended for the use of his picture.



Although things have been very nautically inclined recently I have not been neglecting my ideas around the use of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame series. For me the obvious fit would be WW1 and WW2 but I am also giving serious thought to something colonial. In fact, when I prepare the khaki army it would very simple to use some of the Tumbling Dice 1/600th open order infantry as loose order tribal irregulars of some type. Magister Militum have a large range of material in  this scale - far larger than the Tumbling Dice offering - so cherry picking odds and ends from them would be a useful alternative. Mounted camels would be very handy indeed for a couple of ideas!

I also have a large selection of the Peter Pig troop blocks that are available as part of their Hammerin' Iron ACW naval range. This is quite limited but covers infantry, infantry skirmishers, cavalry, artillery and command bases. the infantry blocks are rather nice and would be ideal for pretty much anything close order and linear for the 19th century. I am toying with the idea of using these for Napoleonics at some point - and Bob has mentioned the possibility of a dedicated Napoleonic Portable Wargame at some point.

My original thought in respect of WW2 was to replicate the approach from Memoir 44 using Heroscape tiles and 1/600th scale models. So far I have limited myself to what models Tumbling Dice have produced which is fine for the infantry and for the more vanilla vehicles. By that I mean I have a Panzer 4 F2, Shermans and T34/85s. Trucks, halftracks, artillery and antitank guns as well as armoured cars and SPs will need to come from magister Militum but I will not need many of them for sure!

Terrain will be pretty straightforward and I already have a selection of pieces that would suitable - including some palm trees! There are a few pieces available in the Peter Pig 1/600th scale Hammerin' Iron range that are useful as well including a rather nice farm/homestead

One of the other ideas I have been messing around with it the use of the Portable Wargame in a non-gridded way. I reckon that the core mechanics could be readily taken off the grid and games fought over a 2ft square playing area, DBA style. This is not an entirely original thought but it is a mechanism used in the Peter Pig Hammerin' Iron ACW naval rules. They make use of a 'free hex' mechanism whereby all combat and movement was handled using hexes but not on a hex grid as such. The unit being moved was assumed to at the centre of a hex orientated with a hex side across the bow of the ship (see the picture above to see this in action). This representational hexagon would then have the normal six sides facing off the ship for movement, turning and firing etc using hexes as the unit of measure. I think it could work with land actions as well and would give the advantage of opening up the playing area. I think it could also be used with squares and in fact think that they would benefit even more given the restriction of having four sides as opposed to the six of a hexagon.  It is something to ponder and I will give this some more thought in due course.

Jutland Part 7: "More slaughter, more misery"

 

S.M.S. Goeben sporting the Turkish flag



The playtest I am planning on running over the course of next weekend is fairly low key but is based on a potentially significant historical (in)action. The clue is in the title but a more fuller version of the quote from Winston Churchill I used runs as follows:

"....more slaughter, more misery, and more ruin than has ever before been borne within the compass of a ship."

I am of course referring to the escape of the two German warships the Goeben and the Breslau at the outset of the Great War. I will not go into the full story - you can read about it here - but suffice it to say that my play test will feature a small part of the saga or rather potentially a small part of the saga.

The piece of the action I have chosen as the basis for my playtest takes place somewhere in the southern Adriatic and involves the Royal Navy armoured cruisers H.M.S. Defence, Black Prince, Warrior and Duke of Edinburgh with three destroyers against the German battlecruiser S.M.S. Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau.

I confess that my knowledge of this particular affair is rather hazy on the exact timeline and details (something I shall be taking steps to remedy) but for my immediate purposes the British are trying to engage the Germans in an effort to slow them up so that the battlecruisers of the Mediterranean fleet - H.M.S Inflexible, Indomitable and Indefatigable - could catch them and render them hors de combat. The problem for the British historically was that the commander of the armoured cruisers - Sir Ernest Charles Thomas Troubridge KCMG CB MVO - was under orders to "not to get seriously engaged with superior forces."

