Ironbottom Sound: The Guadacanal Campaign is a tactical naval game concerned with the battles around Guadalcanal in 1942. There are also two "might have beens" from 1928, as well as three hypothetical scenarios for 1942. The game was designed to be a moderately complex game that was fun to play and gave a chance for players to pit different ships and their design concepts against each other. In many ways Ironbottom Sound is really the son of Destroyer Captain as submitted to Avalon Hill two years ago. Now, a new Destroyer Captain much simpler then the original, will be published in 1982 by Quarterdeck Games.

One of the main design considerations for Ironbottom Sound was the desire to portray warships and their unique qualityies. Too often, naval games have tended to gloss over ship differences and made them too simplistic -- the old "one hit you're half sunk, two and you are sunk". Yet the highly detailed miniaturist approach was too detailed for a game that ideally could be played in just two to four hours. I wanted Ironbottom Sound to fall in between those two extremes.

Let us look at some of those ships. Destroyers were interesting to design into the game. The Japanese tended to build bigger destroyers than most of the Allies, and they usually carried six 5" guns. The Japanese also maintained a higher rate of fire from their 5" guns than the Americans. I might add here too that rate-of-fire is very subjective, and when you have sources that discuss it, they often conflict with other sources. In game terms this was translated into one extra hull box for most Japanese destroyers and a greater fire factor.

Speed of destroyers was interesting too, especially with the Americans, who tended to build destroyers with high trial speeds (conducted when not fully loaded ) This caused me to cut back their game speed to a more realistic level. The Japanese tended to be a bit slower, while the British, with their philosophy of plenty-of-ships-of-moderate- dimensions, produced the slowest.

The Americans had built good torpedo platforms but unfortunally, they had poor torpedoes on them. During the fighting around Guadalcanal they are credited with one torpedo hit that exploded. The llull in the Savo Island scenario is without torpedoes because she tried to sink a burning merchant ship earlier in the day and failed to do so. Even the torpedoes for the U.S. in the 1928 scenario were not as effecient as the British or Japanese torpedo, which is why I cut back the number ot torpedo factors carried by the American ships.

Why Two 1928 Scenarios?

Some have asked why I had the two 1928 scenarios.

Well, Jellicoe, in the 1920s, did remark that Tulagi would make a good base, and a hypothetical war then could have been interesting, especially with some of the ships that the Washington Conference of 1921-22 cancelled (or got converted, like our Lexington class battlecruisers). But it also allows gamers to see how the ships changed and progressed.

The Kako, the Japanese heavy cruiser, is a good example of that. In 1928 she was brand new, and while an answer to the English Hawkins class, she had some problems.

The Kako lacked extensive armor and her new 7.9" guns were blessed with a poor rate of fire. Later reconstructed, she had her armor beefed up, guns replaced, and lost some speed due to the greater armor weight. In that guise she appears in Scenario 10 with her sister ships.

The Kongo sister ship to the Hiei, also was extensively rebuilt in the interwar years and players can compare the changes here too. If things appear a little strange, usually it is with good reason. For example, the Japanese 5.5" and the 6" on the Yahagi just are not as good as the American 6" gun. Our American light cruisers were simply deadly, having a high rate of fire which delivers a greater weight of shell. The only real compromise that I can recall is giving the Repulse only one type of torpedo when it carried two types.

The hypothetical scenarios were less an attempt to produce actual possibilities, than they were to introduce new and interesting ships as well as very balanced scenarios suitable for tournament play. For example, the Dutch battlecruisers were never even laid down, let alone completed, yet since they were specifically designed to take on Japanese CAs, I wanted to include, them.

The Yamato was Yamamoto's flagship, and he did once state that if need be he wuld sail into the Slot and join in the fight off Guadalcanal. But obviously the inclusion of the German ship Scheer is only to let players get a "taste" of another design concept. Actually, Yamamoto should have ventured into Ironbottom Sound, as the biggest error in Japanese strategy in World War II was their tendency to commit their forces in penny packets instead of jumping down our throats with everything they had.

I hope there will be a companion game to Ironbottom which will cover the European theater, and allow for more ships bo be introduces.

There are several rules concepts that need explaining, or players nay wish to introduce. When a ship is "sunk" in Ironbottom it is not necessarily really sunk. It is totally out of commision and is sinking. I toyed with a ship-sinking table, whereby you rolled after all your hull boxes were destroyed to find out when you actually went down. In turn, that would have required some additional modification on the collision-with-wrecks aspect of the game, and I decided not to include it.

The largest problem with the game is the base 6 system. While learned quickly, it does lead to some problems that a base 10 system using decimal dice wuld have eliminated. It was done largely as a means of economy. 20-sided dice, even wholesale, are expensive, and Quarterdeck Games is a shoestring operation. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that future games from Quarterdeck may go to decimal dice, which would have to be included.

One of the biggest complaints about Ironbottom is the fact that it uses torpedo firing rules that are simple but on the face of it, unrealistic. They fire down certain hex rows and that leaves cones of dead firing area. There are two ways of handling torpedoes on a hex grid. You either eliminate them and use an abstract table that one rolls on for hits, or you try to develop elaborate rules for moving across hexes. But it goes beyond that.

When we were playtesting the First Batle of Guadacanal I had a system for cross-grain attacks. Not only was it giving me grey hairs working it, but I suddenly realized that every ship present had fired torpedoes. This I knew to be unrealistic, as in most of these battles many ships returned after firing a few or none of their torpedoes. Should I make a rule whereby you rolled to see if you could fire? Not another table! I also remembered in Hara's book, Japanese Destroyer Captain that he spoke of specific firing angles in a torpedo attack.

In effect, that is what I have done. Ironbottom, sets you up so that you must seek special firing angles. It forces you to lead your target, which is realistic. And with so many potential targets and firing ships, as well as speed settings, the number of possibilities generated is, overall, quite realistic. Torpedoes, and your use of them, is an acquired skill. We have one local player who is quite deadly with them.

A player from Origins, who remains anonymous, suggested considering numbers 51 and 64 on the Gunnery Hit Results Table as armored (1/3), If this is done, then I would suggest dropping the 1/3 from 62. I would also consider one more "Fire Results" if the shooter is a Japanese or German 5" gun.

The final point that I want to discuss is the scale. Six hundred yards at night and 750 yards in the daylight is about an average distance for ships of war in World War 11. Destroyers could be a bit closer, and very large ships could take up more room for manuevering as well as their actual physical length. This made threeminute turns ideal, as I could simply divide a ship's speed in half and device it into three increments. Therefore, a 32-knot ship divided in one- half is 16 MFs, which is translated into a 6-5-5 for movement.

This ullows for ships with different speeds to be realistically portrayed, and gets around the problem in a si- move game of speed factors that are so high that ships zoom all around and miss good atack positions. While the above is not rigidly historical, it does translate into game terms well, and certainly gives a good feel for night naval actions.

All in all, this was a fun project, it is a game I still enjoy playing, and fulfills a dream of doing SPl's old game CA "right". Comments on it are always welcome.

Ironbottom Sound Review