The Big Guns somewhere in the Northsea around 1916

Aaaand another naval game (The Big Guns - working title), because we can. This time 1916, WW1 testing the rules of another homebrew naval game for my 1/6000 scale ships. I just drafted Bart (for the British Royal Navy) and Campbell (for the German Hochseeflotte) and left them exposed to the basic elements of the game, water, steel, minis that really deserve their name and a shit load of dice!

Both started out with the same set up on a 6x4 table in the opposed corners. Two Battle cruisers, a dreadnaught class ship and two older (shittier) battle ship and as an eccentric extra, a submarine for both. Aim was to have a quick and easy WW1 naval game, with a functional game engine that can also accommodate bigger battles (i.e. with 10 or more ships per player). For starters, I just had these  four types of ships, maybe I introduce destroyer more decidedly later. In the grand scheme I'm not interested if the Dörflinger has lost its back lights or the Invincible is getting to loose some of its side small guns ... heck I wouldn't even give them names, in this game they just had dots!

So Campbell advanced in line (very British!) until he painfully realised in the 50cm medium range Barts concentrated fire can be deadly. Both admirals submerged their tiny subs and after 2-3 turns the emerged and ... Bart‘s hit the jackpot (with a double six) and caused an explosion on a German battle cruiser, while one turn later Campbells U-boot just emerged too near and missed and got shot back home (his torpedo canal was hit and he limped unarmed homeward).

Then the Germans executed a "Gefechtskehrtwendung" successfully and tried to escape to Hamburg. That was the most successful moment for them, as Campbell could just sink one British battle cruiser while, Bart cleaned up the the Hochseeflotte quite quickly, just two "older" ships escaped.

See, once you get a couple of hits the ability to turn, absorb further damage or even roll control tests (morale, fire extinguishing etc.) is deteriorating. Explosions (which we had 4 of them) escalate the damage and the fires and before you can say Hipper the ship is under water.

So a British victory after half nine ... a very quick game ... promising for really bigger naval battles ... what was the name ... ach I forgot.

The British set up/stats

The German set up/stats

The complete rules (vers. 1.0)

All tables

In the German corner Mr Campbell!

In the British corner Mr Bart 

The whole battlefield

Initially the RN split

while the Kaisers just trodd on

there the first blood on the Dörflinger

hit by a torpedo

the Incontinence followed by the Inconceivable

Another hit on the ... lets call them all Dörflinger

until only the Dörflinger of the two Dörflingers were left

The HSF (Dörflingers) under fire

while the RN has thinned a bit ...

The Germans try the same submarine stunt, but ....

the Dörflinger

the British submarine hunting Germans

the rest of the Hochseeflotte is retreating

with the battle ship in flames

Bart send his sub to finnish it off.