Naval battles off Guadalcanal

Last Friday was a change in pace as Eric brought up his ships for a nite engagement off Guadalcanal. Larry and I were the “bad guys” as Jim and Eric took the Americans. Neal played Eric’s forces when he arrived later. Our forces were Haruna, Nachi, Jintsu, Hatsuyuli, Uranami, Nowaki, Hamakaze, Kuroshio, and Ushio. ( 1 BC, 1 CA, 1 CL, and 6 DDs). Among the similar-sized forces opposing us was BB Mississippi , CL Honolulu, and CA Chester.

This was a night engagement using General Quarters 3rd edition  rules.

Jintsu's column hammers the Honolulu

The US ship’s radar gives advantages at night, so they have an edge for detection. Basically, each ship column roll to detect and acqire enenmy vessels. If enemy is detected, ships may elect to fire star shells to illuminate potential targets.

Each side scored several hits to each other, with Haruna on fire from the big guns of the Mississippi. Fortunately, I doused the fire on the next turn and several turns later repaid the damage with a critical hit on Mississippi…a turret pentration which endangered the ship if uncontrolled. Jim couldn’t control the damage, so scratch one battleship!

The battle was pretty much over at that point. The picture shows Jintsu’s column raking the hapless Honolulu. Although Jintsu is afire, it’s guns were still active! What’s not shown are the tracks of the 9 torps in the water heading dead for the slow-moving US target! The “circles” are the star shell bursts for illumination.

We called the game at that point.  Jintsu would manage to put out the fires later, but her speed was down to a crawl. We thought she would make a juicy target for the Marine aviators on the island and wrote her off.

 

December-January Gaming

The guys got together Dec 26 for an all-day session at Jim’s place. Rich Fisher and son Andy visited from Virginia, and nephew Steve came in from Arizona. The four of us played a WWII battle in the bocage moderated and provided by Keith Kunkle (rules Battleground?..dunno). Team Baier played the 29th US Division battlegroup attacking the wily German Fishers. Three of us never played the rules before, so the game ran slowly until we learned the fundamentals.

The Battlefield

At left is Steve, Andy and Rich surveying the field before the game

We had two infantry compies with the support of a platoon of armor to attack with. The hedgerows proved hard to crack as the game progressed, just like it was for the 29th in the month after D-Day.

Visibility and movement are handled well by the rules, but combat seemed very hard to remove enemy stands..basically you need a modified 10 on a ten-sided die to kill and there aren’t many “plus” modifiers!

Final result was judged a narrow Allied win….no thanks to me <G>

My verdict was that I’d rather play Spearhead, although that’s a higher organizational level game. Our thanks to Keith for the afternoon festivities!

Ambush at the Crossroads

Under the cover of a smokescreen laid by mortars, Steve advanced his armor to the crossroads where Andy’s Germans tried to ambush them.  Partially successful at first, the guns of the tanks proved too much for the defenders who pulled back hastily after losing the company commander…postumous Iron Cross awarded to his family.

January 12 had Steve Parillo, Larry Chaban, and me at Legion’s Hobbies for a nite of DBx gaming. I had a “virgin” Late Hungarian army newly arrived from Sri Lanka, so Steve obliged me in the first game with his beautiful Post-Mongol Russians.

Wagons, Ho!

Hungarians to the bottom advance to the Russian lines. Steve had one war-wagon to my two, and his horse were all cavalry. My horse were a mix of knights and light cavalry.

Tricky Steve attacked along the front before I was set and managed to kill a bowman at first charge. Then I got lucky and killed his war-wagon by combining a shot with crossbow support.

Russian Cavalry

I hated to kill these guys…they’re so pretty! Steve printed parts of the flags and cut them to cover the shields. When the edges are painted up and sealed they look damn good!

My German 6-man knights once agin proved terrible in combat, but didn’t get killed for once (damn mercenaries!). One Russky fell to a wagon shot, and Steve double-overlapped my supported blade to no avail. After mt turn without managing to kill anyone with 5:2 and 4:2 modifiers (Diceman rules!), Steve flanked my blade and double over-lapped it to boot!

Hah! I actually rolled high enough to push him back. It was Evil Steve’s undoing as the next bound I picked up another cav and drilled a Light Horse (1:1) to pick up the win.

Chaban laughed as there were three or four combats where we BOTH rolled 1’s!

Next up was Steve playing Athenian Hoplites versus Larry’s Thessalians.

Suffice it to say that Steve ROLLED FIVE SIXES  IN A ROW for combat….guess who won?

Steve's Camp and War-wagon

Next up was Larry (Roundheads) versus Steve (Royalists) in Engish Civil War DBx style, using the Humbersides Extensions to DBA downloaded from the web.

Larry and I had not used these before, but the basis is DBA, so the differences are easy to learn.

Royalists (Steve) versus Parliamentarians (Larry)

Steve’s luck or Larry’s lack of it gave victory to King and Country….

I always like the period of the English Civil Wars so this is a good reason to dust off some old figs, and maybe do those Polish Winged Hussars I love so much!

We also cleared dates with Legion’s Hobbies, so announce Stoogecon II DBA con, to be held

Saturday , April 25. There will be two events, an Open Tournament and a Theme tourney, probably Book II. Details to be posted in the usual places and in this blog.

Get your armies ready now and boogie to Pittsburgh in the Spring!