Angus Konstam's Edinburgh Wargames
Second World War Naval
A one-way ticket to Ironbottom Sound
This is another naval period which rarely sees the light of day, but which was inspired more by the models than anything else. Several years ago I was writing figure reviews for the Osprey Military Journal, and the guys at GHQ sent me a bundle of ship models to critique. Well, they were fantastic, or at least they were after I'd covered my fingers in super-glue trying to stick on derricks and guns turrets! I landed up buying two fleets, one American (with a few Allies) and the other Japanese. After all, there were more surface actions fought in the waters of the Pacific during the war than in the Atlantic and Mediterranean combined.
I avoided the largely un-gameable carrier battles (that's what computers are for), and concentrated on the battles fought off Guadalcanal. That meant building up fleets with a few battleships, a handful of cruisers and a whole bunch of destroyers. Every six months or so I pull these puppies out and have a game with them - it always looks good, and works really well as a multi-player game, with each player commanding a destroyer flotilla or cruiser division.
Like WW2 land battles, the period seems to attract rules filled with statistics. The tendency is to cram naval rules with every possible piece of information, which can easily make a game unmanageable. I've tried so many naval rules over the years that I've lost count. For a while I favoured Command at Sea (produced by Clash of Arms), which had an elegant rules system and an information appendix the size of a New York phone book! Next came Warship by A&A, which worked - up to a point. I still haven't found the perfect rules set yet - one than combines playability with accuracy, which is probably the unattainable Holy Grail of naval wargaming! The other problem is that this will never be a major period, so you want rules that are easy for people to pick up and use. For the moment I'm using the ridiculously simple but reasonably effective General Quarters set, which at least has the advantage than just about anyone can master the basics within a few minutes.
Sample General Quarters (1st edition) Ship Cards - They're much nicer than the ones that come with the rules...
Of course General Quarters III just came out (I think version II was the First World War set), and I've got a copy. At first glance they're slightly more complicated than the original set, although the complexity seems to come in the form of add-on rules rather than the main nuts and bolts of the system. As the original set lacked decent rules covering spotting, radar and night fighting, then this might be a good thing. Once we get round to playing a game we'll let you know.
Another new option is Stations Manned & Ready, produced by A&A Game Engineering in the UK.
These look really promising, and on first impression they're slightly more complex than the old General Quarters, but a lot more realistic. They also seem very playable.
I have a bit of a problem with A&A's rules - they're often difficult to follow, with a dreadful typeface and layout, but the mechanisms themselves are perfectly sound, and well worth trying out.
In these rules ships manoeuvre by squadrons, and gunnery is worked out in proper salvos, rather than as an abstract odds calculation as found in General Quarters. Gunnery is also worked out in range bands of 5,000 yards (2 1/2 nautical miles), which saves on a lot of repetitive calculation. All you need is a 25cm (10") stick.
One of the things I always look for in a set of Second World War naval rules is the way gunnery is covered (I'm impressed), and also radar. After all, in several battles (most notably in the Battle of North Cape, 1943), radar played a crucial part in the outcome of the engagement. This set includes fairly sensible radar rules, covering both detection and radar guided gunnery, although they could still do with a little bit of tweaking to make them less - well - accurate.
This rules book is labelled Part 2, as Part 1 deals with naval warfare of the Great War era, and Part 3 is an air warfare bolt-on, allowing the recreation of carrier battles (never really playable on the tabletop). There are also two scenario books to go with the Second World War set, one for the Pacific, and the other for European waters.
You can buy any of these rules as a published rules set, or as a downloadable PDF file, through the A&A website.
Ironbottom Sound
The IJN The USN
(all three pages are still under construction)
General Quarters (1st edition) Playsheet
For examples of Second World War Naval games, see Journal 1 , Journal 11 & Journal 18
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American Civil War Pre-Dreadnought WW2 Coastal Forces WW2 Pacific