For the purposes of this scenario I have assumed that the British are more prepared to engage the Germans. As the Royal Navy ships are for the most part slower than the Germans (even allowing for the boiler woes of the Goeben) they will need to get in quickly if they are to have any chance of slowing them down. The three destroyers in support were all that were able to stay with the armoured cruisers at the speed they were travelling, mainly due to running out of coal. I am undecided about including them at all as they would have been hard pressed to have engaged the Germans in any event

For the purposes of the scenario I have assumed that the Germans are crossing he front of the British at an angle so the window of engagement will be  relatively brief.

The ship specifications look something like this.

Germany (Mittelmeerdivision: Konteradmiral Wilhelm Souchon commanding)

S.M.S. Goeben (BB)

Flotation value: 12
10 x BB guns (5 x 2)
12 x CL guns
12 x DD guns
Movement: 10

S.M.S. Breslau (CL)

Flotation Value: 7
12 x CL guns
Movement: 11

Royal Navy (Rear Admiral Sir Ernest Charles Thomas Troubridge KCMG CB MVO commanding)

H.M.S. Defence (CA)

Flotation Value: 10
4 x CA guns +1 (2 x 2)
10 x CA guns
16 x DD guns
Movement: 9

H.M.S. Warrior (CA)

Flotation Value: 9
6 x CA +1
4 x CA
24 x DD -1
Movement: 9

H.M.S. Black Prince and Duke of Edinburgh (CA)

Flotation Value: 9
6 x CA +1
10 x CL +1
20 x DD -1
Movement: 9

A couple of points on the numbers above. The flotation values look quite close together in that the Goeben comes in at 12 whilst the average for the armoured cruisers is 9 and the Breslau comes in at 7. This is intentional and the actual calculation will be revealed later.  Suffice it to say that the rationale behind it is so that ships have some survivability (or rather to make the game last a little longer!) when facing their peers. The effect of damage from larger weapons on less well protected ships is reflected by the damage modifiers based on the calibre of the firing weapon and the type of target so although the numbers look close once the appropriate factors come into play the damage points should accrue fairly quickly!

The + or - modifiers next to the gun types are a reflection of their impact within the same notional gun type. Remember in a previous post that the 15" guns of the QE class had a +2 modifier compared to the standard 12" weapon? This is an extension of that same basic principle - the DD -1 guns represent the 47mm weapons carried which are not as effective as the 3.4" used as a baseline. Again all these assumptions will be obvious once the rules are drafted - and you can feel free to tweak them up or down to suit! 

I shall be using counters for the ships in this action which are scaled at 1/4800th and so will be using centimetres rather than inches for all measuring. I will write up an after action report with some pictures if possible but the purple prose may be in short supply - it is a test after all!

Jutland: Intermission



 

At this point there should perhaps be some dreamy music whilst the popcorn, drinks on sticks and numerous other comestibles are consumed....

 



For the record this is not way of saying 'I am bored with this and so I am now looking to do something completely different' rather it is a pause for reflection and to serve as a reminder of what has gone before and how it fits in with what is to come.

My original intention was to expand the tactical system from the Avalon Hill game Jutland to make them more to serve as a standalone set of WW1 naval rules. This idea was abandoned in favour of designing a set of naval rules for the period using selected mechanics from the original game.

I am happy with the process I have devised for designing ship damage record cards and believe that I have addressed the thorny issue of firing and the effects of such fire in such a way as to reflect the combat capabilities of the ships in question.

At the time of writing I need to factor in critical hits and also the whole torpedo attack mechanism but both of these areas can be more or less lifted straight from Jutland with very few adaptions. There are a number of other processes that will also need to be considered including manoeuvring, formations, visibility and weather etc.

I am the first to acknowledge that sometimes my written explanations may seem a little unclear and I freely admit that on occasion I may have overdone things a little. All will become clear though once I have run a couple of play tests and also have a draft of the rules ready - and I am aiming on fitting the whole thing on two sides of A4!

These rules will not appeal to everybody but I have always maintained that variety is one of the strengths of our hobby. They are not uber-detailed in the way that Seekrieg or Fear God and Dreadnought are, nor are they as simple as, well, the original version of Jutland. The rules are more concerned with the overall effects of damage accumulated over a period of time rather than micro-managing every single shell fired and its point/angle of impact. I believe that this should be variable and not merely a matter of hit, damage, hit, damage, hit, damage. More like hit, possibly damage, hit, actually damage, hit actually damage more/less than the last time. Above all the rules are designed to give a fun game that captures the flavour of WW1 naval combat as far as it is possible using models on a table top.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating as the old saying goes and with this in mind I am hoping to run the first play test this weekend.

