Cliff Sayre commanded the Allied fleet of 2 carriers, 2 battleships, a cruiser and 3 destroyers as they approached the enemy repair facility at Truk Island. Their objective: to destroy the Japanese carrier being repaired at the facility, to ensure it would never take to sea again.
My defending forces consisted of a battleship, a cruiser and a destroyer. I also had 2 airfields which, each turn, could, in theory, send aloft more planes than the Allies could from their carriers. This was theory, of course.
Don't ask about the scale of the ships... they were all about 4 inches long, and if you picked up one of Cliff's battleships and looked at it closely, you'd find it was a pencil sharpener which had been purchased at a souvenir shop in Pennsylvania.
Ships moved some 10 inches on their movement phase, but before the ships moved, there were several phases concerned with the aircraft, both movement and combat.
In the sequence, one phase provided for both sides to simultaneously determine how many planes took off from each facility. A carrier could launch a maximum of 3 planes, while my airfields could each launch 4 planes. Initially, all planes taking off were defined as fighters. For each facility, we tossed percentage dice.
Chart I
- 01 to 33 All planes take off
34 to 66 All but one plane takes off
67 to I 00 All but two planes take off
Thus a low number tossed for one of my airfields (33 or below) would result in all aircraft taking off, 4 aircraft in all. Unfortunately, I saw very few low numbers and the Japanese air force was sadly lacking in the battle. Most of the time, only two Japanese planes zoomed off each airfield.
The sequence was alternate, with, first, the Allies being active and second, the Japanese. The active side, having determined how many planes it had aloft, would then assign them to targets, For the Allies, for example, the aircraft could be tasked to hang around the carriers in a defensive role, or to attack the Japanese carrier, or to attack the Japanese airfields, etc, After the active side assigned its planes, the non-active side reacted and placed its own planes.
I should note that after the sides determined how many planes took off, there was another table to be referenced, one which told of the bomber component of the planes,
Chart 2
- 01 to 33 2 of the aircraft in the air are bombers
34 to 66 1 of the aircraft in the air is a bomber
67 to 100 No bombers
Here, too, a low number was a favorable toss. For example, if there were 4 planes in the air for the Allies, and a 45 was tossed, then 2 of the planes were defined to be bombers, and the other 2 remained fighters. There was no need to specifically note from which facility the bombers came... what was important was that they were there. As far as the aircraft were concerned, there were 5 distinct phases. We can track Cliff's planes in Turn #3, showing how the sequence worked.
Sequence
- First, the sides determined how many planes were in the air and how many were bombers. After dicing on Charts 1 and 2, the Allies had 5 planes aloft (4 fighters, 1 bomber), the Japanese had only 4 fighters out of a possible 8 (4 per airbase), no bombers.
Second, Cliff, as the active player, assigned his planes. He placed 2 fighters and his bomber at the Japanese carrier. His remaining 2 fighters were assigned to guard his own carriers. I placed 2 Japanese fighters by my carrier, and my other 2 attacked an Allied carrier.
Third, an air-to-air combat phase. The only combat of this type was above my carrier. All aircraft toss 10-sided dice. A toss of '1' produces 1 hit, a '2' produces 2 hits, and a '3' produces 3 hits. The sides struck simultaneously.
In air-to-air combat, all planes toss 2 dice. At the carrier, my 2 planes scored a total of 3 hits, which I distributed evenly on Cliff's 3 planes... one per target aircraft. Each of Cliffs planes now took a reaction test to see if the air-to-air combat had frightened off any of the Allied pilots.
Each plane started with a reaction level of 80% and subtracted 5% for every hit on the aircraft.
All of Cliff's Allied planes, therefore, tested reaction at a 75% level. All passed and all held position at the carrier.
Fourth, an anti-aircraft (A/A) phase. The number of A/A dice were determined by the data sheets of the target. At the carrier, there were 3 A/A guns, and 3 dice were tossed. A toss of 1 produces 1 hit, a 2 produces 2 hits, and a 3 produces 3 hits. I scored a total of 4 hits which I added to the total of previous hits. Now one of Cliffs fighters had 3 hits, one fighter had 2 hits and the bomber had 2 hits.
All took another reaction test (a base of 80% less 5 percent for each hit).
One fighter went home, it failed the test. The other fighter and the bomber held position over the Japanese carrier.
Fifth, with the air combat phases finished, Cliff's remaining planes dropped their bomb loads. A fighter tosses 2 dice, a bomber tosses 3 dice. Cliff had, therefore, 5 dice and his total score on the Japanese carrier was 6 hits. I placed 6 smoke markers (damage markers) on the carrier.
After all the above air combat, we had surface combat. None of the attacking fleet fired at the carrier, and it still maintained its 6 hits.
