Ok, for the Med scenarios, I would limit the US capital ships to:
1942 Texas New York Massachusetts
Ranger Sangamon
1943-45 Texas New York Massachusetts Nevada
Ranger Sangamon St Lo, Guadalcanal
This is all based on Operations Torch, Husky, Avalanche, Shingle and Dragoon. There were lots of different subs destroyers and cruisers, but I think that excluding the bigger, newer capital ships is appropriate cause they were busy in the Pacific.
I don't see these posted anywhere despite being from 2012 so I thought I would give them a thread so people can view them, they look pretty good I really want to try them out. Funny that they really didn't gain any traction.
Gaming: Today I think Iâm going to step out of the theoretical ground of the last couple of posts, and muse about something more specific: What do I wish Iâd done a little differently with War at Sea (aka Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures)? Overall, Iâm pretty happy with the outcome of that design; itâs fast, fun, and serves as a good skeleton for layering on as many house rules and mods as you might want. But I still think I could have done a little better.
The first thing I wish Iâd included in the game was a simple facing system. The classic naval tactic of âcrossing the Tâ doesnât appear in AANM because of the relatively high abstraction of ship movement and position. The reason we didnât include this early on is because initial design drafts contemplated far more abstract versions of the game, where ships might be grouped into Task Forces fighting in an area of maybe 200 miles by 200 miles. Playtests of this approach showed us that ship dispositions were pretty boring in a large-scale game: You wanted your TFs together, so you wound up with â100 points in a box.â The shift to a more tactically focused game came relatively late in the process. Anyway, hereâs a simple implementation of facing rules we could have used:
¡ Draw a game map using large hexagons, say 5â or so.
¡ Ships and submarines move by a) entering the hex directly ahead and can change heading by up to three hexsides when they enter a new hex, which counts as 1 movement, or b) remain in their current hex and choose any heading. This basically means you canât make any real distance going âsouthâ on a turn you begin facing ânorth.â Destroyers and PT boats might be able to start with a course change, and would have more ability to maneuver.
¡ Ships and submarines have arcs of fire: Ahead, Astern, Broadside. These basically correspond to shooting âoutâ of the hexside in front of you, behind you, or the two hexsides on your port or starboard.
¡ Submarines canât make Broadside torpedo attacks (some older subs did have trainable torpedo mounts outside their pressure hulls, but maybe that could be handled with a special ability).
¡ Ahead or Astern Gunnery attacks take a penalty of -1 per die. This is an easy way to model reduced volume of fire from a limited number of guns bearing dead ahead or dead astern. Sure, we could present exact Gunnery dice for ahead/broadside/astern attacks for each different ship, but weâre talking about a simple patch we could add now to the game.
¡ Some ships (say, Rodney or Richelieu) would gain a negative special ability to the effect of âno Astern Main Gunnery attacks allowed.â Richelieu might also get a special for âno penalty for Ahead Main Gunnery attacks,â I suppose.
There you go â pretty simple, really, and youâd add some fun positional advantages and disadvantages to your War at Sea games. You could force your opponent to choose between moving toward the objective or guarding against having his T crossed, for example. However, be careful, since this makes Initiative *really* important. Whoever moves second gets a big advantage by being able to see exactly where enemy arcs of fire lie and moving accordingly. And submarines suffer from their non-broadside attacks.
Hereâs another one: Delayed Torpedo Resolution. Our initial design wanted to make a stronger distinction between gunnery attacks and torpedo attacks for surface ships but really punished destroyers, so we relented in the errata and reprint and moved destroyer torpedo attacks to the same phase as their gunnery attacks. But torpedoes really should have run times of 5 to 10 minutes even at pretty close ranges, which is pretty close to about one game turn. So here is an alternative I wish I had thought of at the time: To simulate the run time of a torpedo attack, when you make a Torpedo attack against a unit, donât roll the attack on the turn your unit fires its torpedoes. Resolve the attack on the following turn. Hereâs how this would work:
¡ When a unit fires Torpedoes at another unit, place a Torpedo Attack chit on the target unit.
¡ Roll a d6 for each Torpedo Attack chit on the board at the end of the Movement Phase.
¡ Torpedo Attack chits âhitâ on a roll of 5 or 6. However, a unit can degrade a Torpedo Attack to âhitâ only on a 6 by choosing to evade torpedoes instead of moving in the Movement Phase. You could indicate this at the moment the ship evades by flipping the chit to a "degraded" side.
