PT Boats in the Black Sea

    A convoy of 1/300 scale coastal vessels attempts to evade an ambush in the Black Sea during WW II

One of the advantages of having a friend like Keith (here's the link to his blog), who owns figures for virtually every period of warfare, is that you get to PLAY games from virtually every period of warfare! This past Sunday was a perfect example. In all my years of gaming, I don't believe I have ever gamed WW II PT boat actions. Yet there we were, playing out an engagement between Italian, Romanian, and other naval forces as one side was escorting a convoy that the other wanted to sink.

    Keith taught us a new set of rules for small scale coastal actions called, 'Hunters on the Shoreline'

Keith was using a set of free rules he'd downloaded from the internet, Hunters on the Shoreline. They bill themselves as "Fast Rules for 1/600 WW II Coastal Miniatures." Keith's miniatures were 1/300, but I can't imagine that really affected anything. Just bigger and easier-to-see ship models. We had six players, and each of us was given a small force of three ships or so. Mine were two F Lighters -- big (for this type of action) armored ships with a 3" gun and some smaller caliber weapons. Most ships simply had what was called an Autofire Factor to account for their 20mm guns or whatever. My third ship was a heavily-armed Romanian torpedo boat. Our side also had three freighters we were escorting.

    Two of Jenny's torpedo boats veer off to meet the attack of Allen's ambushing flotilla at the top

The enemy decided to spring their ambush early. Allen's four torpedo boats roared out to attack the escorts between him and the freighters. Spotting is a crucial factor in this game, with size, speed, and distance all making it more difficult to see an enemy at night (when most of these types of battles took place). We had two turns of taking this into account before Keith's bigger ship fired off a starshell which illuminated the entire battlefield. 

    Three dark gray freighters surrounded by the defending escort vessels attempt to make it through

Allen's early attack meant he was potentially facing at least half our fleet while his two cohorts were far away, out of range to assist him. True to form, Allen's dice were hot, though. He knocked out the steering of two of Jenny's torpedo boats forcing them to slow to a crawl to avoid running aground. Between Jenny's return fire and my own attacks with the my Romanian vessel, Allen's force of four PT boats was soon either sunk or fleeing the table. My Romanian vessel had also created smoke to keep Allen from attacking our freighters, which I think was a crucial point to our success (if I must say so myself...haha!).

    Mike S's torpedo boats race towards Keith's flotilla, hoping to screen the freighters and launch torps

As Joel and Keith's flotillas closed with our fleet, Mike S had zoomed ahead with his PT Boats to cover our front. When he got near enough, he began the countdown to firing his torpedoes. Strangely, you declare you are firing them and it takes two full turns before they are actually launched. Mike did a great job with timing because as soon as they hit the water, Keith's big warship was within close range. Lots of dice rolled later and Keith's vessel was struck twice by torpedoes and quickly sinking. It did get off a long range hit on one of my lighters, knocking out its 3" gun. 

    My Romanian vessel lays a smoke screen to prevent Allen from launching against the freighters

The rules for firing the 3" guns really annoyed me. To hit, I needed to roll a "12" on 1d12. What's worse, if my target was small like a torpedo boat, I would then need to roll a "6" on an additional 1d6. My autofire factor on the lighters was only a "1", so my secondary weapons were useless at more than 12" range. I realize in these actions the navies are throwing everything that floats into the battle, and some ships are going to be underpowered. However, I would think a 3" gun would be more effective than that. A direct hit would probably not be necessary to cause damage on small vessels like we were fielding.

    The Romanian warship fires its impressive array of auto cannons and sinks one of Allen's MTBs

Then again, I am assuming the author of the rules knows way more about this style and period of warfare than I do. It just seems unsatisfying to roll 1d12 turn after turn and know you have only the slimmest of chance at hitting. I thought the rules for the smaller caliber guns -- the Autofire factor -- worked well. The modifiers made sense and hits were realistically more or less likely depending on the tactical situation. So, kudos to that aspect. I think it would have been fun to play the game without the starshells turning everything to daylight, too. Ships moving slower are hard to spot, but once spotted, are easier to hit. A nice decision-making conundrum for players.

    Allen & Jenny with a rules question during -- Allen rolled lots of criticals, but Jenny drove him off

Did we enjoy that game? I don't think anyone was ecstatic and champing at the bit for another game. Equally, I don't think anyone felt it was a waste of time or unplayable. That often seems to happen when we first play a game, though. Learning new rules and trying to design a balanced scenario for a rules set you haven't played is difficult. Often it takes just getting one rule wrong or something off in the scenario to prevent you from getting full enjoyment. So, kudos to Keith for taking the risk, as well as time and effort, to let us test out these rules.

    Allen's torpedo boat pierces the smoke screen, but is promptly damaged & driven off by autofire

Keith's 1/300 miniatures looked great, I felt. They were small enough that we could play a naval engagement on a tabletop, yet big enough you could see the details. It was easy for me to tell my torpedo-armed Romanian ship from its sister ship that didn't have torpedoes. 

    Mike W wasn't there, but his cat Jack (who Keith was watching) was & made himself a nuisance!