Hit Functions
Finally, we're at the end of the turn when all hit markers are assessed. Each marker is worth 20 points, and we go to the following Chart #3 and toss percentage dice:
Chart 3
| . | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| . | Cross off one hit on target |
| Total Points | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| . | Cross off 2 hits on target |
| 1/2 Total Points | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
| . | Cross off 3 hits on target |
| . | ----------------------------------------------------------- |
Note the above chart acts as a filter. To enter the chart, the 6 hits on the carrier produced a total of 60 Points, and I tossed a 32 on percentage dice. This scored 2 'actual' hits on the carrier, and we went to the carrier's data sheet, which looked like the following:
- A/A: 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1
The data sheet shows the number of A/A guns (10-sided dice tossed) possessed by the carrier. I crossed off 2 of the A/A values for the 'actual' hits. Note the carrier possesses only A/A guns, no heavy defenses. A total of 12 hits and the carrier is destroyed. In contrast, a cruiser, which can take 10 hits, has the following chart:
- Primary Guns 80 75 75 70 70 70 65 65 65 60
Secondaries 60 60 60 55 55 55 50 50 45 45
Anti-Aircraft 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1
For surface-to-surface combat, the ship's data sheet lists the probability-of-hit (POH) of its primary and secondary batteries. For the above cruiser, the chance of its secondaries hitting the target is 60 percent. As the ship takes damage, the POH of all firing systems goes down.
Each time the cruiser is hit, an entire column is crossed out, reducing the effect of the ship's primary guns, its secondaries and its A/A. A total of 10 hits (10 columns crossed off) knocks out the cruiser.
When the damage assessment phase occurs at the end of the bound, a lot of ships have damage markers resulting from the enemy aircraft attacks (those enemy aircraft that survived the reaction tests due to air-to-air- combat and A/A fire) and surface attacks.
There's a lot of 10-sided dice tossing in the game, and a lot of hits. Since a toss of 1 scores 1 hit, and a 2 produces 2 hits, and a 3 gives 3 hits, by the time the firing phases are over, there are many, many damage markers placed on the air and surface targets. That's why the filter of Chart 3 is used during the damage evaluation phase at the end of the turn. Under Chart 3, you'll note that there's always at least one hit produced on the target, while the maximum number of hits per turn is only 3.
Whole Ship Approach
This type of approach to a naval game regards a ship as a conglomeration of weapons systems. There are no 'hull boxes' here, and in this simplified approach, there's no need to separately track the number of functioning boilers and starboard guns and port guns and see if the rudder is still working. When a ship is hit, all on-board offensive systems are affected, all efficiencies are reduced.
All we're concerned with is the effectiveness of the ship's weapon systems. When the weapons are knocked out, the ship is effectively taken out of the fight. You can regard it as sunk, or that the captain, seeing that his ship could no longer help, wisely pulled it out of the battle, and sailed off to the nearest shipyard. In any case, it's off the table.
In the sequence, after all aircraft go through their various combat phases, they all automatically return to base and, for all practical purposes, are in stand-down. There they await the dice tosses on Chart 1 for the next turn, telling, in effect, how many planes were repaired and how many can take off.
As for time scale per turn... I have no idea. The only moving tokens on the sea surface (the table top) are the ships, going at 10 inches per turn. Planes don't 'fly' to their targets, they are simply placed as desired, regardless of distance, as long as the target is on the table top. And after the combat phases, they automatically zip back home and stand down. This means that planes can, in effect, take off, fly to their targets, engage in air combat, drop their bombs, and fly back to their base in the period of a single turn.
In the battle described above, we quit after Turn #7. The Japanese carrier in dry dock, which was the primary objective of the Allied fleet, had already taken 9 hits (of the 12 needed to destroy it) produced by a succession of air attacks. The end was obviously near. As I noted before, I could never muster, in consecutive turns, enough airborne Japanese planes to both attack the Allied force and defend the carrier in any numbers.
The few times that all 8 Japanese aircraft took off, I managed to divert the Allied planes by attacking the ships in the approaching fleet, causing Cliff to temporarily forget about the Japanese carrier and defend his own carriers. But these instances were few in number.
My own strikes against the fleet were, for the most part, beaten off by the enemy A/A defenses. Each of my attacking planes had to pass two consecutive reaction tests, first due to air-to-air combat, and the second due to A/A fire. The overlapping A/A defense provided by the ships in the fleet was deadly (each ship tossed 2 or 3 A/A dice), and most of my planes (damaged during both the air-to-air and the A/A firing phases) failed one of the two reaction tests and returned to base, never dropping their bomb loads on the targets,
In retrospect, the fleet A/A fire was too deadly. In part, this happened because there were no rules regarding the clustering of the ships in the fleet to provide an A/A defense. As a result, all the attacking ships clumped together to provide a maximum, overlapping umbrella of A/A fire, almost impossible for the Japanese planes to penetrate.
In Edition #24 of these rules, we'll mandate that the ships must maintain some minimum distance from each other. In our battle, all A/A fire reached out to 10 inches, while an aircraft had to be within 5 inches of its target to drop bombs. This difference in striking range essentially rendered the Japanese planes impotent in their attempts to attack the Allied fleet.
Note that there's a mixture of percentage dice tossing, coupled with individual 10-sided dice tossing. In truth, I've never liked this, preferring to stick completely to one type or another. Perhaps, Edition #24 will also 'unitize' the dice throwing efforts.
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© Copyright 1999 Wally Simon
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