Three of us… Jim Butters, Cliff Sayr and me… have formed the Ancient Mariners Eating Society (AMES). We're all retired, we all have served time in the navy, and we meet once a month to visit a local buffet… after which we retire to my house, play a short game, and all go home for an afternoon nap.
In the August, 1999, issue of WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, appeared an article by Colin Standish, titled PRE-DREADNAUGHT NAVAL RULES. What caught my attention was the fact that Standish had based his game on the 'pip movement' system used in the WRG DBX series of table-top games.
I have never been a fan of 'pip movement' in the DBM/DBR ancients arena… its use has been stretched and distorted and warped and skewed, all in the guise that this is a most 'realistic' method of representing command and control problems on the battlefield.
And here in WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED, I saw a naval game using the same pip method! Unbelievable! And so, after our AMES group met for lunch, I proposed that we give the Standish rules a try-out, thinking that this would provide me with fodder for an interesting, bantering article making a mockery of the entire concept of 'pip movement' for naval games.
Standish titled his rules DE BELLIS NAVALIS (DBN), and we set up, according to his guidelines, a Russo-Japanese battle, circa 1904. Cliff, as the Russian player, commanded one battleship, three cruisers and a couple of destroyers. Jim, the Japanese commander, had two battleships, plus a couple of cruisers and destroyers. Looking at the orders of battle furnished in the article, it appeared that in every encounter, the Japanese force was of better quality than the Russian one.
The DBN sequence for the half-bound is the standard:
- Phase 1 Side A tosses his pip dice and moves
Phase 2 Side B fires
Phase 3 Side A fires
We used a table-top area of some 4-feet by 4-feet, with the ships around 2 to 3 inches in size. I have no idea of the scale (was there one?) but to give you an idea of the speeds and ranges as the fleets approached each other, the big battleship guns reached out to 18 inches, but the ships moved only 3 inches per turn. Destroyer guns ranged out to 6 inches, while the destroyers moved at 5 inches per turn.
We used the same movement rates as suggested by Standish, but the above numbers doubled his published ranges… we wanted a quicker game, one in which we'd get results in a much more rapid fashion than if we employed, for example, his battleship range of 9 inches.
In accordance with standard DBX procedure, DBN gives each type of token, i.e., ship, a combat Factor (CF):
- Battleship: 4
Cruiser: 3
Destroyer: 1
The CF values are used offensively and defensively… they are both attacking and defending numbers.
For example, when the Japanese side was active, the Russians fired first (see Phase 2 of the given sequence)
- a. Russ battleship on Jap cruiser
- Russ adds his attack CF of 4 to a 6-sided die roll
Jap adds his defensive CF of 3 to a die roll
- Russ adds his attack CF of 3 to die roll
Jap adds his defensive CF of 1 to a die roll
There were 3 possible results:
- a. Attacker's total less than defender's. No effect, i.e., a miss.
b. Attacker's total greater than defender's, but less than twice. A hit.
c. Attacker's total more than twice the defender's. A critical hit.
Two critical hits sank a ship. Other 'regular' hits were 'harrassing' hits. With these regular hits, a ship received a marker. It could receive as many markers as I had in the box, but it wouldn't sink. The effect of the markers was simply to prevent the ship from firing or moving full speed until all the markers were removed.
When a side became active, and tossed its pip die, it could use its pip die roll to remove hits. One pip removed a regular hit, while 2 pips removed a critical hit. Using pips to remove hits, of course, reduced the maneuverability of the rest of the fleet.
The pip dice could be used for several purposes, other than movement:
- a. As I've indicated, to remove hits. Once a ship received a critical hit, it was quite important to remove it, since if a second critical hit appeared while the first was still active, then KABOOM!, the ship went under. Removal of other hits was also important, since a ship couldn't fire until all of its hits were removed.
b. One pip was required to have a ship move at full speed. After all pips were used up, the ships that didn't have a pip devoted to them moved 2 inches, so the entire fleet was not brought to a complete standstill even though its pips were limited.
c. A pip could be used to turn a vessel 90 degrees.
d. A pip could be used to stop a ship dead in the water.
Now why am I going into such detail about this game? Because, most surprisingly, it provided one of the most entertaining and 'fun games' in which I've ever participated! The entire AMES crew at table side agreed… this was good stuff!
Did DBN have anything to do with naval ship and fleet movement? Certainly not.
Did it have anything to do with naval gunnery practices? Certainly not.
For example, when two ships fired at a given target, instead of computing the separate effect of each ship, the fire effect was combined. One ship was designated the lead firing ship, the other the supporting ship. The presence of supporting fire deducted –1 from the target ships' CF. If a Russian battleship fired on an enemy cruiser, and a Russian cruiser fired simultaneously on the same enemy ship, providing supporting fire, we'd have:
- a. Russian battleship adds its CF of 4 to its die roll
b. Russian cruiser, providing supporting fire, deducts –1 from the target cruiser's regular CF of 3, hence the target now adds only 2 to its die roll.
The above means that it becomes easier to hit the target, since its defensive factor is dimunished. Our AMES group, dreadnaught naval experts all, disagreed with this approach.
During this era, if two ships fired simultaneously on the same target, the spotters on board the firing ships would be confused concerning the shell splashes landing on or near the target… they couldn't tell which ship produced which splash. Consequently, they couldn't direct their guns as efficiently as they could if only one ship was firing.
Another instance in which DBN mandated weird results was that, when hit, the ship would not only receive a marker, but it would do an immediate right turn of 90 degrees. In other words, the captain would panic and order "90 degrees port!" or "90 degrees starboard!" I must tell you, panic was frequent throughout the battle, as the various ship captains kept spinning their ships in circles.
Despite these minor abnormalities, BDN provided a good game, a game in which, because of the prevalence of hit markers on a player's ships and the need to control his fleet, there was a constant series of decision points in each bound in which the player had to decide upon his priorities in terms of rationing his available pips out.
In a sense, to me, the pip movement concept appeared to be more applicable to naval warfare than to the land-based warfare of DBM/DBR. When you run out of pips in DBM/DBR, your army comes to a complete halt… despite the immediate presence of the enemy and the fact that only five minutes before, your troops were engaging in bloody hand-to-hand combat, all of your troops are now instantly immobile… they're now comatose and cannot respond to the enemy threat.
Here, in DBN, the pips could be assigned to control certain ships, but even when you ran out of pips, your fleet still maintained its forward motion. Ships couldn't dash forward their regular movement distance, but at least they advanced some 2 inches. the world didn't come to a complete halt.
As we played, we changed and shifted several of the published rules. For example, if there was a column of ships, a single pip was required to be assigned to move the forward, leading ship. This made sense… the rest of the column formation would automatically follow the leader without the need to expend any additional pips.
DBN had no such provision for a line of ships abreast. Here, each ship reaquired a separate pip to be assigned for control. And so we added the line abreast formation as a 'controled' formation… a single pip could control the entire line.
And we were't too pleased with the "rotate 90 degrees immediately" result when a ship was hit. Giving the ship a marker to indicate damage was fine, and so was the concept of 'immediate repair (removing the marker by assigning a pip to it)… but the 90 degree rotation didn't go down well.
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© Copyright 2000 Wally Simon
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