Keith did make some slight changes in the sequence of play. Those of you who read my blog regularly are probably thinking, "Did Keith bolt on the Wiley Games' card play mechanic for sequence?" Why, yes! You would be right! And I honestly feel Keith made the correct call. The rules say movement in simultaneous, but we all know how that works out when two sides are moving at the same time. One side watches the other and reacts to their movement. With no "plotting" mechanic, there's no way of avoiding this situation once the ships are within range and shooting at each other. So, I felt it was a solid modification and I'm not really sure if there was a downside to it.

 

    Screen shot of the 'Hunters on the Shoreline' rules, which Keith downloaded for free of the internet

We declared our side the victors since we sank Keith's big warship and scattered or sank Allen's fleet. Our losses were small -- a damaged lighter and three ships with their steering temporarily knocked out. Most of the ships on the table were undamaged, including our freighters. So, it seemed like a win for the defenders. All in all, a good time and a chance to play something new and different. Thanks, Keith!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures acquired in 2024: 64
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 67

Lotta "What A Tanker!"

Keith's 20mm tanks stalk one another across a cityscape in What A Tanker! rules

Sometimes, I'm the odd man out in my group. For instance, many of my regular Sunday night gaming group love all things tank related. I've always abhorred tank games. Maybe I've been stuck in one too many chart-intensive, plodding micro armor games in my four decades of gaming. Whatever it is, my group knows I am not the biggest fan. However, Keith was insistent that we try out Too Fat Lardies "What A Tanker!" rules. He said they were not like most armor games.

Peekaboo! My Italian tank sneaks up behind Andy's British one and squeezes off a shot

Keith was definitely right. If I had to sum up the two things I dislike most about armor games it would be: (1) Their tendency towards dense rules sets that force you to calculate angles and thicknesses of armor; (2) Their unabashed love of anything German. Of course, that last one could be true of many World War II rules sets. More than one gamer has joked that if wargamers wrote History, the Germans would have won WW II. On that note, the French would likely have won the Napoleonic Wars, etc.

Our Sunday night gaming group engages in a swirling tank melee in a North African city

What A Tanker completely fixes those two things in my book. Tanks are given armor ratings, which is the number of defense dice they roll. With the tanks we've used, this has tended to be three to five dice. The rules fix the second thing I hate because a German "4" is no better than a British "4" (let's wait a second while the tank lovers run screaming from the room...). The way side and rear armor is covered is you needed different numbers to hit if you are shooting from that side (let's wait again, while the rest of the armor heads leave the room). Yes, no dense charts in this game at all!

Finding avenues of fire and playing cat and mouse is a big part of the fun of these rules

It IS a different style game, though. The dice dictate what happens and generate their own fog of war. You cannot do what you want to do some of the time...check that: MOST of the time. You roll a certain number of six-sided dice when initiative says its your turn to move.  The score on each dice lets you a different thing: 1's = movement, 2's = spotting, 3's = aiming, 4's = firing, 5's = reloading, and 6's are "wild," allowing you to use them as any number. So, yes, that means you may have a bead on another tank, be spotted, aimed, and ready to fire but roll no 4's. Your crew freezes, or random smoke has drifted across your vision -- whatever.

Joel and Brian check a ruling in this easy-to-learn set, while Mike S ponders his tactical situation

Although these pictures are from our third game, our first game featured me in a tank rated Fast, but not so heavily armored. I was able to race around and get on my opponent Brian's rear. Though my movement dice were fantastic, my shooting dice were awful. I fired away again and again, bouncing off his armor. Equally frustrated, he was unable to get move dice and get facing me. The game definitely works best with players controlling only one or two tanks each, we've found in our massive three games of experience. It also works best with lots of terrain, so you can play cat and mouse with the enemy. The dice provide the fog of war, so that your stalking doesn't always work out the way you wanted it to. I can recommend What A Tanker rules for anyone who normally doesn't like armor games. That said, my friends who DO like them also enjoy the rules. 

More What A Tanker action (don't ask me which tanks these are -- remember, I hate tank games! Ha, ha!!)

Japanese Bettys "Sweating" It Out After Bomb Run

Our formation of "sweaty" Betty bombers, and Allen's escorting Zeros

Check Your 6! is one of those games that we play only about once a year. So, invariably, we spend the first half hour trying to re-learn the rules. Mike S had cooked up a scenario featuring a flight of Japanese Betty bombers escorted by 6 Zeros. A U.S. force of 5 Wildcats and 2 P-39 Airacobras were attacking them after the Bettys had completed their bomb run.

My two Zeros take a left turn to sweep around and come in behind the Wildcats -- or so we thought!

I ended up controlling two Zeros flown by Veteran pilots. As we were filling out our sheets, I noticed our "robustness" -- how much damage we can take under the CY6! system -- was appropriately enough, a "0." That is a really fragile plane. So, I decided to take my two Zeros on a sweep to come in behind the Keith's Wildcats after they had made their run. I underestimated how quickly they could close with the bomber formation and ended up out of the fight for a good length of time.

