A review of Find, Fix And Strike naval wargaming rules

[AdmiralHawke]

Introduction

Find, Fix and Strike is a set of fast-play Second World War tactical naval wargame rules written by David Manley and published by Long Face Games in 2019. The rules are derived from Si Vis Pacem, a set of fast-play rules for First World War naval actions published in 2018. In effect, Find, Fix and Strike is a Second World War version of Si Vis Pacem, with the important addition of carrier operations. Indeed, the name “Find, Fix and Strike” is the motto of the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm.
Find, Fix and Strike also includes a set of operational-level campaign rules that provide a framework for linked battles. So the rules contain two games: a tactical wargame with six-minute intervals and an operational wargame with four-hour intervals.
A couple of you were kind enough to like my review of Grand Fleets rules, so I thought I would write a review of Find, Fix And Strike which I have been testing to see whether I could use it for Matapan or the Coral Sea.
The rules include data for more than 200 ship classes and individual ships from the navies of France, Germany, Great Britain and Commonwealth, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Sweden and the United States. There is also data for more than 60 aircraft types.
The rules are intended for surface actions and carrier battles involving large warships and not designed for submarine attacks or coastal forces actions, though motor torpedo boats (MTBs) are included in the rules.
There are no scenarios included in the rules, but you can download four free historical and semi-historical operational campaigns from Long Face Games on Wargames Vault.
The tactical game doesn’t need any special equipment: all you need are ship and aircraft miniatures, a large table, a measuring tape, six-sided dice and the scenario that you want to play — though paper, smoke markers and splash markers will be useful too. The operational-level game will need a map of your area of operations, whether that’s the North Sea, the central Mediterranean or the waters off Guadalcanal, which is perhaps best sourced from a board game if you are not using one of the four campaigns written for the game.

What works well

Scope
Find, Fix and Strike operates at the level of an admiral or vice-admiral commanding a fleet or a task force, not a captain commanding a ship. The game represents ships being damaged or sunk, but not always what specific damage they have suffered.

The British carrier Eagle with her escorts, the cruiser Gloucester and two J-class destroyers in 1/3000 scale.

Si Vis Pacem was written to enable Jutland to be wargamed in a day. With more or less the same core mechanics, Find, Fix and Strike is perhaps best suited for fleet actions involving half a dozen ships or more on each side — such as Calabria (or Punto Stilo) in 1940 or Matapan in 1941 — where detailed gunnery or extensive record keeping could really slow a game down, rather than small battles with a few smaller ships. Indeed, the inclusion of carrier operations within the same turn sequence as gunnery, the name of the game and the picture of Matapan on the cover all suggest that these rules were designed with the Mediterranean battles of Calabria, Cape Spartivento or Matapan in mind, where aircraft from a single British carrier attacked Italian ships during a fleet action. My big question is whether these rules enable Matapan, the Coral Sea or Midway to be played in a day (or two, as the battles themselves lasted several days).
However, the scope of these rules, particularly the campaign game, is much wider than surface actions and carrier operations, encompassing aircraft, submarines, motor torpedo boats, mines, shore bombardments, kamikazes and even guided bombs. You could use these rules to refight the Channel Dash or an entire Malta convoy operation, like Operations Tiger or Pedestal, with the convoy coming under attack from a succession of aircraft, submarines, MTBs and the Italian fleet. There are even rules for rain squalls. Maybe you can’t game a midget submarine attack on ship in harbour, but there aren’t many aspects of Second World War naval warfare that are not encompassed somewhere in these rules.

Campaigns
Find, Fix and Strike offers a simple system for operational-level campaigns, divided into turns with four-hour intervals. This is what really enables you to re-stage classic Second World War battles like Matapan, the Bismarck Chase, the Coral Sea or Midway that involved multiple separate actions fought over the course of a day or more.
You can download four free historical and semi-historical operational campaigns from Long Face Games on Wargames Vault. These are based on a hypothetical German invasion of Iceland in December 1940, the near interception of Force H by the Italian fleet in February 1941, a potential break out by the battleship Tirpitz in November 1941, and the Battle of North Cape in December 1943. Not all of the campaigns conform to the same four-hour campaign turn.

