Cruisin' for a bruisin' - game report.

For the second time this year (we truly are spoiling ourselves here), there was an assemblage of Tantobie Warfare And Tactical Society members at The Commie on a Saturday for another afternoon game. Two in two months, I know! I was in the chair for this one and had decided to give the Shipwreck rules another go with some of the rather decent "click together with a dab glue required" ships I'd acquired from Wish a couple of years ago. Markers for missile fire and helicopters, well, good old pen and paper would suffice. Joining me would be Andy and Shaun, neither of whom count modern naval as their thing so this would be a very good example of a game being ran by the umpire.

A life on the ocean wave...

The scenario was US Navy versus the Soviet Navy. Two Tico-class cruisers (Yorktown and Thomas S Gates) escorting a Sacramento-class combat support ship (Seattle) which the Soviets have to stop using two Slava-class cruisers (Slava and Admiral Flota Lobov). There was no air support other than the ship's own helo's, and no submarines either. Andy decided to be a hot dog snaffler for the day, whilst Shaun was already chomping at his pickled beetroot(!). As for the table, this was seven and a half feet by four and a half, so just about enough space for the game. The Americans were tootling along at one end, whilst the Soviet Navy was skulking about some islands at the other.

A note before we get to the game itself - I had hoped that we could get two games in, one as per the rules, the other with some pre-chosen amendments to the shooting mechanics and Aegis use. However, as with all of our games, there was as much convivial social interaction (i.e. talking, gassing, wittering and piss taking) as there was game playing, so only one game was played which meant that I decided towards the end to include one of the amendments anyway (which I'll explain about later). One thing that is essential to the TWATS is that it's not just about playing the game. Indeed, often the game is secondary to the purpose of the gathering. You may disagree and that is totally fine, but we as a group have never been laser-focused on rolling dice. Each to their own, as they say, but then we do hold our gatherings in a pub... with beer... and beef butties. It's how we roll (so to speak...).

They're just a Slava to love...

Anyway, to the game, and the first movement turn was a general US advance, the Seattle between the two Tico's. The Yorktown launched a helo with it's radar on to see what was ahead. It didn't see anything but the radar was detected by the Slava, which had taken up position in one of the channels between the islands whilst the Admiral Lobov had taken the other. Turn two saw the helo move further ahead as the ships from both sides slowly closed the gap. Turn three was pretty much the same, though the Slava did launch it's sole Ka-27, whilst both sides failed to gain/maintain detection. Turn four saw the helo from Yorktown detect the Ka-27, which itself was detected by the Slava due to its radar emissions. 

Turn five saw some juggling of aircraft as the Yorktown's first helo was replaced by it's second. The Thomas S Gates put its first whirly-bird in the air as well, Andy wanting to form a reconnaissance screen ahead of his force. Slava's Ka-27 moved forward, probing with its radar and finding all three US ships. As the Americans were still not radiating, they had to rely on passive means to detect the Ka-27... which the Seattle did but the two very expensive anti-air cruisers didn't. Such are the dice rolls. Andy then decided to switch everything on. The Yorktown detected the Soviet flying menace and promptly fired two Standard surface to air missiles. One hit later and the Soviet helo was no more. 

It's not Harpoon, but it'll do for a map.

Turn six, and things became really interesting as everybody lit up (their radars, there were no smokers in the group). Shaun also launched his last helo, this one from the Admiral Lobov. The Yorktown's helo detected the Slava and was counter-detected, the Thomas S Gate's chopper didn't find the Lobov but neither was it found by the Soviets. At this point, Andy decided to have a pop at the Slava, utilising data links between the ships to fire two Harpoons each from the Tico's at the Soviet cruiser. Onto the combat turns!

The first combat turn (6.1 so to speak) saw the missiles on their way. 6.2 saw the Slava try to detect the missiles as they reached medium range, picking up three of the four and launching a pair of SA-N-6's at each of the incoming missiles. All three of the detected anti-ship missiles were downed. Combat turn 6.3 saw the final Harpoon detected at short range and shot down by another brace of SA-N-6's. 

Andy, at this point, was questioning his ability to actually sink the enemy. There then followed a discussion over tactics, the effect of air power and the differences in approach between the US and Soviet navies on ship to ship combat. Handily, food also arrived at this point: beef sandwiches with fried onions, peas and chips, and lashings of gravy too. Once again, Jean surpassed herself with the victuals. So, fortifying ourselves with another couple of pints of Consett Ale Works Pale Ale (except for poor Shaun, who was drinking lightweight pokey-pola as he was driving), we returned to the table.

Movement turn seven kicked up a gear here. A round of detection dice led to everyone knowing where where everyone else was at with the exception of the Thomas S Gates, who got ignored, and the Slava who seemed to have had dice on his side. Thus began another round of combat turns.

Combat turn 7.1 and it was SAM heaven as the Slava and Admiral Lobov each fired a pair of SA-N-6's, blotting out the two forward deployed US helo's. In return, the Thomas S Gates fired a pair of Standard SM-MR2's at the Lobov's helo, and it too made a rapid connection to the sea. 