Our enemy -- three of the five Wildcats and two P-39 Airacobras in the distance

In fact, I had no idea that they would simply dog-pile into the middle of the bomber formation and essentially be invulnerable under the CY6 system (and Mike S' really bad die rolls!). So, as I was hurriedly trying to close with the scrum in the middle, Bettys kept falling from the skies. I think that our defensive fire from bombers accounted for one damaged Wildcat in the entire game. Maybe that's accurate -- I don't know. Keith was clever and dove under their formation where they had fewer guns to bear, and Brett hung on the edges and shot in, but Steve just flew straight into the middle of the formation, guns blazing.

Yes, you must be bald to play in this game...ha, ha! Keith, Brett, and Mike S analyze the scrum (guess whose two fighters those are way out of the fight...?)

Slowly, my fellow Japanese Zero pilots (Joel and Allen) closed with the U.S. fighters. One by one, we began to damage or drop their fighters, too. I made a diving turn and got into fight (right onto the Wildcats' tails, as I'd planned) two turns before the end of the game. I managed to shoot down one damaged Wildcat. I never took any fire, but felt somewhat like I'd bungled my job as bomber escort. Oh well, dead men tell no tales!

The Wildcats boldly jump right into the formation of Betty bombers, ignoring the Zeros lurking on the edges

I do think that perhaps slightly larger hexes are needed. The bomber formation was simply a mass of airplanes and looked kind of silly, I thought. Of course, if it was fighter-on-fighter action, it likely wouldn't have looked as out of scale.

Okay, this looks a little silly, in my opinion...an argument for larger hexes with this scale planes

I learned some lessons about how to do bomber escort, which I will doubtless forget in the ensuing year before we play again...ha, ha!

One Betty bomber remains, but will soon be shot down. Zeros close in...too late!

Old School Naval Wargaming

    Allen insisted, so we got down on my living room floor for some old school WW II Naval wargaming

It was a little time warp as we played General Quarters with Allen's 1/2400 scale WW II ships. The rules are a bit dated, but in their day were a "beer and pretzels" set. Now, some of the mechanics seem a bit cumbersome -- especially firing torpedoes. It gets harder each year to get down on the floor and move those ships...and even harder to get back up!

Allen cooked up a convoy raid scenario with a British force (Joel and Mike S) trying to jump a lightly-escorted merchant ship convoy (Steve), before the Italian surface elements can steam to the rescue (Tom and Mike D).

Both Steve and Mike S had deadly shooting in the first half of the game. Steve sunk two of Mike's destroyers with torpedoes. When Tom and I steamed into combat, Joel also entered. We traded shots back and forth, with the British getting the worst of it. Eventually, they decided to break off contact, as their cruisers were getting pounded. So, we decided to call it a victory for the Italian navy.

Hopefully, next time we get out the tiny ships, we'll be playing a different rules system...ha, ha!

A Sinking Tribute to PT 109 and JFK

    Some would say we're getting a little old for crawling around on the floor doing WW II Naval miniatures! Here Mike S closes with the Japanese flotillas, while Allen, Joel, Keith and Steve look on.

So, Allen had been wanting to run a World War II General Quarters game with American PT boats against Japanese destroyers. Mike S, Joel, and I were all volunteered to follow in John F. Kennedy's shoes and face down a night convoy of Japanese destroyers and barges. Each of us was given a force of 4 PT boats and we waited in the dark waters for the Japanese fleet to sail by us, when we would attack.

We'd never played theses rules for such a small action, though. General Quarters is more designed for fleet actions with the bigger ships. How would it work for such small scale engagements? Well, according to us would-be JFKs, not very well! The rules' move/countermove system allowed the Japanese destroyers to ram us easily and at will, slicing through 1-2 boats every turn we were close enough. Our torpedoes had a range of only 12" and they had a movement of 13", which meant they could virtually outrun our torpedoes. Never mind the fact that I have always stunk at this aspect of the rules. With GQ, you guess whether your torpedo target will maintain course, go to port, starboard, or reverse course. To get within range of them to launch torpedoes, we had to weather the storm of their gunnery (and more dangerous) their ramming.

    Our target: A Japanese supply convoy headed towards Guadalcanal (1/2400 scale miniatures)

The game ended with all three American flotillas destroyed or fleeing off table, and not causing a single point of damage to the Japanese or their barges. Needless to say, we need a little re-working on this scenario before it is tried again! I pointed out the worst part is the PT boats are sitting ducks under the move/countermove system. Either the turn they close with the destroyers or the turn following, they will move first. That means the Japanese can slice them in two fairly easily.

    Tsuro: The Game of the Path is a quick, fun 15-minute board game

Since the game ended so quickly, we broke out the boardgame Tsuro. This tile-laying path game is always a fun, quick play. Keith and Steve V (who had played the Japanese in the naval miniatures game), ruled at this game as well. It was a night to be Asian, we decided! Steve won the first game and then he and Keith tied in the second game.

Next week, we will do the second scenario of my Pulp skirmish games. I'm busy finishing up the terrain for this game, as you can see on my post about my Jungle Hut.