¡ Units evading torpedoes do not move. They remain in their hex. (If you use facing, too, the unit must change facing by 2 or 3 hexsides to evade.)
¡ Torpedo damage could be randomizedâsay, 1 to 3 points normally, or 1 to 4 points for a Long Lance attack. It bugs me that destroyers are always killed by torpedoes even though they often survived being torpedoed.
This doesnât really change the timing of torpedo attacks from surface shipsâwhen you fire the torpedo, itâs on its way, and if youâre blown up in the current Attack Phase, you still get to roll your dice next turn from beyond the grave. This does weaken torpedoes a little bit in that a torpedo attack in Turn X doesnât affect the claiming of objectives in Turn X, but instead in Turn Y. But it makes torpedo attacks much stronger in that theyâre much more likely to hit unless the targets choose not to move. Many times in real battles ships turned away from real or imagined torpedo attacks, and this rule creates that behavior in the game.
Both these systems are all about increasing the simulation value of War at Sea. Whether or not theyâre worth the added complexity, well, thatâs up to you. But if youâre inclined to tinker under the hood with your War at Sea game, maybe these will spark some ideas for you.
To you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high. -In Flanders Fields. John McCrea
This is a ruleset I made for part of a campaign setting I'm making. I've only tried it once, so please feel free to try it out and tell me how it works.
I'm also looking at how it works as a stand alone scenario, but I can't figure out how the points ratio should work for attacker vs defender. In a campaign, it wouldn't matter cause you buy whatever. Thinking along the lines of the convoy where the attacker gets three quarters the points of the defender.
Shore Battles
Use the Battle Map edges as the deployment zones. Row A for the attacker and Row G for the defender.
Movement is reduced by 1. Speed 1 units move every other turn.
For determining range, count every other sector.
Battleships are restricted to Row A and cannot move any further inland.
Cruisers are restricted to Row A, B and C.
Destroyers and Auxiliaries are restricted to A, B, C, D and E.
Destroyer Escorts, MTBs and Landing Craft are restricted to A, B, C, D, E, F and G2, 4, 6, 8, 10.
The shoreline is Row G1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and Row H
Attacker uses Convoy Ships as troop ships. At any point on their movement inland, the Convoy Ships may launch their Landing Ships (universally use Daihatsu Landing Craft) during the Sea Movement Phase. Launching Landing Ships counts as their movement for that turn. The Landing craft may not move the turn they are launched. Attacker gets two bases of Landing Craft per Convoy Ship. Landing Craft ignore stacking limits.
LST units count as two stands of Landing Craft when they become available and they have no restrictions on movement.
To win, the attacker must land over 50% of the possible Landing Craft brought to the battle.
Attacker may only use Carrier based aircraft that get a rearming counter every turn they are brought back to the Carrier. The Carrier itself is never placed on the map and is free from harm for this battle.
Defender can use the Land Air Base as per itâs listed capacity. No rearming counters are placed
Each map section can have 3 installations and a 7 cap land air base
BLOCK HOUSE 5PTS
0 1 2 3
Main Guns 1 1 0 0
AA 0
A 4 VA 9 HP 3
Fixed Position: Whenever this unit takes damage, roll a die. On a 4 or higher, this damage is prevented, but this unit is unable to fire next turn.
LIGHT SHORE BATTERY 8PTS
0 1 2 3
Main Guns 5 5 4 0
AA 4
A 3 VA 7 HP 2
Fixed Position: Whenever this unit takes damage, roll a die. On a 4 or higher, this damage is prevented, but this unit is unable to fire next turn.
RADAR
A 1 VA 6 HP 2
RADAR: If an engagement occurs within 2 Sea Zones of a base with Radar, the controller of the Radar automatically deploys second and wins initiative on the first turn of the battle. If both players have a Radar within 2 Sea Zones, each rolls a die. Whoever wins the roll off, gets to choose second deployment or first round initiative. The other player gets the remaining benefit.
ANTI AIRCRAFT GUN 5PTS
0 1 2 3
AA 2 0 0 0
A 1 VA 6 HP 2
DOCK/REPAIR FACILITY
The Dock is 2x3 sectors and at least 3 of the sectors have to be in water. Ships of any size may be in the dock, but they cannot move. You may build up to two installations on the land part of the Dock. Each dock section has the following values:
A 3 VA 14 HP 4
To you from failing hands we throw the torch be yours to hold it high. -In Flanders Fields. John McCrea
These rules are compatible with every other rule set that I've read. You can also use these rules just to mix two of the three games instead of all three.
