The efforts of Leading Seaman Brown to delay Zeithen's repairs and departure make for an interesting solo game. Brown has to be completely disciplined in using his cover and in firing at the best targets of opportunity. His ammunition is limited and if he uses up 120 rounds he can still cause problems since it will take time for the Kapitan and the men hunting him to realise that, and they'd still have to find him, and evacuate the island! He isn't going to surrender, and in the eventuality of using all his rounds he can crawl under darkness to a German casualty and replenish from that source. Moving about in darkness will be tricky for Brown as for the Landing Parties, and with some risk of injury to wrist or shoulder. He should move his position each night. His firing should be considered of good musketry skill level, and the distances are fairly short after all. For the Germans, the dribbling in of landing parties, the use of machineguns (MG) for suppressing fire while moving them ashore (MG's could not be used after that since they would cause casualties among the Germans); the problem of movement very seriously restricted in speed and manner all have an interesting role to play. As does the problem of evacuating casualties and the gathering together of the ship's company ashore when the siren sounds, as it should do at some predetermined stage in the game. It can be played as a map game, naturally, using say an OS map of an unpopulated Scottish Loch, Tarbert, na Keal or Fleet perhaps. Adding the serious restrictions on movement, and with the ship placed appropriately. It can also be played using figures, Brown's easy enough but 200 suitable white clad German Matelots may be more difficult to provide. There's a Revell kit of the Emden available, which would be useful if you were to game Brown's last stand using say 15mm 'Peter Laing' WWI figures (cheap enough) and you could add the new 'Peter Pig' pinnace. I've tried the game some four times. Brown inevitably dies of course, but he usually delays Zeithen for at least a day, which may be enough. Even if he’s killed by a lucky shot early on, say by the suppressing fire of the MG's then it will take the passing of the first night and part of the next day for von Lutz to realise it. Brown may just be waiting for the work to begin again. One game developed into a serious firefight between groups of Germans and resulted in a large number of casualties at night. In another, Brown was caught by the patrolling picket boat as he tried to move across the lagoon under cover of darkness, a decisive kill not an assumed or 'possible' one. He managed in the last of the games to kill Kapitan von Lutz, and the wounded second-in-command with a severely reduced crew to fight the ship was forced to surrender to HMS Penzance, which sailed in to check the anchorage while Leopard stood out to sea. In this account I've simply outlined C. S. Forester's magnificent yarn and given a few options for the solo player to take, but the game could involve as many as five or six players, of course, and be developed into a more complex scenario with the use of the ship's boats and searchlights. The effective use of the MG's is important, but the ship would not carry endless amounts of maxim ammunition. Nor would the use of a QF gun against the shore be of much use unless Brown's position was known fairly closely. Once the German sailors are ashore, it's all down to them. Resolution Island: A WWI Naval Wargames Scenario Back to Table of Contents -- Lone Warrior # 146 Back to Lone Warrior List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Solo Wargamers Association. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com