A kick in the Spratleys

Saturday saw another gathering of the TWATS, again in reduced numbers due to work and personal commitments. I was in the chair and had decided to give Shipwreck an airing. I’d bought this rule set years ago, alongside the Freeplay ‘88 supplement but never got round to putting anything on the table,,, as I hadn’t anything to put on the table. However, last year I bought an 8 pack of snap together plastic ships off Wish. The eight ships included are the Hood, the Liaoning, a Type 54A frigate, a Burke-class destroyer, a Tico-class cruiser, a Slava-class cruiser, a Sacramento-class supply ship and what the packaging refers to as a Kilo-class sub but I think it’s a Seawolf-class SSN. Quite liking these, I bought another pack from Amazon in December. In each instance, the price was just over a tenner for the eight. With these, I could put a game on.

The toys for the game

Joining me on Saturday were Shaun and Andy, who played as the Chinese and Americans respectively. The scenario was a simple one: a US Navy supply ship, the John Lewis (wait, there’s more) is damaged and drifting after a typhoon savaged the area. The Chinese have claimed the waters as theirs and the US Navy believe they are international waters. The Americans have dispatched a surface group of one Tico (the John James Fenwick) and two Burke-class destroyers (The Thomas Marks and Michael Spencer – told you there was more). The Chinese were heading to the Lewis with the Liaoning freshly out of trials accompanied by two Type 54A frigates. Due to the poor weather, there were no flight ops (in other words, I have no models yet for helo’s – that will change). In addition, there was a Russian Slava-class cruiser in the area due to meet up with the Chinese for joint exercises after the two countries signed a friendship pact.

The US Task Force as the game started

The set-up gave the Chinese a bit of a head start in the race to the Lewis but both sides started at flank speed for the first few turns. The Lewis was using its radar and data-link to keep the US group informed of the Chinese location, whilst the Fenwick alone had its radar active – the destroyers Marks and Spencer were under full EMCON. As the two forces approached the Lewis (and each other), the Americans were very vocal in telling the Chinese they were in international waters on a rescue mission. The Chinese in turn were pretty loud in proclaiming their socialist friendliness and willingness to escort the Lewis to a Chinese port since they were in Chinese waters.

The Chinese Squadron

As the ships closed the distance, the Americans detected the Chinese force first, the two Type 54A’s ahead of the carrier. I made Shaun roll for the Slava to make an appearance, which it didn’t.

In turn 6, the Chinese declared they were going to have to board the Lewis in order to "rescue" the crew. The Americans did not take this well.

The Chinese frigates surge ahead, the John Lewis in the distance

Turn seven saw the Chinese get painted by the Lewis’s fire control radars for their Sea Sparrow missiles. Whilst not dedicated anti-ship missiles, they could still cause some damage. The Chinese ignored this and approached closer still, though by this point, they had activated their radars and finally saw the Fenwick and her escorts. As an aside for our northern England readers, rumours that the Fenwick was equipped with an advanced chaff substitute called Window were just that, rumours, though the thought of Fenwick’s Window being a distracting was quite apt.

The Americans, and rough seas for the Spencer

Turn 9, and the US commander at sea gets a message from Pacific Fleet Command – the Chinese should not get closer than 3 miles and that permission to fire was granted. Of course, when told this, Shaun brought one of his 54A’s to within one mile. Finally, some shooting started.

Closer...

Closer still...

Very close now...

Dude! Personal space!!!

Now, I quite like Shipwreck’s mechanic of movement turns lasting 10 minutes of game time but when firing occurs, this is sorted out in up to six combat turns before another movement turn can be started. It neatly takes into account missile speed and distance as well as being neat when trying to figure out what is going on. Needing relatively low dice to get hits due to the way the Sea Sparrows were balanced for anti-ship use, Andy fired to at the closest 54A and missed. Similarly, an attempt at Phalanx fire also failed, though that was more of a desperation shot. Once that had been decided, it was the next movement turn.

"Western belligerence" was claimed by the Chinese, as they launched boats with marines on to grab what they could from the Lewis. When asked what kind of boats they would be (as there were no models for them), the reply of "don’t know but don’t say they are from Taiwan or we will fire" seemed very apt. The Americans were given the all clear to fire at will (poor lad) and the Fenwick and Marks each launched four Harpoons at the two frigates. The Lewis joined in with its remaining 6 Sea Sparrows at the the nearest frigate. It must be noted here that the Liaoning was keep its distance. The remaining frigate tried its hand with 76mm cannon fire against the Lewis and missed. Both, however, unleashed their entire payload of 8 C802 missiles each at the Americans, divided equally between the Fenwick and the Marks.

Vampire, vampire, vampire!

Another intermission here as I kind of cocked up. I didn’t read the ship cards properly which limited the number of SAM’s that could be guided at any one time. However, my defence is that modern day Standard missile/AEGIS combo’s are much more effective than even these rules have them (originally written in 1999) so I let both sides fire whatever they wanted at their respective incoming targets. So let that be a lesson, when you cock up, cock up so that both sides are receive a fair benefit of the cock up.