The turn sequence
The turn sequence in the tactical game is straightforward: initiative; ship movement; air operations; gunnery; torpedoes; and end (mostly damage control). Each turn represents six minutes.

Initiative
The initiative determines which ships move and shoot first and is decided primarily by a roll of a die. Fleets or squadrons that are led by a brilliant admiral or have at least one ship equipped with radar are more likely to win the initiative. The winner of initiative decides whether to move first or second, and whether to fire first or second. That offers an advantage, but not a substantial one as gunnery alternates by ship, rather than all of one fleet firing first.

Visibility and sighting
Visibility is determined by a roll of the dice, and whether the game is set in daytime or at night. Poor weather, including rain squalls, mist and fog, can reduce visibility.
All ships spot at the same distance, which keeps things simple in the spirit of fast play.

Radar
The rules encompass both surface-search and fire-control radar. Surface-search radar can spot targets at longer ranges in poor visibility. Fire-control radar, similarly, offers a gunnery bonus in poor visibility.

Movement
Movement is straightforward. The initiative rule means that there’s no need to plot movement or write orders down. Movement is by squadrons, alternating by side. Ships can only move directly forward, or turn. Faster ships in the game can move 6″ or 7″ each turn, which means a ship will take about 12 turns to get from one end of a 6ft table to the other.
As in many naval wargames, speeds are rounded to the nearest inch. This means that historically slightly faster ships cannot chase down slightly slower ones.
Unlike Si Vis Pacem, destroyers operate as individual ships rather than being grouped into flotillas. Motor torpedo boats (MTBs) are grouped into flotillas.
Large ships are restricted to turning no more than 90 degrees in a turn. This restriction makes no sense in a six-minute turn as even the huge battleships of the Yamato and Iowa classes could turn 180 degrees in less than a minute. I don’t really see why this restriction is needed, unless it is to prevent players from cheating by turning their ships at the end of a turn to bring all their guns to bear when their ship has actually been steaming towards or away from the enemy — though the rule that ships must turn at the beginning of their movement already covers that.

Gunnery mechanics
Hitting a fast-moving target with a large gun from a moving platform at long distance is difficult, so the rules to model gunnery are the core of any age of steam wargame. The gunnery mechanic in Find, Fix and Strike is basically the same as in Si Vis Pacem. Gunnery ranges in Find, Fix and Strike are simplified into five range bands: short, medium, long, very long and extreme.
Each ship has an ‘attack factor’, which is an abstract of the weight of its broadside, and a ‘defence factor’, which is not clearly explained but seems to be an abstract of its construction and armour and how hard it is to hit. Gunnery is resolved by comparing the attacking ship’s attack factor, any modifiers and a single attacking die roll with the target ship’s defence factor and a defending die roll. If the attacking ship’s total is greater than the target ship’s total, then the target ship is lightly damaged. If the attacking ship’s total is double the target ship’s total, then the target ship is heavily damaged. Armour penetration depends on the range. If guns can’t penetrate the opposing ship’s armour, they can only inflict light damage. Special damage (i.e. critical hits) results if the target ship rolls a one.
To illustrate the mechanic I set up the first capital-ship encounter of the Second World War, when the British battlecruiser Renown ran into the German fast battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst off the Vestfjord on the morning of 9th April 1940. Renown, catching the German ships by surprise, opens fires at 13,000 yards in the early morning light. She has an attack factor of 4 (15″ guns), but the stormy seas reduce that by -1, and as she is turning she can only fire her forward guns for another -1; she rolls a 4, for a total of 6. Gneisenau has a defence factor of 5 and rolls a 3, for a total of 8. Renown’s total is lower, so she does no damage to Gneisenau.
The British battlecruiser Renown (bottom) engages the German Gneisenau (top), with the Scharnhorst beyond her sister ship.