I am rather excited about what I have achieved so far and I hope that the final results meet my expectations.

Jutland Part 6: Firing and Damage

 

H.M.S. Lion about to enter the fray



In the original game of Jutland firing was handled very simply. Essentially you measured the range, added up the number of gunnery factors (gunnery boxes) firing, selected the appropriate column from the firing table and then rolled a single d6. The score rolled would determine the number of hits scored. This number could be modified according to range so the closer to the target you are the more damage you could potentially score. This is all straightforward stuff.

The rules I am working on will use this system but with an additional step. Hits scored are now referred to as potential hits as you will then be required to roll a further d6 per potential hit to see what, if any damage is inflicted. Damage inflicted will be variable and also subject to modification depending on the calibre of the weapon being used and the type of target - and this is a crucial difference to the Jutland system where all damage was 'flat'. In Jutland one hit scored one point regardless of the firing weapon or target type. The greater effect of heavier weapons in Jutland was represented by using additional gunnery factors. H.M.S. Warspite for example having 12 gunnery factors representing her 8 x 15" guns so heavier weapons had more factors which in turn meant more potential hits and therefore more damage. I prefer to have the damage inflicted on a variable basis* so that a larger weapon causes potentially more damage than a smaller one. As Jutland assumes a norm of 11 or 12" weapons for its capital ships I believe that larger or smaller weapons should have their potential damage adjusted up or down accordingly and not as a mean figure. With this in mind I am currently working on the following system.

After having secured a hit or hits the firing player then rolls a further d6 per hit. If the score is 1, 2 or 3 then no damage is scored. If a 4 or 5 is rolled then one point of damage is scored. A roll of a 6 is two points of damage. The damage inflicted may then be modified depending on the calibre of the weapon firing and the category of ship being fired upon.

A couple of examples of this are as follows. Our old friend H.M.S. Warspite has scored two hits on S.M.S. Seydlitz. The two hit dice come up 2 and 5. Warspite has hit Seydlitz with her 15" main guns which have a plus 2 modifier due to their size. There is no modifier for ship type as we are dealing with BB type weapons hitting BB type targets. The first roll of 2 is no effect - either the shell(s) hit and failed to explode or it caused no effective damage. The 5 though is a different matter as this is one point scored. However, due to the crunching impact of a 15" shell(s) the Seydlitz suffers a further 2 points of BB calibre damage or 3 damage points in total.

In another example S.M.S. Lutzow has fired her main guns at the RN armoured cruiser H.M.S. Warrior and has scored 3 potential hits. The dice are rolled and come up a 1, a 5 and a glorious 6. the 1 is discarded. As the Seydlitz is using BB rated guns against a CA target each hit receives a an additional 1 point of damage. This means that 1 point of damage is scored for the roll of 5 and 2 for the roll of 6. Each adds an additional point (BB weapons hitting a CA target) so the Warrior has suffered 5 BB calibre points of damage.

It is all very well scoring damage points but what do we do with them?

I mentioned previously that in Jutland damage points were first applied to the gunnery factors. When all of these had been marked off then any further hits could be applied to the protection/flotation value. The rationale behind this was that once the topside had been suitably battered that any further damage would have more chance of wrecking the vitals, loosening bulkheads etc. I have no great issues about how hits are applied when suffering damage and indeed believe that  variety is a good thing however, it does need to have a degree of control otherwise unscrupulous gamers will take advantage of the fact and apply any damage to the least important part of the ship. I also believe that gunnery could (and indeed did) cause damage below the waterline or in game terms against the protection/flotation factor. With this in mind the following applies. Within a single firing attack (that is the effects of firing from a single ship) consecutive damage points may not impact the same system. For example a target receives three hits. The first hit is applied to any part of the ship (lets say the main guns) and then second hit is applied. This may not follow the first (so not the main guns) but must be used elsewhere. The third hit could be used against the main guns again if desired. The area hit may also sustain additional damage depending on the calibre of the firing weapon and the calibre of the target damage. For example a BB rated gun has hit a BB rated target with two points of damage. The target ship wants to ensure his main guns are kept intact (at this stage of the action it is tactically prudent to do so) and so elects to apply the damage to his secondary (CL rated) guns. He may only apply 1 point  to the secondary guns (remember no damage points are applied consecutively) BUT as they are rated as CL (and this is two steps down from BB/PB the damage point adds an additional two to the point being applied. This means that a BB calibre gun hitting a CL calibre target or the CL part of a BB/PB/CA type ship will score three points. A table reflecting his will be drawn up and added into the text of the rules.

