I must go down to the seas again

Or 'more DBSA antics' (and apologies are probably owed to John Masefield).  

After my initial outing with the rules proved to be a reasonable success I have been thinking about the issues I had came across.  OK there was nothing major thrown up, and I'm prepared to bet that all my points were considered by Phil Barker and decided against for the sake of keeping the rules simple, but, well you know how I like to bolt on additional chrome.  

The first point was that in the real world damage to a warship has an effect beyond making it easier to sink.  This is either a reduction in combat efficiency or a reduction in speed/manoeuvrability.  Secondly, a crippled ship simply halting feels wrong (inertia and all that) even with fairly long 15 minute game turns some headway would be maintained.  Lastly I think the Hong Kong Wargame Societies idea of having some differences between the capital ships (Cruisers and Battleships) has merit.  This should include both a reflection of different armament, weight of fire in the different shooting arcs. and some reflection of advances in range finding and gunnery technology.  All that said I don't really want to loose the essential simplicity of the rules as conceived by Mr B.

Other players have tried to address some of these issues previously so I'm going to incorporate those ideas where ever possible.  There is a bit of retro-engineering involved in some cases to attempt to understand how their changes were arrived at, but nothing too difficult.  The hardest part will be finding a way to calculate a factor to reflect weight of shot in each firing arc as that will have to be done on a ship by ship basis.  I'm thinking some sort of Excel calculator (you know how I like to play with Excel).

My initial thought is to use some combination of shell weight, rate of fire and perhaps range finder capability, although the latter is problematic.  That would create a number for weight of fire reaching target but wouldn't take into account ability to penetrate armour.  I need to have a bit of a think on this.

Damn Battleships Again...again

So I played a test game of DBSA this week using my 1/4800 home made ships.  One thing I learned is that naval wargame pictures at that scale are pretty boring...lots of blue and a few tiny ships!  So I'm sorry if the pictures don't inspire you.  For an opening game I kept it pretty simple and played a fictional River Plate based game set in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese war.  One Russian pre dreadnought battleship the Pobeda v a Japanese cruiser squadron consisting of one armoured cruiser the Azuma and two protected cruisers the Kasagi and the Chitose.   The Pobeda is escaping from Port Arthur and has been separated from the rest of the Russian force, so is heading south looking for safety in a German naval base.  The Japanese squadron has steamed to intercept and delay pending the arrival of heavier elements of the Fleet.

The table is open sea and covers an area roughly 14,400 yards long by 7,000 yards wide (roughly 7 Nm by 3.5 Nm).  The two sides enter via the opposite short edges and already have sight of each other's smoke.  The Japanese are in line astern.  There are four hours until sunset and the sea state is moderate with a moderate breeze from the North West.  Each game turn represents 15minutes of action.  Shooting into the sunset will be penalised for the 30 minutes prior to sunset (deemed to be shooting into an arc from SW to NW of the shooter's position).   The Pobeda needs to exit the opposite short table edge to gain safety the cruisers to inflict sufficient damage and delay to allow the fleet to come up the following day. 

The Pobeda enters in the centre of the North edge of the table (a narrow edge) and steams due south at maximum speed.  The Japanese enter heading North East also at maximum speed.  At this point the range between the lead cruiser (Azuma) and the Pobeda is 11,000 yards.  It quickly dawns on me that the range shortens very quickly with the combined closing rate being 2,000 yards a turn if both side head directly at each other.  Extreme range for the Pobeda is 6,000 yards while the Armoured Cruiser can also reach out to the same distance the chances of it doing any damage before closing to Long Range of 4,800 yards is slight.  The Protected Cruisers have no chance of hitting until within 4,800 yards and ideally would need to be within 1,600 yards to have any chance of damaging the Russian.  The tactical position is simple the Japanese need to use their speed to close the range and the Russian wants to keep the cruisers at arm's length.

The range closes until at after 45 minutes steaming at full revolutions the range closes to 6,000 yards and the Azuma open fire, but no hits are observed and the Pobeda's reply is also ineffective.  Movement is IGO - UGO but both sides shoot in both players combat phases, with the phasing player firing first. The effect of any hits scored being applied before the second player replies.  Torpedo attacks happen in the same sequence but are resolved after all shooting is dealt with as torpedoes take longer to reach the target. .  This leads to some interesting manoeuvring to try to cross range thresholds in your own turn so as to get first chance to cause damage at the more effective shorter range!  

The Russians now close the range further and initiate a further exchange of fire from 5,100 yards with neither side scoring any hits.  The Japanese cruisers, still in line astern close to 4,400 yards for the Azuma at least as the trailing protected cruisers still being out of range. The exchange of fire is now scoring hits but with no damage (I decided that an equal result for adjusted shooting and defence dice scores meant a hit but no significant damage simply to help build a narrative for the game) neither side has their shooting heads on it seems.  The Pobeda continues to close and fires again at 3,800 yards on the Azuma, again the exchange of fire has no effect.  The Japanese aware that their current course will not close the range enough to allow effective shooting turn towards the Pobeda and fire a salvo at 2,600 yards and hit the Pobeda but again do no damage.  The Pobeda returns fire with no effect (I'm beginning to wonder if either side has actually loaded live shells!).  The Pobeda now turns away from the approaching cruisers to maintain the range.