On the next turn the Germans win the initiative and Gneisenau is first to fire back. She has an attack factor of 3 (11″ guns), but the stormy seas reduce that by -1; she rolls a 5, for a total of 7. The Renown has a defence factor of only 3 and rolls 1, for a total of 4. That’s a terrible score and results in special damage to the Renown. Had Gneisenau rolled 6 for a total of 8 she would have doubled Renown’s score, to cause heavy damage and end the battle as a contest on the first turn. But it is bad enough as it is: light damage and a roll on the ‘special damage’ table that results in Renown losing one of her main turrets because even Gneisenau’s 11″ shells can penetrate Renown’s thin armour at long range. That light damage is enough to reduce the effectiveness of the Renown’s gunnery.
The Gneisenau (top, left) fires back at the Renown (bottom).

Unlike movement, which is by squadron or division, firing is resolved ship by ship, alternating by side, until all ships have fired. So Renown can return fire before Scharnhorst opens fire.
So gunnery in Find, Fix and Strike is pretty quick — and the Royal Navy was lucky that Gneisenau was inexplicably firing high-explosive, not armour-piercing, shells on 9th April 1940. I find myself getting confused between ships’ defence factor and the similar sounding protection factor (which is their armour).
As an aside, I don’t really know what the defensive die roll represents. I like to associate actions in the game with something that happened historically. The attacking die roll is the gunnery officer aiming and the turret crews firing the ship’s guns. But what is the defensive die roll? The captain of the ship trying to steer out of the path of the shells hurtling towards him? The crew praying that the shells miss? Shutting the watertight hatches? I suppose the point is really to keep both players engaged and make it fun. Mathematically, it is no different to the attacking player rolling two dice (subtracting one die roll from another gives you an 11-point range with a median and mode of 0; adding two dice together gives you an 11-point range with a median and mode of 7).

Damage resolution
As you would expect for a fast-play set of rules, damage resolution is kept simple. Rather tracking damage points, damage is recorded through a series of levels: ships are lightly damaged, heavily damaged, crippled, silenced or sunk. That is the same as Si Vis Pacem, except that the crippled and silenced levels are new.
Light damage affects a ship’s gunnery; heavy damage affects its gunnery, speed and ‘defence factor’, presumably meaning that the crew are already struggling with damage control. Players can roll to conduct repairs, effectively damage control, during the end phase.
The rules suggest tracking damage using either counters or markers, such as grey smoke for light damage and black smoke for heavy damage. You will need to either use markers or keep notes on paper or an electronic device.
In the end, I am not a fan of the ‘special-damage’ rule. Although I like the additional narrative that comes from having a ship suffering a fire or having its rudder jammed, the rule conflicts with the simple, fast-play spirit of the game. Having reduced gunnery to fast and simple mechanic, why then complicate it by adding an extra step and obliging players to track specific damage in a game with no system for doing so? Conditional rules such as ‘AF-1 if shooter’s AF greater than or equal to target’s DF’ are neither easy to understand nor easy to keep track of. ‘Special damage’ would be better as an optional advanced rule.

Carrier operations
The British carrier Ark Royal in 1/3000 scale from Tiny Thingamajigs.