The rationale behind this is that quite often secondary and tertiary weapons were less well protected than the overall class of the ship would indicate. A large calibre shell exploding within a thinly armoured casemate could wreak havoc so the additional damage goes some way to representing this effect.

Finally, as far as possible damage has to be applied to the part of the ship that is nearest to the source of the fire. This means port, starboard, fore or aft.

I appreciate the above may seem a little confusing and at this stage is not complete but I hope that what I am trying to convey makes sense. Once the rules have been drafted in their entirety all will become a lot clearer!

Jutland Part 5: The Devil is in the Detail

 

S.M.S. Von Der Tann - the first of the German battle cruisers. This superb looking model is by GHQ in 1/2400th scale from the collection of Ken Reilly and forms part of his Jutland collection. Ken was able to do what I was not able to and built both sides for use in a Jutland refight. His blog details the story of the collection and the action. It was a magnificent effort!

One of the main things I want to achieve with my as yet unnamed naval rules is to have a transparent system for setting up ship damage records. If you recall from my previous posts one of the weaker areas of the original Jutland rules was how the ships damage record cards were set up. They are detailed enough when used within the game itself but not for my needs. 

I have tried to reverse engineer the Jutland ship specifications but not with any degree of success. In any event what I want to use is a little more detailed. Calculating the specifications for any given ship is something that most naval wargamers will be familiar with, even if their favourite set of rules had plenty of types included. There is inevitably a ship that is missing from the rules or the existing record for a particular vessel is inaccurate and requires amendment. 

The biggest problem though is that the original Jutland rules had no provision for ships of light cruiser size or smaller. This is one of the reasons I am looking to go my own way. 

The construction of a ship damage chart (hereafter referred to as SDC) looks at a number of factors some of which are straightforward, others less so. The main areas we are concerned with at this stage are armament, protection and speed.
 

Speed. This is very straightforward and as I am working on the basis that a 30 knot ship can move 12” the number are readily convertible. Essentially 2.5 knots of speed equal one inch of movement. Fractions should be rounded up if more than one knot over a 2.5 knot multiple e.g. an 24 knot ship would be treated as moving 25 knots (10”) whilst a 23 knot ship would be treated as 22.5 (9”) knots. I will cover ship movement in more detail in a further blog post. 

Armament. For every gun a ship carries it has a box on the SDC. These should reflect their position on the ship itself so turrets will have their boxes together in twos or threes. Secondary and tertiary weapons should also be deployed in their correct positions on either beam. I should mention that I will be using a top down view for each SDC. Guns are of course rated using the method mentioned in my last post – BB, PB, CA, CL and DD. For the most part these categories are largely self-explanatory but as mentioned previously there is a degree of overlap. As a base the BB and PB category includes weapons of 9.4” and above, CA is larger than 6” up to 10”, CL is 4.1” to 6” whilst DD is 4” and smaller. I will detail the overlaps and their effects in a later post. Finally torpedoes. One box is marked on the SDC for every two carried.  At this stage I am only considering those carried by 'light ships' - light cruisers and destroyers - although I may rethink this.

Protection. This has given me more headaches than anything else with this project and try as I might I have not been able to see how the original numbers were calculated. I have a formula I am working with which may look a little inconsistent but bear in mind I am looking to model ship characteristics in such a way that one could readily have a good game featuring any permutation of ships types. The key assumption with this part of the process is that unless using torpedoes or barring something like a magazine explosion it was extremely difficult to sink a ship by gunfire alone. I will explain this in more detail in a further blog post. For the moment though it is sufficient to note that the protection, or more accurately, flotation factor is based on a combination of armour carried and tonnage.

