No it's Phil Barker's 'Damn Battleships Again' a pre-dreadnought naval ruleset using some DBA mechanisms. I was rooting around following links from wargaming websites and I came across a set of AARs for a Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) naval campaign using these rules and my interest was triggered. The rules were drafted around 2003 but never made it to a final publication and it seems almost everyone who used them had house rules. Now naval wargaming is an area I have dabbled in once or twice over the years but without ever finding a set of rules which really grabbed me. Typically this time around I have found a set that seem like they may actually be interesting enough to make me play a naval game but they are twenty plus years old and not fully finalised! What was worse was that at first I couldn't find a copy anywhere. Then I found a post with a link to the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine where I was able to see a copy of the rules and another link to the Wargames Society of Hong Kong with their house rules and amendments. Of course I immediately started thinking about what changes I might want to make!
Damn Battleships Again (lets call it DBSA for short) is a deliberate attempt to create a simple set of pre-dreadnought naval rules. To do that they assume that all ships of the same type are identical. Which to be fair is not too wide of the mark. Warships are split into battleships, three classes of cruiser, submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. There are also armed merchant cruisers and raiders which are classed as cruisers plus some merchant ships. Each warship has four arcs of fire forward, aft and port and starboard broadsides. They have a single combat factor which reduces with range and for larger ships can split fire between two arcs but at reduced effect. Combat is resolved in the usual DBA way by comparing attacker and defender dice rolls. Unlike DBA there are step reductions showing levels of damage but no recoils or flee outcomes.
The Hong Kong society additional rules assign individual factors to ships rather than have all battleships and cruisers given the same stats. They also add torpedo gun boats (the precursor to torpedo boat destroyers) and allow capital ships to fire torpedoes. There are combat deductions for three or more ships firing at the same target to simulate difficulties working out fall of shot for individual firing ships, changes to torpedo attack rules and the interestingly named 'Windy Corner' rule. Windy corner is the point where a group of ships in line astern turn in sequence on reaching the point where the lead ship turned. shooting at ships passing through that point is not subject to the multiple shooter deduction as fall of shot isn't as important when targeting an area rather than a single ship.
So I have a set of rules that look interesting but no ships; what to do? You know the way I think. I have cardboard, plastic broom bristles, clear plastic sheet and glue, lots and lots of glue, result teeny tiny ships!
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| Trial run. It's more of a marker than a model |
I'm aiming for 1/4800th scale or there abouts. The models will be a very rough approximation of the ships they represent but the prototype is good enough for me purposes.
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| With a ruler to show the size I'm working at |
That model is the IJN battleship Mikasa. Armed with a pair of twin 12" guns in turrets fore and aft and 14 x 6" guns in barbettes and deck mounts. On top of which (like all capital ships of the period) she mounts multiple smaller calibre quick firing guns as defence against torpedo boat attack.
The tactics of the pre-dreadnought period are interesting. Other than a straight stand up fight with other major warships attack by a swarm of torpedo boats was the biggest risk to battleships and cruisers. The initial defence was to have a lot of smaller guns to lay down a hail of fire before the torpedo boat reached firing range. as torpedoes improved that firing range increased from a few hundred yards to over a thousand yards. The solution moved to having small fast boats tasked with destroying torpedo boats further out first torpedo gun boats and then the torpedo boat destroyers. The torpedo boat destroyer also replaced the torpedo boat in the attack role and hey presto the destroyer was born. Torpedo boats became an obsolete concept until the advent of fast patrol craft like MTBs, MGBs, PT boats and of course the E-boat in the Second World War when the wheel once again turned full circle. Modelling those little beasts is going to be a bit of a challenge!