Carrier operations are, in a way, the raison d’etre of a set of rules named after the Fleet Air Arm’s motto.
The carrier operations in the campaign rules mean you can use these rules to recreate carrier battles like the Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. Intriguingly, the incorporation of carrier operations into the tactical rules mean that you can weave surface actions and air strikes together, recreating actions like Calabria, Spartivento, Matapan and Samar where carrier aircraft attacked warships during a surface action.
The inclusion of carrier operations in the tactical rules implies putting carriers on the same table as enemy surface warships. I can only think of three times in the Second World War when carriers actually came in sight of enemy surface warships: 8th June 1940 when Glorious ran into Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; 28th March 1941 when Formidable was still in the battle line in the night action at Matapan; and 25th October 1944 when Admiral Kurita’s Centre Force met the escort carriers of Taffy 3 off Samar.
Carrier aircraft are divided into flights of three or four planes, as they were historically; reconnaissance and spotter aircraft carried by battleships or cruisers operate individually. Carriers can either launch or recover aircraft in a turn, not both. Carriers can launch or recover three flights per turn in the tactical game. Oddly, there is no requirement for a carrier to turn into the wind.
The tactical rules offer no system for tracking the status of a carrier’s aircraft, whether rearming or refuelling in the hangar or damaged in combat. That’s probably fine for a game with a single British carrier with about nine flights of aircraft; I’m not sure it would work for the much larger air groups at the Coral Sea or Midway, let alone Leyte Gulf. The biggest American and Japanese carriers in the game such as the Lexington, Yorktown, Essex and Shokaku classes, can operate as many as 24 flights.
The operational rules recommend tracking aircraft on carriers and at airfields with a series of boxes, so you need to draw these up before a game. That is a missed opportunity. It would have been easy to have included either a generic carrier operations template or chart, or specific carrier operations cards such as those found in Avalanche Press’s Bismarck, Eastern Fleet and Midway board games or Sam Mustafa’s Nimitz.

Air strikes
To illustrate how air strikes work, let’s recreate an attack by three flights of Swordfish torpedo bombers during the Battle of Calabria in July 1940.

Three flights of Swordfish attack the Italian cruisers Trento and Bolzano, concentrating on the leading cruiser, Trento. I don’t have suitable aircraft miniatures, so am using counters instead.

Three flights of Swordfish attack the Italian cruisers Trento and Bolzano, concentrating on the leading cruiser, Trento. The ships engage the torpedo bombers with their anti-aircraft guns, with Bolzano supporting Trento as she is within 4,000 yards. Larger ships can split their AA fire, so Trento fires at the first two flights while Bolzano concentrates on the third flight.
Every ship has an anti-aircraft factor, which is typically 3 for a modern battleship, 2 for a cruiser or carrier, and 1 or nothing for a destroyer. Anti-aircraft fire is resolved in a similar way to gunnery, with both the defending ships and the attacking aircraft rolling a single die to which is added the ship’s AA factor and the aircraft’s air-to-air (A2A) factor respectively.

Both cruisers engage the Swordfish with anti-aircraft fire: Trento fires at the first two flights; Bolzano concentrates on the third flight.

Having split her fire, Trento adds one to each of her die rolls; Bolzano adds two; the Swordfish add an A2A factor of one to their die rolls. Trento’s anti-aircraft fire proves highly effective: the first flight of Swordfish is destroyed, while the second flight is damaged and driven off. Bolzano only damages the third Swordfish flight, but even that is enough to mean the torpedo bombers will abort on a die roll of 4+.
Now, obviously, those weren’t great dice rolls for the British. But given that no carrier strike aircraft in the game has an A2A factor better than one and most cruisers and above have an AA factor of two, it’s more likely than not that anti-aircraft fire from one or two ships will damage, drive off or outright destroy at least one or two attacking flights. It’s hard to think of an air attack in the Second World War, before radar guidance, where the anti-aircraft fire was that effective, so that outcome doesn’t align well with history. The Bismarck, for example, failed to shoot down a single Swordfish from the eight flights sent against her (in two separate attacks), though the Tirpitz shot down two of 12 Albacores when she was attacked in 1942. Italian anti-aircraft fire only shot down one Albacore (at Matapan) in some seven torpedo attacks by British carrier aircraft in 1940 and 1941. The Japanese cruisers Mogami and Mikuma shot down one Vindicator of 12 Marine aircraft that attacked them on 5th June 1942, and two of 56 Navy Dauntlesses (18 flights) that attacked them the following day. It was defending fighters, not anti-aircraft fire, that proved lethal to attacking strike aircraft. Of course it’s just a game, not a simulation, but with anti-aircraft guns this good, ships in the game have little to fear from aircraft in general, limiting the value of both carrier aircraft and aircraft carriers.

The third flight of Swordfish press home their torpedo attack.