Damage is another area that has given me much to think about and after much deliberation I shall be using the original Jutland model but with a number of additional factors. The original rules assumed that two ships exchanging gunfire would inflict damage above the waterline (the gunnery factor boxes) and when every box had been marked off the protection/flotation value would be reduced by one point per hit suffered. For every protection/flotation hit scored the movement factor of the ship was reduced by one. the ship was sunk when this factor was reduced to zero.

The key thing with is that until everything above the waterline had been destroyed the ship could still belt along with, in effect an undamaged hull and no speed restrictions. It also meant that ships with more gun factors would last longer as there were more hit boxes to cross off. Surely increasing the number and types of guns available (remember the base game made no allowance for secondary or tertiary weapons) would mean that certain ships would accrue an advantage simply because of having more weapon boxes to cross off?

This is certainly true as, for example, H.M.S. Warspite under the original system had 12 gun factors and 10 protection points. Under the new system it has 8 x BB rated gun factors and 12 x CL rated gun factors meaning 20 gunnery boxes instead of 12. The protection value changes from 10 to 14. So the new Warspite has a total of 34 damage boxes rather than the 22 of the original version. The problem becomes even more acute when you start looking at the Germans dreadnoughts that routinely carried secondary and tertiary weapons. I have a solution to this in respect of gunnery damage effects which will serve to negate some of this artificial survivability which I will outline in a further post.

I will have a mechanism in place for critical hits as this adds to the overall mayhem and also adds to the flavour. It also makes the after action reports more interesting to read!

Jutland Part 4: The Reason Why

 

The last dreadnoughts of the Imperial German Navy built during the Great War - the two ships of the Bayern class



I think that one of the main things you need when undertaking the design or amendment of a set of rules is to have a clear idea of what it is you are trying to achieve. From my own experience it helps to be quite focused at this stage otherwise you can end up with an unwieldy and unplayable monster that raises more questions than it answers.

As I collate my notes and order my thoughts I figured it would be a good idea to set out what I am trying to achieve with the naval rules based on Jutland (and not Jutland based naval rules - an important distinction) project I am currently embarked upon.

What do I want?

1. A set of blue water naval rules that will allow for ANY ship type from torpedo boat destroyers up to dreadnoughts during the period 1895 to 1920.

2. Designed for use on a 6ft by 4ft table with a maximum firing range of 4ft and a maximum ship speed of 12".

3. To use individual ship damage record cards.

4. To have gun types 'banded' using ship categories.

5. To have a d6 based two stage combat process - roll to hit and if successful then roll for effect.

6. To use those game mechanics that are suitable from Avalon Hill's Jutland.

I think that is a fairly straightforward list to work with and seeing it written down makes (to me anyway) perfectly good sense.

I spent some of yesterday evening drawing up some ship specifications for a variety of types and was struck by how intuitive they appeared. For sure having generic gun types (more of which later) may seem like the easy way out but the rules will allow for variation of damage inflicted within the same notional category. Similarly there will be modifiers when the target ship is not of the same type as the weapon being used by the firing ship. An example of this would be a BB type weapon firing at a CA type ship or a DD type weapon firing at a CL type ship. There will be some overlap with this but all will make sense when the firing/damage table is drawn up.

I will detail the formula for the creation of a specific ship type in a future post but for the present the foundation of this is based on the following ship categories.

BB - Dreadnought type battleships and battlecruisers

PB - Pre Dreadnought battleships

CA - Armoured cruisers

CL - Light Cruisers

DD - Destroyers

These broad categories are the basis of much of the rules in that they refer not only to gun types but also ranges and protection levels. There is flexibility with these, even within the same category,  so quite different ships can be represented under the same notional type. An example would be H.M.S. Dreadnought compared to S.M.S. Baden. They are both BB type ships but are very different.

 

H.M.S. Dreadnought - the differences between her and the Bayern class are substantial as technology evolved into bigger, faster and more powerful.



