2 22" x 34" maps: 2 island cut outs; cards; one 22-page rules booklet, ziplocked, 210 counters; 18 roster sheets; 10 player aid cards, MiH/Admiralty 805-534-9723 $42 It is the Ancient Gaming Swab He stoppeth one of three With rotund 'bod and glassy eye, "Please buy a game from me" The dice are here, the dice are there The dice are all around They clink and smack, and crackle and growl For charts that do abound True, the above is the Ancient Mariner (Sam Coleridge's naval hero), not the mariner of the above title. But this newsletter has never missed an opportunity for gratuitous pedantry. The legend of The Flying Dutchman, the doomed sea captain, complete with ghostly ship, sailing hither, thither and yon in search of either Redemption or a good overture (in opera he finds both). is one with much resonance for one of the hobby's Senior Citizens ... in service, if not in age. Jack Greene has been designing tactical modern naval games as if no one ever told him they rarely sell well. Jack, however, being the upbeat type of guy he is, has been constantly "at sea" for the past generation or so, dropping anchor at Publisher Port after Publisher Port, seeking the redemptive powers of The Royalty Check. That, and he truly likes the stuff he's doing. And he hopes you incisive stringers like it to. To that end, our crack staff of takes a look at two of Jack's latest maritime efforts. both released through MiH, for which Jack (and his wife, Beth Queman) are also the US distributors. Every little bit helps. I'd like to thank Jack Greene for the opportunity to review this game. Not that Jack chose me out of a pack of petitioners. It's that he specifically states in the rules that not only is Richard Berg not allowed to review this game, but if anyone sees him playing it he is to call the neighborhood SWAT team. In this revision of his 20-year old "classic", Jack Greene brings us back again to the Solomon Islands of 1942-43 to fight tactical nighttime naval surface combat in the slot between Bougainville and Guadalcanal--whose battles sank so many ships that the area was renamed Iron Bottom Sound. How IBS2 is different from its Quarterdeck Games predecessor of 1981 is that it includes new graphics, new scenarios, simplified rules of play, and extensive rules changes. Its torpedo system and gunnery tables have been adopted from The Royal Navy, the firing system taken from Fleet Admiral. As for me, the game resembles more The Battle of Tsushima from Strategy & Tactics #130, the issue wherein Jim Dunnigan set out to truly prove that, as Thomas Mann warned us, you can't go home again. Visually, the rules book has a very handsome, if recycled Rodger MacGowan painting (the cover of Fire & Movement #60). The component graphics made by Beth Queman, work very well although, for tactical games, side view ship portraits just seem strange and the cutout islands look a bit weird. Detail Whichever changes were made, IBS2 is a game that has plenty of detail in the ship displays and player aid sheets. The detail is not oppressive as in some tactical naval games where every minute detail is brought into play into the commanding, moving, sighting and firing of the ships. This game has reigned in many such excesses, although the reasoning may seem strange. The turrets are arrayed on the ship displays with the type of guns mounted in the pamary, secondary and tertiary turrets listed on the side. The turrets show their firing arcs and how many gunfire "factors" are in each. This doesn't represent how many actual guns are in the turrets but rather the chance that shells from the mount will hit their target and how much damage they'll cause. Torpedoes and their reloads are displayed along with their type. Other systems displayed are the bridge (main fire control), floatplanes, radar, hull boxes, and speed boxes. The armor of the hull, turrets, and badge are displayed. All this data is cleanly displayed and easily digestible. The one strange thing about the ship displays is the use of gunfire factors instead of listing how many guns are in each mount. For example, the Japanese cruiser Agano has three primary turrets each sporting two 5.9" guns. the amount of gunfiec factors in each turret is listed as 3. the higher factor-to-gun ratio does not have to do with how quickly the guns can be reloaded because the turrets of the massive Japanese battleship Yamato. which each sport three 18" guns, have gunfiec factors of 31. This can't possibly mean that for every time the Agano fires its 5.9" guns once, the Yamato fires its 18" monsters ten times. The opposite is nearly true for the reloading time of the Yamato's 460 mm shells is a bit time-consuming. I found no data that maintains the various naval guns are wildly different in basic accuracy. I imagine that the factors are related to the damage that the shells do. This makes no sense, though, since the factors determine hits. Using this rule rationale, Yamato, with her broadside of 93 gunfire factors. is going to get hits. In a battleship duel, the antagonists will close range and pound each other to oblivion. I much prefer tactical naval combat that lists the gun's base accuracy rate and the damage it does by the weight and velocity of their shells. This problem of gun size equaling hit probability is not so pronounced, as IBS2 is a game of cruisers and destroyers. These ships had lightweight guns and woefully insufficient armor. Their only trump card was their torpedoes, but they had to get close to use them effectively. In World War 2, the cruiser founds its niche as an anti-aircraft platform and the destroyer as an anti-submarine picket ship. To fight such tin cans against battleships was suicide as their slender arms could not pierce the battlewagon's thick skin. It was in the night battles in the Solomons and the Philippincs where these diminutive warships were actually used in combat with each other. There seems to be a faction of wargaming that is attracted to combat between destroyers and this game caters to them, Iron Bottom Sound II caters to this crowd rather well as the game plays fast enough, is fairly easily comprehensible (although the gunnery hit table was a bit confusing), and contains enough detail to keep the game from being a boring rock-throwing contest. One area in which the game falls short is simulating the confusion of night combat. The supreme admiral of chaos usually commanded such night naval battles of WW2. Of course, it is difficult to simulate such things and the players usually prefer their games to be parade grounds of precision instead of chessboards of chance. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Quite good. Playability: High. Short rules and minimal errata help. Replayability: If you like the game, there are many scenarios to keep you coming back for more. Wristage: This IS a tactical naval combat game; lots of die rolls for firing, damage, hit locations, special damage, etc. Historicity: Pretty good. No glaring inconsistencies. Creativity: Not much in onginal concepts, but Jack Green has synthesized the many different sources of rules in a good way. The torpedo rules were interesting. Comparison: There's still Tokyo Express for an operational treatment of the naval battles in The Slot. Lou Coatney just released a desktop publishing strategic Guadalcanal game called Sky, Sea, and Jungle (reviewed herein). For a game on tactical destroyer combat, Avalon Hill's Submarine is a great one. Overall: Iron Bottom Sound II is an entertaining little game with mechanics that are ingenious, quirky, and strange (depending on the gamer's views, of course). The big negative is the price; I just will not pay $42 for a ziplock game. Seeing the trend, it looks like I won't be buying many new games. White Ensign Rising Sun Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #28 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com