To finish our Swordfish attack on the Trento, the third flight of Swordfish successfully rolls a 3 to press home the attack. The flight needs 11+ on 2D6 for their torpedoes to hit, but must subtract 1 from the roll because of the damage from the anti-aircraft fire. The flight rolls 11. Their torpedoes narrowly miss the Trento. (It’s not clear whether aircraft get the modifier for dropping torpedoes within 2,000 yards, but I assume not.)
So having run the gauntlet of the anti-aircraft fire, it is then extremely difficult to achieve a torpedo hit. Unlike the anti-aircraft fire, I think David Manley has got the chances of a torpedo hit right: 11+ is three chances in 36, or about 8%. By my reckoning, the Fleet Air Arm dropped 120 torpedoes at enemy ships at sea in 15 attacks between 1940 and 1942 and scored about five hits, or 4%.
I like the way anti-aircraft fire can distract or drive off attacking aircraft even if it doesn’t knock them out of the sky. Note that the existence of ‘damaged’ flights means that you have to track the status of individual flights: being either shot down / unflyable or undamaged would probably be simpler and play faster in games with multiple carriers.

What could be better

Scale
The large guns mounted on capital ships almost always force a compromise between miniature scale and sea scale in age of steam naval wargames. Find, Fix and Strike uses a scale of 1” to 1,000 yards (which is 1/36,000) and is designed for use with 1/2400, 1/3000 or 1/6000 scale miniatures. That means that 1/3000 miniatures, for example, are 12 times larger relative to distances than the ships they are representing on the table top.

The Italian heavy cruisers Pola, Zara, Gorizia and Fiume in 1/3000 scale take up 12″ on the table.

That is tight and creates some distortions that you need to beware of. A typical Second World War cruiser, such as the British Southampton class or the American New Orleans class, was about 180 metres, or nearly 600 foot, long. So a typical cruiser in 1/3000 scale is about 60 mm or well over two inches long, while a typical cruiser in 1/2400 scale is even longer, before adding the additional length of a base. That means that model ships are well over 2,000 yards long in sea scale and a cruiser squadron on the table top could be 12,000 yards long with each ship 3,000 yards apart. Miniature ships in the same squadron that look close together on the table top can be 1,000s of yards closer to or further away from the enemy. That sets up a tactical problem in the game because the rear ships in a squadron or force may well be out of range and unable to support the leading ships in the same squadron, increasing the tendency for gunfire to concentrate on the leading ship in a squadron.
Beware that if you use larger miniature scales, such as 1/1800 or 1/1200, you’ll face an even bigger compromise between miniature scale and sea scale. If you have the table space to double or even triple movement speeds and ranges, it’s worth doing so. I recommend increasing the distances in the tactical game to 2″, 10cm, 3″ or more to 1,000 yards if you can. Unfortunately the rules are written in inches, rather than thousands of yards, which means you have to remember a small calculation if you change your sea scale.

Air combat
Air combat in Find, Fix and Strike uses the same opposing die roll system as gunnery, which is more intuitive for air-to-air fighting than it is for gunnery.
Let’s take an example of three flights of American F4F Wildcats engaging a flight of Japanese E13A float planes, which ought to be a pretty uneven combat.