Mixing all three mini games
There are a couple secnarios that you can play that can integrate all three games into one. The easiest is an amphibious assault. First, decide if both players are going to fight over a land mass, or if one player will be defending the land and the other attacking.
Build your forces following these steps:
1) Build War at Sea fleets of equal size. Auxiliary points donât count towards your overall points total, but you can only have 15% of your points total to use for auxilliary ships. (100 pt fleet would give you 15 pts to use on auxiliaries) If you go over the 15%, it will count against your fleet total. Warships or aircraft capable of carrying land units count towards the Fleet size, not the auxiliary size.
Allied units that can carry ground forces:
Indianapolis Secret Cargo 6
Emile Bertin, Casabianca Secret Cargo 4
Pluton, LST Landing 5
Krasnyi Kavkaz, Krasnyi Krym, Taskent, York Landing 3
Vospers Torpedo boat Land Cargo 2
Queen Mary Troop Transport 8
American Victory (can be used by all allies) Vital Cargo 8
Jeremiah OâBrien (can be used by all allies) Vital Cargo 6
Axis units that can carry groud forces:
JU 52 (soldiers only) Paratroopers 2
Blucher, Konigsburg, Nagara Landing 3
Nagatsuki Tokyo Express 2
Oceania Troop Transport 5
T1 Landing Ship Landing 5
Kinai Maru (can be used by all axis) Vital Cargo 8
Daihatsu Landing Craft (can be used by all axis and allies) Beach Landing 3
Each point of cargo capacity will give you 6 points towards your army build and can carry:
1 Tank = 3 points of capacity
1 Artillery, 1 vehicles = 1 point of capacity
2 Soldiers = 1 point of capacity
2) Build your land army using the points total from the capcity slots from your fleet. Bear in mind the restrictions on how much you can put on each ship. On a piece of paper, write the names of each ship and what land forces theyâre carrying. Aircraft use points, but donât have to be listed on a ship. If there is already an established defender on the land mass, that player gets 75% of the points total of the attacker.
3) Build 100 pt air forces using planes as close as possible to the ones you selected in the War at Sea and AAM builds. Read the AAAF game rules below to see what types of planes youâll need
Play out the AAAF scenarios first, then the War at Sea component, then the AAM part.
AAAF to AAM
Set up an AAAF map as normal and place two targets on opposite sides. Each Player defends one target and attacks the other. For every sucessful strafe or dive bomb, you earn a chip. When you play the AAM game, you must spend a chip to place an aircraft in the Flight Phase. Play till all planes from one side are destroyed.
AAAF to War At Sea
Set up 3 containers labeled Fighters, Bombers and Flak. Also make a number of chips labeled âAxisâ and âAllies.â
Decide who is the attacker and who is the defender. The Attacker gets at least 2 fighters and 1 bomber. The defender gets at least two fighters. The defender places a target on any sector on the map, but must not be close enough to the edge that a bomber canât turn out after a bomb run. Use the Flak rules from the rule book.
Every time a fighter damages a plane, that side gets a chip in the Fighter container
Every time a bomber makes a successful bomb run, the attacker gets a chip in the Bomber container
Every time the Flak scores a hit, the defender gets a chip in the Flak bag
Play the AAAF match until all the planes on one side are destroyed, then play a new game with the attacking and defending roles reversed.
In the War at Sea game, play as normal. At the end of the Air Mission phase, you may select one friendly fighter. Remove a chip from your fighter container and that fighter gets one extra die this turn. You may select up to two fighters per turn. You may also select one Ship per turn to get 1 extra die from the Flak container.
You may also select up to two Bombers in the Air Mission Phase, however, bombers get +1 armour until the end of the turn.
The selected units may only get the appropriate bonus once per turn.
Donât put the chips back in their containers. You can only use each chip one time.
The War at Sea part
Set up the map as normal, and determine with your opponent which Island(s) is to be contested. In order to land your forces on an island, the ships containing the land forces must be adjacent to the Island sector. If there is an established defender on the land mass, you can also use my Shore Landing Scenario to perform the actual landing. But you must further divide your forces amongst the landing craft.
If any unit that is carrying ground forces gets destroyed, you loose all the embarked ground forces as well.
The AAM part
If both players are contesting the land mass, play out on a standard map. If there is an established defender, play the game as a landing scenario.