Tales from the Vienna Woods

1904/05

Reviewed by Markus Stumptner

(Avalanche) After thinking long and hard about it I decided to give the Great War at Sea series another chance, in the shape of it's (then) latest incarnation on the Russo-Japanese War. Some of the earlier games had very few balanced scenarios, the rules were vague, and the tactical system didn't work. (Which meant that the operational scenarios were uninteresting because they didn't have a basis to stand on.) From the comments I've seen it seems that of those who rave about the series, a third doesn't play it at all, just admires the counters, and another third play it by using other rules or games for tactical resolution. Since there's not much operational stuff around on the Russo-Japanese War, we wanted to give it a chance, however, and decided to try the battle scenarios to get us up to speed. We intended to continue with the operational scenarios afterwards but never got there.

The first battle scenario, a hypothetical mini-battle at Chemulpo worked reasonably well, although it's hampered by fixed movement rules and not much of a fight - the Russian cruiser gets one shot at the Japanese transports and then has to run for it or die.

The second scenario we tried was the Battle of the Yellow Sea because we thought it would make for a well-balanced, tense battle. Historically, the Japanese, moderately superior in strength, intercepted the Russians, were outmanoeuvred, caught them again due to superior speed, and were suffering enough to think about breaking off when the Russian flagship's bridge was hit, leading to the Russian formation disintegrating. (Bythe way, was there ever a Yellow Sea scenario for Tsushima?). Here instead, the Japanese are simply superior all round, *but* nothing will ever happen since the Russians simply have to stay away from the Japanese for eight turns for the scenario to end. They start two hexes out of gunnery range, and the Japanese battleships have the same speed as the Russian ones and so will never catch up. There is no battle.

Actually, the Japanese player could send his faster cruisers in pursuit in the hope that they will slow down one of the Russian ships before the cruisers are crushed so that the Japanese heavy ships can catch up. However, that does not seem appropriate and in any case is not what happened historically. My main quibble with the original system was with the manner in which closing and opening range was handled, and that problem is still the same. To accommodate finer distinctions among lower ship speeds, 1904/5 has a separate speed rating of 1+, but the Japanese ships (who had an advantage of perhaps one knot or so) don't warrant it, thus making Togo's historical manoeuvring mistake and subsequent successful stern chase of Witthoeft an impossibility.

I've seen accounts that pointed out that one of the Japanese problems in the battle was that they could not freely open the range because they were on the landward side of the battle. Of course there's no land in the scenario.

The last scenario we tried was "Makarov's Death." This plays out more like a battle, it starts out with a cruiser/destroyer clash with the battlelines marching to the sound of the guns. Now, historically, the Japanese declined to fight, waiting for the mines to do their work, and Makarov returned to port (where of course two of his BBs hit the minefield). In the scenario, the Japanese heavy squadrons are superior in every respect and have no reason not to go for the Russian ships (how simple life can be in a game).

Next problem, the scenario is open ended, and the Russians, not being faster, can run but not escape, so it could go on forever. (I assume when combined with the operational game, night would fall at some point and allow the Russians to get out of sight and escape.) They can't return to the port either, because of the minefields. These fields will hit a ship on an 8+ result on 2d6. That's carefully thought out: there are 5 Russian BB's - if Makarov returns to port, two should be hit on average. Unfortunately, *all* ships must roll for mines, not just the BB's. This then begs the question of how all those Russian ships on the map, something like 10 counters' worth, ever got out of the port unscathed, when upon returning, five of them would be hit! In fact, there are two further BBs in port, the ones under repair at the time, so the Russian player can use them as reinforcements if he wants to fight it out. In our game, once Makarow saw he could not run (except if he ran forever) and chances were low in a fight, he decided to try his luck and sailed them out. As luck would have it, both were sunk immediately. I note that the deadliness of the mine damage table is probably not inappropriate; of three more Russian and Japanese battleships that hit mines the same month, one sank immediately, one foundered later, and Pobieda made it to port with 11 degrees list, so they obviously were pretty vulnerable. It's just the chance of hitting that is weird.

So we decided to forget about the mines and fight with the remaining ships. We then saw that as in the basic rules, the opening and closing of the range (here handled by the initiative rules) is everything because it determines at what range ships with equal speed will fight.

If fleets of speed 1 start at range 3 and the fleeing fleet gets the initiative it moves to distance 4, then gunnery happens, and then the other side catches up. If the other fleet gets initiative, it closes to 2, primary guns fire, and then the other fleet opens the range.

If fleets of speed 1 start at range 2 and the fleeing fleet gets the initiative, they fire twice at range 2, it moves to distance 3, then no gunnery happens (as everyone is out of range), and then the other side catches up for gunnery at range 2 the rest of the turn. If the other fleet gets initiative, it closes to 1, primary and secondary guns fire (with a +1 modifier), and then the other fleet opens the range.

This rubberband effect is very strange in play. In addition, the +1 modifier from the standard rules means that secondary guns *always* fire with a positive modifier, making them very deadly. This alone is not a criticism; perhaps it is intentional because the primaries had problems hitting at long range anyway due to their low rate of fire and targeting problems. But there is the nagging impression that someone forgot to tone down that modifier for the earlier era.

Ignoring the mines, the range, the ending conditions, and the historical strategies, I guess one could argue that the pure combat aspect of the Makarov scenario worked (assuming the relative ship strengths are correct), but the range jumping is still strange, and the fact that maneuvering makes no sense (there's no facing, no crossing the T etc.) gives the whole thing an unreal feeling. Finally, the peripheral rules (especially the minefields) made no sense.

Anyway, we played the chase for two turns, arguing about whether we should call it quits or not, and then to our relief a salvo of 50% hits from the Japanese ships caused four hits on the Russian flagship Petropavlovsk, of which two were critical hits; overall she was sent to the bottom twice over. So in that respect (only) the scenario was historical; Makarov did not return. Neither did our interest in the game.

It's interesting to note which factors actually determine what feels acceptable in terms of granularity in a game and what not. I thought the Tsushima game by that one British fellow worked very convincingly to reproduce the main elements of manoeuvring both fleets despite representing a whole squadron per counter. So very abstract ship handling does not really present a problem, but speed and manoeuvring have to be there. Here you have what superficially looks like fine distinctions in gunnery strength and speed and it ends up feeling absurd.

I note that several people have now started to work on CRTs of their own for these games, or on improvements to the official combat system, which is a ray of hope given that in five years there hasn't really been any official improvement. I am now looking at an experimental system Karl Laskas mentioned on Consimworld and which appears very promising from initial reports. We'll see.

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