The Wildcat has an air-to-air factor of two (2), compared with nought (0) for the E13A. There are three flights of Wildcats, but only two can attack, with the second only adding half its air-to-air (A2A) factor to the calculation. Each flight of aircraft now rolls a die and adds its air-to-air factor. The Wildcat flight rolls a one, adding two for its air-to-air factor and another one for the support from the second flight, for a total of four. The E13A flight rolls a two, adding nothing. Doubling the enemy’s score is only enough to damage and drive off the Japanese float planes. To destroy them, the Wildcats would need to triple the Japanese score.
Air combat uses the same results table as anti-aircraft fire. This seems efficient, but the table is not nearly lethal enough for air combat. Because aircraft need to triple the opposing aircraft’s score, a flight of Wildcats has only a 25% (9 in 36) chance of destroying a flight of float planes like the E13A in the first round of combat. A flight of Wildcats cannot shoot down a flight of A6M Zeros in a single attack because it is impossible to triple the A6M’s air-to-air (A2A) factor of three, plus a minimum roll of one, whatever the Wildcats’ die roll. The best the Wildcats can achieve against A6M Zeros is a damaged result, needing another damaged result in a second round of combat to destroy a flight of A6Ms. Even the F4U Corsair and the F6F Hellcat have only a 1 in 36, or 3%, chance of destroying a flight of A6M Zeros in the first round of combat, and vice versa.
Damage is a far more likely outcome than destruction with almost any combination of aircraft. That means you have to track damage for individual flights of aircraft, which is unwieldy in battles with more than a few flights of aircraft and too much tracking for a fast-play set of rules.
There are two easy fixes to make air-to-air combat a bit more lethal, and hence combat air patrols a bit more effective: either treat the ‘damaged, driven off’ result as a ‘destroyed’ result or alternatively instead of having to double or triple the opponent’s score, base the outcome on scoring two or three points more than your opponent.
It’s easy to quibble with individual unit ratings in any historical wargame, but I can’t help thinking the A6M Zero is probably overrated in the game as the equal of the Hellcat and the Corsair: yes, the Zero was fast, well armed and highly manoeuvrable, but its lack of pilot armour and self-sealing fuel tanks made it vulnerable once Allied pilots learned not to dogfight with it.

Data cards
Data cards are common in most modern wargame rules because they save time looking up speeds, armament or gunnery ranges and tracking damage. Find, Fix and Strike doesn’t use data cards, recommending that you track damage levels with markers. That is clever in principle.
In practice, it’s hard to remember the attack, defence and protection factors for more than a few ships, so you end up either referring back to the rules to check gunnery and torpedo statistics that you don’t remember, writing them down somewhere, or printing them out on a scenario sheet.
Tracking damage levels with markers alone doesn’t really work because the special-damage rule means that you need to track ships that have had their radar, their steering, a main turret or some secondary guns knocked out. You either need a lot of different markers, or you need to note it down somewhere.
Some basic ship and aircraft data cards would make Find, Fix and Strike an easier, and faster, game to play.

Scenarios
There is some good guidance in the rules on how to set up a scenario, including the weather, but no scenarios are actually included. The free campaigns are great, but it is a pity that the game does not include few simple historical scenarios, like the River Plate, the action off Vestfjord, the Denmark Strait, Cape Esperance or, better, some battles involving carriers like Matapan or the Coral Sea.
While some wargamers already have their own scenarios and enjoy creating them, others don’t. It’s not hard to create scenarios, or convert them from other rules, but including a few historical scenarios would make the game a little easier to pick up and play. Hopefully some will be added to future editions. The new North Cape campaign, with an actual historical battle, is a great step in a good direction.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations save space when everyone understands them, and slow things down when they don’t. There are a lot of them in Find, Fix and Strike. Some abbreviations, such as AA for anti-aircraft, BB for battleship, CV for aircraft carrier and DD for destroyer, are familiar to most people with an interest in naval history. But there are plenty of less-familiar abbreviations like A2A (air-to-air), AA (transport), AF (attack factor), DF (defence factor), HT (heavy torpedoes), LF (light torpedoes, facing forwards), LRT (long-range torpedoes), PF (both penetration factor and protection factor), RAD/RNG (radius, range), SS (surface search) and X (extreme) that make the rules hard to follow in places. For example, ‘DF reduced by 1 if shooter’s AF greater than or equal to target’s DF’.
In some cases these abbreviations don’t even save space as there’s room to spell out words like ‘level’, ‘dive’, ‘light’ or ‘heavy’. You end up having to look up abbreviations a bit too often.

Support
Find, Fix and Strike hasn’t had any of the marketing or professional packaging that bigger wargame companies can put behind their games. That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that there isn’t that much support for new Find, Fix and Strike players. While David Manley does sometimes answer questions on Wargames Vault and some forums, there is no obvious online home or community for the game. Four years after the rules were published, it’s hard to find more than one or two reports of games based on the rules and a couple of video reviews on YouTube. Even David Manley’s own blog doesn’t have a Find, Fix and Strike game report [Edit: My mistake and apologies. There’s one of the Battle of the Denmark Strait here.] — though he has recently published the new, free, North Cape campaign. It’s a pity that there aren’t more reports from other players as these are good rules that deserve a wider audience among naval gamers.