Another shot of the missile action.

Pretty fair exchange here

So, the first set of SAM’s went up. Andy fired three Standards per incoming missile so 24 from Marks and Spencer. Even with a miscounted points value (again, my cock up but again, fair to each side), all but one of the C802’s was shot down. In response, the Chinese only managed to down five of the eight incoming Harpoons. Final result – one hit on the Marks, one hit on the port Type 54A and two on the other. The 54A with one hit took light damage and lost it’s now empty C802 mount. The other 54A took a crippling hit first, then sunk with the second hit. The Marks took it’s hit head on, leaving it crippled and down a Phalanx mount.

At this point, I enacted the third rule of the TWATS. The first one is "The umpire is always right, especially when he’s wrong". The second is "refer to rule one" and the third is "the umpire is a TWAT". And so I was. I took Shaun to one side and asked him if he wanted to call upon the Russians for help. He said yes, so on one corner of the table, the Slava appeared as did four missile tokens, each one representing four SSM’s. Yep, the Slava had shot its entire load, eight at the Spencer and eight at the Fenwick.

Ain't I a stinker!

Onto turn ten and the remaining 54A tried again with its 76mm to hit the Lewis, more bum dice here from Shaun. An emergency message from the Varyag claimed that an unfortunate error had meant the launch of all of the Varyag’s SSM’s. Totally an accident and unintended(!). However, whilst Andy was prepared to rescue survivors from the sunk 54A, he knew he had been well and truly kippered. Not that this was to stop him. Cleverly (and totally unintentionally), he bypassed the multiple missiles per target rule and had the Spencer and Fenwick each fire one SAM per incoming missile. As each ship was acting individually, I ruled that this would have no effect on the accuracy of the missiles and with a total of 32 against 16, the incoming Russian barrage was dealt with smartly. At the end of this combat round, a quick check of the ammunition situation revealed that the Fenwick was down to 106 SAM’s and the Spencer down to just 34!

Turn 11 saw the Russians once again claim a technical malfunction and also making a pretty sharpish withdrawal. Whatever the agreement between the two governments, there was little appetite for a further missile exchange, especially as the Americans still had a good number of Harpoons left. The surviving 54A also turned tail and joined the Liaoning in leaving the combat area, not even helping to rescue their own sailors, something the John Lewis was more than willing to do. Everything else would be sorted out at the UN.

The first run for a rule set is always just a case of seeing if the game mechanics work. In the case of Shipwreck, whilst the scenario was simple, it revealed that they aren’t half bad and with a little updating to to take into account current day weapons capabilities, will see future use. One thing that was remarked upon was the possibility of adding politics to mix. Several years ago, Andy and I ran a political game set in "not Iraq", with multiple sides and backstabbing a plenty. Something like that, with ulterior motives and the like would suit this well as it would add an extra layer to just rolling for missile fire – indeed, once the missiles start flying, there is not much more to do than hope you get good AA fire rolls. We would need more players (the previous political game had 9 including the two umpires), but in that case, it would be one player captains one ship with national orders assigned to each ship captain. Hmmm, with a bit of thought, that could be a go-er.

One thing that will be added to (after the York Vapnartak show) are helicopters. Tumbling Dice do a good range and whilst they are light on Chinese types, that can be worked around. They would also give a bit more subtlety to the hunt. Some fixed wing would also not go amiss, especially with the carrier. This could even lead to a campaign…

Some of you might be thinking, having seen the pictures that the scale of the models looks wrong. And to be fair, they all seem to be scaled so that the actual model size is about four inches. True, that leads to some funny looking size comparisons but to be honest, it wasn’t an issue here as the all measurements were made bow to bow. The models themselves are quite decent and when you consider how much I paid for them, it was enough to put on a game. True, the painting is a bit iffy and some of the fittings were rough and included a fair amount of flash on some of the pieces, but for the price, it would be churlish to complain. Main take away here is that it doesn’t have to cost the earth to put a game on and they made a decent impression on the (green) sea – a props issue that made not much difference to be honest. They were also easily visible, something that smaller scale ships would cause trouble with in the slightly gloomy light as the afternoon waned.

All told, I enjoyed this game. It was nice to try something different and there is room for expansion later on. Both participants also enjoyed it (so they tell me, though they both were well versed in political double speak by the end of the game :-)). As always, the fine hospitality of Eric and Jean at the Commercial was much appreciated, as was the Consett Ale, and the Beef Butties and Chips were well served. Empty plates and full stomachs all round and a satisfying afternoon of gaming.

Note: For non-UK readers, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis and Fenwicks are the names of department stores in UK. Fenwicks is particularly popular in the north-east of England for its Newcastle store where a large Christmas display window (hence the chaff/window reference) is set up each year. And yes, bad jokes will continue is future games I run :-).