Jutland as a game went some way to addressing ship type differences within the same notional category as far as was needed for the subject matter in hand - the system I will be using goes into more detail and is therefore more representational of the vessel being used.

I am planning to flesh out the process for creating ship damage cards in the next post and from then on will concentrate of particular areas of the rules and how they have come about.

Jutland Part 3: Setting the record straight

 

 

The famous Otranto barrage designed to keep the Austrians honest and scene of a number of tactically interesting actions involving smaller vessels.



Despite a train cancellation on the journey home last night I was able to spend some quality time reordering the files and notes around the Jutland rules project. It was a strangely therapeutic experience and more importantly has served to focus my thought process. The following post is very much a 'retrospective clarification' of exactly what it is I am trying to achieve and more importantly, why I am trying to achieve it. Some of this may well fall into the category of 'stating the obvious' but it is relevant.

Jutland was the epitome of the big fleet battle - I am quite sure we all agree on that score. The Avalon Hill game of Jutland reflects this and is designed to enable the gamer to recreate the action in a manageable fashion. The rules are concerned with capital ships and the smaller ships, the light cruisers and destroyers, whilst important are very much supporting players. The game mechanics reflect this to the extent that light cruisers and destroyers are represented by formation counters, each containing any number of ships. In short, they are abstracted out. This is fine as for Jutland as we are concerned about the battleships and battlecruisers. For this level of operation the game works extremely well.

What about smaller actions then? Destroyer sweeps, 'hunt the raider' actions, shore bombardments and a myriad other non-fleet sized activities.

The Jutland tactical rules are not really suited to use for single ship games and in my opinion struggle with even small squadron sized actions - why would they need to be concerned with such engagements as they are designed for use with whole fleets.  As they designed for fleet actions, specifically THE fleet action, the smaller scale stuff is of less importance.

Therein has lain my problem and although I had reached this conclusion some years ago I had to relearn it....

It is not a new phenomena. As wargamers we read about a battle and then raise a force that represents a small part of it. We then try and use that small force to fight the larger battle we have read about - or (in this case) vice versa. The problem is that we invariably have a set of rules that are not suited to what we are trying to game. I am not saying that everyone suffers from that but I have seen and experienced it first hand.

The small but very useful looking Austrian Navy. The Otranto barrage kept the Austrian surface fleet honest but was a lot less successful keeping the submarines penned in.



The majority of naval actions I have fought have tended to be quite small in terms of the number of models - usually around a dozen or so a side. With this in mind I want a set of rules that will enable me to fight an action to a conclusion in a couple of hours gaming time and with around a dozen or so models a side. A typical force (and this is VERY general) may be division of battleships (say 2 or 3), a couple of cruisers and half a dozen destroyers. For something of this size every ship is important and has a role to play. Clearly then, using Jutland would not be suitable, focussing on as it does the challenges of fleet level command.

It is not all doom and gloom though as the core systems of Jutland (which are very soundly thought out) can be used at a lower level of operations and still give a satisfying game. By 'telescoping' the rules down a notch so that all ships from destroyers upwards have some form of damage record card it will ensure that the lower level flavour is not lost in higher level processes.

On the face of it then the approach will be similar to that employed by Paul Hague in the original version of Sea Battles in Miniature. Essentially ships smaller than an armoured cruiser used a different calculation for their vital statistics (damage points etc) than the bigger ships. This is quite easy to factor in really as various prohibitions were employed around what types of ship could fire at what. For example battleships could not fire their main guns at a destroyer nor vice versa. Jutland also had provision for this but not for scoping out smaller ships.

In a nutshell then, I am devising a set of rules that will work at the lower end of the tactical scale - primarily by treating smaller ships as individuals similar to the larger types - using most of the mechanics from Jutland but with some subtle changes. By setting a series of baselines for ship types based on any of the following - guns, armour, tonnage etc I will be able to model their characteristics more readily but still maintain the Jutland 'big ship' flavour. These rules will include big ships as a matter of course - think as what I am doing as adding the 7/8th of the iceberg to the 1/8th that is above sea level.

That is the plan then.