Date:         2007-12-28

Subject:    Battle report Russo-Japanese war, Naval battle

Scale:        1:3000

Rules:       Home brewed rules mainly based upon QUICKFIRE and BATTLEFLEET 1900 published by War Times Journal (wtj.com)   

   ..\Quickfire clone.pdf

The report

Introduction

For some years now I have been collecting and painting ship models from the World Times Journal (wtj.com) line for the Russo-Japanese War. I have shown the ships a few times at the club and finally the time had come to arrange a bigger battle. I’ve been toying around with the two free rule sets that WTJ offers, the very simplified QUICKFIRE and the rather more demanding BATTLEFLEET 1900. For this game I decided to write a heavily modified “QUICKFIRE clone” spiced with some elements from BATTLEFLEET 1900. I particularly like the element of estimating the range to the targets instead of rolling a dice to figure out if you score a hit. I also wanted to take the opportunity to use the big floor in the “war room” we have access to, so I doubled the speed of all ships and
increased the range of the artillery to 200 cm. None of us are naval experts in anyway, but the over all feeling was that the clone worked out quite well but it were almost impossible to score a decisive hit on any ship.

 After the game I have taken an other turn on adjusting the rules and the latest version can be found here.

 ..\Quickfire clone.pdf

 Scenario

Five Japanese merchant ships are carrying yet an other wave of invaders to Korea. The invaders are escorted by 6 battleships and 4 cruisers. Russian intelligence have found out the plans but have not been able to find out if the Japanese are heading for the Red or Yellow landing zone. The Russian fleet that is sent out to intercept the invasion holds 7 battle ships and 4 cruisers.

The gaming area also held two tiny islands labelled "A" and "B". Their only purpose was to get in the way of the ships...

 Victory conditions

The Japanese must reach the designated landing zone with at least three of the five merchant ships to win. The Russian players have to prevent it from happening.

 Order Of Battle

Imperial Japanese 1st Battleship division
 (Commanded by Pontus)

Mikasa, Asahi, Fuji

  

Imperial Russian 1st Battleship squadron
 (Commanded by Erik)

Petropavlovsk, Poltava, Sevastopol

Imperial Japanese 2nd Battleship division
 (Commanded by Niklas)

Yashima, Shikishima, Hatsuse

  

Imperial Russian 2nd Battleship squadron
 (Commanded by Gunnar)

Tsessarevich, Peresviet, Pobyeda, Retvizan

Imperial Japanese Cruiser division
 (Commanded by Daniel)

Chitose, Kasagi, Naniwa, Takachiho

  

Imperial Russian Cruiser squadron
 (Commanded by Olov)

Bayan, Askold, Diana, Pallada

Imperial Japanese Merchant fleet
 (Commanded by Oskar)

Merchant ship no 1 to 5

    


 


Team Russia have realised the Japanese battle plan. Now it's no time to waste so Erik is writing orders to his Battleships, while a tired  Olov is trying to figure out what to do with his Cruisers. Meanwhile Lars, the umpire, is watching as the Japanese fleet is closing in.   

 

Team Japan, Niklas, Pontus, Oskar and Daniel watches as two Russian cruisers are about to sneak in to the rear of their convoy... not good...

The Battle plans

Initial deployment and movement during the game.

 

Planned movement

In the final round the Japanese fleet concentrated all their fire against the Russian battleship Retvizan. A few rounds missed (white pegs) but she also took some direct hits (red pegs).

The Japanese deployed rather neutral. Their idea was to send the cruisers forward towards the Yellow zone as a diversion. The main fleet should advance straight forward a bit slower then the cruisers, but then turn and rush for the Red zone.

 The Russian plan was to send one battleship division to each landing zone as initial guard. When they had worked out the Japanese plans they were to concentrate to the threatened landing zone. The Russian cruisers were tasked to engage the Japanese cruisers.

 The Game

As none of the players had any wargaming experience beside various versions of Warhammers, I started up with a brief introduction to the rules and to the scenario. The introduction, division into teams and set up took about 30 minutes. As the two sides were separated by large amounts of water the initial turns could be used by the players to get familiarized with manoeuvring. Several of the players stated that this was great fun compared to what they have experienced before…

The fleets moved pretty much in accordance with their plans and soon the Russians had figured out that the “Red zone” was the goal for the Japanese fleet. During the race for the landing zone, several rounds were fired between the two fleets. The method of guessing the range worked out well and the way of marking hits or misses with inverted golf pegs added some good flavour to the looks of the gaming area.

We played for 4½ hours and most of the battleships fired 6-8 rounds. The fire was generally concentrated on one target at the time, leading to a situation where single ships took several hits. However it proved hard to inflict any substantial damage to any of the targets as most damages could be rapidly repaired.

When we ended the game, the Japanese merchants were not even close to reaching their goal and the Russian battleships were closing in on the Jap’s. For some reason the Japanese cruiser division were split in two taskforces. One was following the main fleet and one was engaging the Russian cruisers on the Japanese right flank. As the game developed, the two fastest and best armed Russian cruisers were unengaged and managed to slip pasts the two Japanese ships. If the game had been on for a few more rounds, the Russian cruisers could most certainly have presented a deadly threat to the Japanese rear. The Japanese chance to respond would probably have been limited as the entire fleet were packed on a small area with a very limited space to manoeuvre to counter the threat.

A draw but with a slight Russian advantage.

 

Comments on the rules

As mentioned before, the game was played with a home brewed ”QUICKFIRE clone”. The core of the clone works fine but some details has to be adjusted.

  1. The size of the gaming area (4x4 meter) was perhaps slightly too big for the time we had available (5 hours) as the Japanese merchant fleet was unable to reach the designated landing zone.

  2. The speed of the ships had been doubled to match the larger gaming area. That looked good.

  3. The artillery range had been increased to 200/100cm and torpedo range to 30 cm, also to match the gaming area. This also looked good.

  4. The system of estimating the range to the target instead of simply rolling dices was appreciated by all participants and it worked well.

  5. It’s hard to score any decisive hits on these ships. At one point a Japanese cruiser scored a good torpedo hit on a Russian cruiser, destroying four speed boxes. In the following repair phase the Russian player managed to fix all four and was back on full speed for the next movement phase. Doesn’t feel right… I will have to restrict the number of repair tries one ship can perform in one turn. I will also increase the chance to score “critical hits” such as explosions.

  6. It was really hard to hit anything with torpedoes. I will have to do something here but I don’t know what yet.