Editor’s Introductory Note Some time ago, Brian Dewitt took off, family and all, for California, to seek his fortune. He’s now in Los Altos, and writes that the housing market has fallen by some 30 percent… which, to me, means that you don’t have to pay $2 million for a house… it’s way, way, way down to $1.2 million. I’m not sure with what gaming group Brian joined up, nor of how often they meet, but on occasion, Brian sends in an account of his table-top adventures. And his conclusion, stated at the end of his article below, is that a wargamer is a wargamer is a wargamer… regardless of where he lives. WWII Ships Over the winter break I painted up some NAVWAR WWII German and British ships I bought the last few years at conventions to go with the convoy ships and subs I have. I played the first battle with them yesterday at the local game meeting. The battle was the Graf Spee (Pocket Battleship)against 3 British Cruisers. One of the books I read stated the British attacked from 3 angles. My interpretation of this was the Graf Spee started in the center of the table and the three British ships were placed on three different corners of the table. One of the players said this was a wrong interpretation on my part but I stuck with the setup because it made for a fun game with clear victory conditions. Lucky for me, this particular player was able to supply me with wrong interpretations at each phase of the battle. Apparently the British attacked at three angles but they were much, much closer together than 90 degree separations). The NAVWAR ships do not have the detail of the GHQ ships, but they cost about half as much and I have already found them to be significantly more durable than the GHQ models, and they come already put together, so it does not take much effort to have a fleet ready to go. My favorite player had already asked me about my ship model for the Light Cruiser Achilles. When I bought the ships I had managed to pick out the WWI British Light Cruiser Achilles instead of the WWII British Light Cruiser Achilles. What were the British thinking of?… making a new ship with the same name only a few years later. I guess the British had extra name tags made with “Achilles” on them and reused the name. When I painted up the ships I discovered my mistake but I felt that probably no one else would ever notice and it would be to hard to replace the ship model. I had not even started the first game with my new fleets when I was questioned about the model. The victory conditions for the Graf Spee were to sink one British ship and get off the board to win. Another wrong interpretation, as my expert informed us that the German commander was not suppose to engage any strong British forces. I thought it would be more interesting than if the German Pocket Battleship was just suppose to run for it. During the battle the Graf Spee managed to heavily damage all 3 British ships. She was often firing the front turret at one cruiser and the rear turret at another. My rules require a given turret to only fire at one target but different turrets can target different ships. Once again my favorite player informed everyone that this was an incorrect interpretation because the Pocket Battleship's fire control was not able to target more than one ship with the main turrets (something about weight limitations… which I did not follow, as I would not expect fire control to be very heavy). The Graf Spee even managed to torpedo one of the British ships. There was no mention of torpedoes in the references about the battle, but two of the British ships, as well as the Graf Spee, are listed as having capability to launch torpedoes in the reference books I have, so I told the Captains: "If you got ‘em, you can launch ‘em!". My resident expert was once again unhappy as he mentioned something about Naval doctrine but by now I had developed a filter that was tuning much of what he said. The rules were my own “guess the range rules” based on Fletcher Pratt's rules. With Fletcher Pratt's rules your shell had to fall on the model of the ship to be a hit (He was using large ships). Since my ships are so small, each ship has a “shadow”, and any shells that land in the “shadow” of the ship are considered hits. I have run these rules a number of times over the years and a number of folks have played them. I have found that these rules can produce very different results for the same battle as some gamers have days when they cannot guess anything close to the correct range. The Graf Spee took a steering room hit along with a couple of Engine Room hits, so she was having a hard time getting off the table. Near the end, the Graf Spee Captain decided to stop his ship and fight it out, which certainly surprised the British. In the end the Graf Spee had so many fires on board that the German Captain surrendered. At this point, my resident expert said that the game played to about the same result as the historical battle as all three British ships were damaged and the Graf Spee was scuttled by the Germans. Somehow, therefore, my wrong interpretations had produced a result that past the “historically realistic result” test. All my wrong interpretations were forgiven, the rules were blessed, and there were requests for more battles. The entire game, which had a fair amount of action and suspense, took about an hour and a half, which, I think, helped the game get high marks. In conclusion, I am finding that gamers who live on the West Coast are not much different than the East Coast gamers that I miss so much. Back to PW Review October 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 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