As the Russian battleship turns away the Japanese decide to split their squadron to try to hem it in.  The protected cruisers make a turn to the west while the Azuma continues directly towards the  Pobeda.  At 1,400 yards the Azuma opens fire again but the Chitose and Kasugi are still not within effective range as they are over 2,000 yards from target.  They fire but don't score any hits.  The Pobeda continues to turn away and fires another salvo which hits and finally inflicts damage on the Azuma, the return fire from her also scores hits and causes damage.  So both the Pobeda and Azuma are damaged.  In the basic rules hits are cumulative, multiple damage results make it easier to score a crippled or sunk result.  How easy this is depends on the size of the ship being hit.  As with DBA 3.0 rules the adjusted attack and defence dice scores are compared and a defence result of less than the attack score but more than half causes damage or if a third damaged result a crippled result.  If the defender is doubled then the target is immediately crippled and if tripled it explodes and sinks.  Torpedoes and mines create a greater risk of a straight crippled or sunk result.

Things are hotting up now but the Japanese have to get closer to have a serious chance of any hits doing damage.  The damaged Azuma closes to 1,600 yards and scores a second hit, the Pobeda is also getting the hang of things now and hits the Azuma again.  All of which means a second damaged result on both vessels.  The protected cruisers are closing in too, but at a range of 2,000 yards don't hit the Pobeda.  It's a big ask for the protected cruisers as they are on an attack score of zero until they close to under 1,600 yards, the battleship has a defence of four and with no dice adjustments likely, the dice would have to be creating one - six split in favour of the cruisers to damage the Russian.

The Azuma now goes for broke and closes to close range of 600 yards to launch a spread of torpedoes along with her gunnery attack  Sadly for the Azuma everything misses, unlike the Russian response which hits and cripples the Azuma.  The Azuma is now dead in the water.  While this is unfolding the Chitose and Kasagi close to under 1,400 yards and fire a salvo neither scores a hit.  The Pobeda now turns into the oncoming protected cruisers while firing a broadside at the crippled Azuma.  Hits land and the Azuma starts to sink!  The closing act after two and a quarter hours is for the Pobeda to turn further into the path of the protected cruisers and engage the lead ship.  The dice are not kind and the leading protected cruiser is crippled.  With this the remaining undamaged Japanese cruiser makes maximum speed and passes the Russian battleship heading for safety.  The Pobeda in a rare act of gallantry does not fire on the retreating ship or it's crippled sister ship instead opting for a run for safety and neutral German port at Tsingtao.

I quite like the free flow and simplicity of these rules but have a few little niggles that some house rules will easily sort out.  These are mainly centred around the damage and crippled status and how they impact on gunnery and movement.  I also want to incorporate some of the Hong Kong Wargame Society house rules as well as those from Rob's RJW campaign amendments.

1/4800th Russo-Japanese war battlefleets

Well if I'm honest only roughly 1/4800th and vaguely like the Russian and Japanese ships (think of them as caricatures).  On the other hand they are scratch built from cardboard and odds and ends I found in the bits box.  They are a step up from counters (just) and for me are part of a long history of making stuff from layers of cardboard.  It started when I was young (stop laughing at the back there, I really was young ...once) when my then best friend and I were playing a sort of proto-wargame based on a comic strip from the now long defunct boys comic/magazine Ranger.  This was 'The rise and fall of the Trigan Empire' a sort of science fantasy adventure story with some strange looking aircraft involved.  Of course our beloved Airfix didn't make any of these, so we had to make our own.  The first ones were created by my friend and I very quickly jumped on the idea.  Light and Heavy Fighters and bombers soon appeared but we never really came up with anything like a set of rules to use them.

A sample page from the story, the art work was actually pretty good

Over the years I have used the same techniques for any number of things but I have to say that it does work rather well for cheap and cheerful ships or space ships.  I think this is because once you create something remotely resembling a deck plan and give it a bit of texture and height the eye sort of fills in the rest.

The current Russian Fleet

You can see how a bit of texture makes them come alive (Russians again)

Any way, back to the Russo-Japanese war at sea.  Rob of the Cabinettewars blog has been good enough to supply me with his version of Damn Battleships Again as well as his campaign rules and map for that war.  I also have the Hong Kong wargaming society's additional rules some of which will be incorporated alongside Rob's rule additions.  The ships are fairly easy to create although the funnels are a bit fiddly.  Basing is on transparent plastic with some wakes and bow waves added.  I can knock out half a dozen in an afternoon pretty easily (I of course actually mean lovingly craft and not knock out).  Terrain is easy as its mostly sea which is basically flat and blue grey coloured with the odd island or coast line which is more lumpy and green-brown coloured.  You can tell I have studied this stuff extensively can't you?

The Japanese opposition

You can see how crude the models are if you zoom in on the nearest line

So far for the Japanese I have three battleships, one armoured cruiser and three protected cruisers while the Russians boast four battleships, one armoured cruiser and one protected cruiser.  I also have three bases of torpedo boat destroyers currently unassigned.  They may look outnumbered but the Russians have four more battleships awaiting funnels and a coat of paint and hulls for three protected cruisers are cut out and awaiting some superstructure.

Its DBA Jim...but not as we know it!

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!

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.

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!