Combat turn 7.2 was the biggie, as far as the Americans were concerned. Chastened by his lack of success with a mere four Harpoons earlier in the game, Andy decided to unload his remaining twelve SSM.s (six from the Yorktown, six from the Gates) at the Admiral Lobov. This left Andy with just the Standard SAM's as any long range anti-ship firepower but needs must.

"Authentic" (ahem) wave simulation on the table.

CT 7.3 saw the Lobov detect 8 of the incoming Harpoons, whilst the Slava detected 9. Sadly for the Slava, the geometry wasn't right for any kind of supporting fire so the Lobov had to deal with the incoming on it's own. Firing one SA-N-6 per target to maximise potential hit rolls, Shaun shot down 6 Harpoons. Not bad at all. 

7.4 saw three of the six remaining Harpoons detected and this time Shaun launched a pair of SA-N-6's at each of the offending trio. Two kills, four remaining. It was squeaky bum time for Shaun as the final four made it to very short range and, in keeping with the rules, he couldn't fire anymore SA-N-6's so was left with CIWS and chaff. 7.5 saw detection pick up only three incoming, with dice rolls killing two. With just chaff remaining, Shaun bravely rolled and managed to decoy one last Harpoon away. That final missile slammed into the Admiral Lobov, causing heavy damage and knocking the SA-N-4 system out. Dead in the water, he would need some good repair dice the next turn.

Which, in Movement turn 8, the lucky so and so got! Back up to half speed and with combat systems up and running, the Lobov was back in the fight. A duff round of detection rolls solved nothing, so onto turn 9...

The Yorktown was blind and deaf to anything (it was poor dice rolling again), whilst the Gates found the Slava. The Slava, in turn, found the Yorktown and the Seattle, but not the Gates. Shaun, using some pretty good logical deduction, knew he was facing two shooters and had detected two ships, so decided to fire every SS-N-12 he had (16 from the Slava, 16 from the still functioning Lobov) and see what would happen. 

This does not look good...

Combat turn 9.1, the Yorktown detected half of the incoming raid and the combined fire of 8 Standard MR2's between that ship and the Gates (got to love data links) shot down seven, so 25 remaining. Good shooting but not enough... 

CT 9.2 saw 14 detected out of the 25 and a further 7 kills from nine missile shots, Seattle's Sea Sparrow getting a look in.18 vampires left after short range fire.

Combat turn 9.3 was the very short range engagement and here is where I made the change to the rules. I permitted the Standard's and Seattle's Sea Sparrow to fire again. Some truly excellent dice rolls from Andy took out another 8 of the SS-N-12's, and of the final 10, Phalanx fire from all three ships (who were in close order so I allowed the Gates to fire even though she was not a target) dealt with a further six. Andy really could not have asked for better results. But that still left four missiles aimed at the Yorktown and the Seattle.

And now, the end is near, and so I face the final...

With just chaff left, the luck of the roll left Andy, and all four anti-ship missiles found their target. The two hits on the Yorktown were fatal, sinking her in pretty short order. The Seattle, however, barely flinched, sustaining light damage from the first hit though the second hit raised that to heavy damage, Still, she was afloat. 

By now, the afternoon was waning and the game was over, with a solid win for the Soviets. They had destroyed one cruiser, heavily damaged the supply ship and the Americans only had SAMs to shoot back against two ships. Ok, one of those was damaged but still able to fight. They too, like the Americans, would have to rely upon using SAMs to shoot for any longer range stuff, and they had a definite advantage if it came down to guns.

Both Andy and Shaun enjoyed playing the game, and it was a hoot to umpire too. This is where umpires come into their own, certainly in the games we play, as it is umpire knowledge and understanding that guides players who may not know the period or topic. As for the rules, well, they played well, but seem to be a bit more dice heavy than I would like. Certainly, the detection rolls for missiles could, in my humble opinion, require tweaking. One solution would be to have a single roll at initial detection range and then have that count for the rest of the flight in. If you wanted, you could bring in sea state to make things a tad more realistic and then have a single roll per batch at each range band. Just a thought, but something worth considering as the core rules are pretty sound. 

Then we come to SAM fire (not samphire, though that is lovely on salmon). Aside from the hit values, which in this game I took as absolute, rather than one under to drive off, two under to kill - nope, you get the hit roll, it kills, I have an issue with the way the game handles Aegis. With the Mk26 twin launcher, an early Aegis cruiser can loft four missiles every ten to twelve seconds. According to the rules, they can only fire four missiles per combat turn. That didn't, and still doesn't feel right given that a combat turn can represent one to two minutes of real-time. One way to take that into account was to permit SAM fire in v-short range. The other is to increase the number of missiles fired per turn. The same goes for VLS systems. This part needs work and it'll be something I'll be thinking about before the next time we play this, which admittedly won't be for a while as variety is a plus point to our group. Of course, I could just have mis-understood the rules... another feature of umpire-ran games :-)

Still, this was another good game and one that kind of played out how I expected it to, minus the inevitable tweaking that we always seem to do with rules. Hopefully you have enjoyed reading this and if late Cold War naval is your thing, try and grab a copy of Shipwreck and its add-on Freeplay '88. They're definitely worth a go. 

If you're interested in the ships used, you can find them on Wish, usually for a few quid for 8. I bought two sets, hence the multiple Slava's and Tico's. For the price, they're decent. Now, to find similar scale models to fill out the fleets...