Tony Figlia faced off with Jeff Wiltrout. Tony was outgunned: Tony’s Force Jeff’s Force 2 Battleships 3 Battleships 2 Cruisers 3 Cruisers 6 Destroyers 7 Destroyers Tony’s job was to play defense and hold off Jeff’s force at four locations. These were not defined on a map… we simply listed the sites: Port A worth 2 victory points Port B worth 1 victory point Convoy A worth 2 victory points Convoy B worth 1 victory point In a previous REVIEW issue, I mentioned the source of the naval rules. This was the August 1999 issue of WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, wherein on page 49, a fellow named Colin Standish outlined his concept of a pre-dreadnaught game using, in essence, DBA rules. Standish called his rules DE BELLIS NAVALIS (DBN), and we tried them, made some changes and found them fairly entertaining, if silly. For example, when hit, the captain of a large ship panicked and had to immediately turn 90 degrees away from the attacker. A destroyer, if hit at a range of less than 5 inches, had to turn 180 degrees and flee 5 inches from the attacker. Strange to say, I liked the rules… no record keeping, no hull boxes, no turret boxes, no crew boxes… if a ship was hit (firer’s die total more than the defender’s die), the ship received a smoke marker and couldn’t fire until the marker was removed. If the firer’s die doubled the defender’s die, this was termed a critical hit. Two critical hits destroyed any ship. In good old DBA fashion, each ship had a combat value, which was added to a 6-sided die roll, and when I transformed the rules, I converted to a 10-sided die. But I made a mistake which came to haunt me in the campaign games we played. A marker on a ship could be removed by using up one pip when the movement die was tossed. A critical hit could be removed by using up 2 pips. It turned out that these removal values were too small for the game when we used 10-sided dice. It was too easy to repair a huge amount of damage to a fleet by simply tossing a high die roll. And so, in mid-stream, or, perhaps, in mid- ocean, we changed the rules. Now it cost 2 pips to remove a regular hit marker, and 3 pips to remove a critical hit. First Battle Our first battle was fought at Port A. Here, at this 2-victory-point location, Tony had placed both of his battleships, one cruiser and several destroyers. Jeff, too, placed the bulk of his entire fleet at Port A. It also turned out that Jeff had placed a single destroyer at Convoy Location A, worth 1 victory point, but that was sufficient to win the point, since Tony had no ships there. But the big battle was fought in defense of Port A. Jeff, as the attacking commander, moved first, bringing his ships on in two columns. It took one pip to move an entire column some 10 to 15 inches. If a ship broke out of column, and went off on its own, it required a single pip to move it. Any ships that didn’t have pips assigned had to ‘drift’ and advance 3 inches, so there wasn’t a total standstill to movement if there weren’t enough pips available for movement. The sequence of the half-bound consisted of 6 basic phases: 1. Side A tosses his pip die and moves ships, or removes markers 2. Side A dices for the number of available aircraft and moves them 3. Side B dices for the number of available aircraft and moves them. 4. Aircraft combat (simultaneous) 5. Side B fires all ships 6. Side A fires all ships You’ll note that I added aircraft to the proceedings. Which means that we were no longer in the pre-dreadnaught era. And if you ask the question: “In which era were we?”… I shall ignore you. When a side diced for the availability of its aircraft, it used the following table: 01 to 33 5 planes 34 to 66 4 planes 67 to 100 3 planes When the planes took off, they were simply placed at their destinations… they didn’t have to ‘fly’ there. After the active side, Side A, placed its planes, Side B could respond, as best it could, with its own planes. Aircraft Combat The next phase, aircraft combat, consisted of 3 sub-phases… first, ship-to-air anti-aircraft fire, second, air-to-air combat, and third (if there were still planes flying around), air-to-surface strikes. One of the questions raised during the game was “If we’re in mid-ocean, where do all the planes come from?” I hemmed and hawed, and suggested that there was a sort of ‘symbolic’ carrier hanging around… no one took issue with my ‘symbolic’ carrier idea. Tony lost at Port A, and when we looked over the listings to see what the sides had positioned at the four sites, we discovered that each side had placed only a single destroyer at Convoy Location B, which didn’t look as if it would produce too much of a battle. But we tried it anyway… one destroyer versus one destroyer. When a destroyer fired, it added its combat value of 2 to its 6-sided die, as did the target ship. With each ship adding 2 to its die, the surface-to-surface firing phase wasn’t too exciting. One ship would become damaged, and the next turn, repair it by devoting 2 of its pip points to eliminate the hit. It came as no surprise when the deciding factor in this battle quickly proved to be airpower. Jeff’s planes put a hit or two on Tony’s destroyer, and since a ship with an existing hit couldn’t fire, the poor ship couldn’t fight back. And when Jeff’s aircraft zoomed in for the kill, the battle was soon over. Back to PW Review August 2000 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 Wally Simon 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