Between 1978 and 1980 SimCan released a trilogy of tactical naval games which sought to depict combat between surface, air and subsurface craft in all theaters of World War II. In 1984, a fourth game was released to cover small craft actions involving PT Boats, E boats and gun boats. These four stand-alone games shared a common rules system, although only Torpedo! included the rules and units for submarine actions and Schnellboote does not include any aircraft rules or units. Designer Stephen Newberg reports that there were no additional games developed for the series nor any unreleased material.

The Reviewers say:

“The [Torpedo!, Kriegsmarine, IJN] system is easy to learn, and play moves quite rapidly. The games are suitable for two or more players, but solitaire playability is marginal ... Despite some shortcomings in realism ... the main attraction of the games is their high playability ... the gamer with a serious interest in WWII naval combat will only be partially satisfied ... the air-sea interface is sorely deficient ... [a]nd Torpedo! does not even come close to being ‘a reasonably accurate simulation ... The level of abstraction is just too great to be very rewarding, and all sorts of historically unreasonable things can happen in the course of a scenario.” --Karl E. Wiegers in The Grenadier 11.

“I feel the designer [of IJN, Torpedo!, and Kriegsmarine,] has done an excellent job of retaining those aspects which should be significant in a naval game and yet retained a high degree of playability and simplicity ... Luck of the die roll is a considerable factor in the games ... Winning does call for skill, but there will be times when the dice may rule ... I have enjoyed the three games very much. The game system offers features which are not available in any other games.” --Cliff Sayre in F&M 24.

Comments

My primary interest in tracking down this series of games was to see how the tactical aircraft rules compared with air games that offered bare-bones naval rules. Unfortunately, I found that the SimCan tactical naval games had highly abstracted air rules. In fact, I think one could accurately describe the designer’s overall approach to the game system as “abstracted tactical.” One of the best examples of this is the “Rule of Five.”

The “Rule of Five” provides that a single counter can represent five aircraft or ships in those few scenarios where there are more units than counters (such as a large formation of bombers or tankers). However, rather than representing several aircraft or ships in a single hex (which wouldn’t be practical at the hex scale involved), under the “Rule of Five” the single counter represents a line abreast type formation spreading over 9 hexes. All five units move together but attack, defend, and search individually.

The aerial results can be a bit preposterous looking in practice (I would just make up some homemade counters myself), and this certainly represents an unusual design choice in a tactical game. However, one look at the detailed damage generation tables shows that the “Rule of Five” does not really frustrate the aim of the game system. The SimCan tactical naval series aims to portray historically valid combat results for these small actions -- in other words, to answer the question “what might result from such an encounter” rather than honing down minute tactical details to definitively portray “where would unit X be at time Y.”

In short, if you are an air combat gamer looking for something with a more hard-core air-naval focus, this series might not be your cup of tea. But if you are a naval gamer looking for a “does-it-all” World War II system with a different flavor than the average tactical naval game, this series is worth a look.

Collectors Notes

You can still get shrinkwrapped copies of Kriegsmarine and Schnellboote from the Clash of Arms website for only $10 each (www.clashofarms.com/specials.htm).

The first three games in the series were originally ziplocked. Later, each game was sold in a cardboard box. Stephen Newberg also believes that limited numbers of these games may have been sold in the generic plastic box format with a purple and white title strip. However, he feels that these would be very uncommon.

Errata

The different ship classes can take different amounts of damage before sinking. In game terms this is represented by the number of flooding points a unit can sustain. Unfortunately, not all games in the series contain the flooding point values for all classes. Here, then, are the flooding point values for all classes in the series. A unit sinks if it suffers the stated amount of points or more:

Steve Newberg says:

This group is really one game, that we broke up to keep at a manageable publication size. The system worked well and sold very well, resulting in some reprinting, but generally it went out of print. The very fast scale (90 second turns and 100 yard hexes) made for a skirmish oriented system that could include aircraft as well as surface ships and submarines. Some plotted movement was a regrettable requirement. I remember being very pleased with the torpedo system, which was far more realistic, as well as simpler, than that of the other tactical naval and submarine games of the period.