What’s broken and needs fixing

Torpedoes
Torpedoes, like gunnery, are difficult to model elegantly in tabletop miniature rules. The torpedo rules in Find, Fix and Strike are greatly simplified, in line with the fast-play spirit of the rules. Rather than firing individual torpedoes, torpedoes are fired and resolved in salvoes: in effect all of the torpedoes from each torpedo mount are fired at once. That is sensible and saves time. Much faster than rolling dice for every torpedo. So far, so good.
The speed and facing of the target ship are both irrelevant; so is the size of the target ship; and range only makes a difference at less than two inches (i.e. 2,000 yards). Torpedoes are treated like gunfire and resolved in the turn that the torpedo is fired, so you don’t need to track torpedoes from one turn to the next. You roll two dice (2D6) to hit with a salvo, hitting on 11+, and then roll for damage. The chance of a torpedo hit might seem low, but that’s partly an illusion caused by using much larger models than the sea scale — i.e. in reality ships took up far less sea space than our miniatures do. How you calculate damage is not explained clearly and a worked example would help to clarify it.
Those simplifications speed up the game in the spirit of fast play. But they involve some big compromises that are worth understanding because they affect naval tactics, which is sort of the point of the game. The tactical situation basically doesn’t matter, so long as the firing ship is in range of the target and the target is within its torpedo arcs.

Kawakaze ought to be hard for Blue to hit with a torpedo because she is bows on to the Blue. But the facing of a target ship doesn’t matter in Find, Fix and Strike.

The first problem is that the torpedo rules take no account of the facing of the target ship. Having a ship’s bow or stern, rather than broadside, facing to torpedoes makes no difference in Find, Fix and Strike. A typical Second World War cruiser was nine, 10 or even 11 times longer than it was wide. All other things being equal, a destroyer or cruiser that is broadside on (perpendicular) to the track of the torpedoes is about 10 times more likely to be hit by a torpedo than a destroyer or cruiser that is parallel to the track of the torpedoes. If the direction of a ship matters enough to be included in the gunnery rules, it should absolutely be included in the torpedo rules — though at least your ships won’t be punished for the 90° turning limit in the movement rules.
The second problem is that, because torpedoes are resolved immediately and the target ships have no opportunity or necessity to take avoiding action, the torpedo rules remove the tactical decision on how to respond to a (real or feint) torpedo attack. Si Vis Pacem has a neat rule for ships turning away to avoid torpedoes; it’s a pity that Find, Fix and Strike does not repeat it. The tactics and outcome of the Battle of the Barents Sea in 1942 would have been completely different if the German ships had not had to keep turning away to avoid torpedoes.
The third problem is that Japanese 24-inch Type 93 oxygen-powered torpedoes are treated as long-range torpedoes. In itself, that works. There are no modifiers for their alternative use as very fast (50-knot) torpedoes that, not incidentally, left a far smaller wake — though they do cause more damage when they hit, recognizing their larger warheads. So the rules don’t really replicate the surprise of Allied captains and crews in 1942 who literally didn’t see the oxygen-powered torpedoes coming or were hit when they thought they were outside torpedo range.
A worked example of how the torpedo rules work would really help players understand torpedo damage resolution.
Overall, I don’t think these torpedo rules work well, even for fast-play rules, because they remove the tactical challenge of getting destroyers into position to fire torpedoes effectively. All players have to do is get their destroyers within 8,000 yards of the enemy’s ships and hope to roll an 11 or 12 on two dice. It doesn’t matter if the enemy ships are heading away at high speed. It should. A fast ship that turned away from a torpedo not only had more time to take avoiding action; it might even outrun the torpedo until the torpedo’s fuel ran out.
The greatly simplified torpedo rules also create an imbalance between gunnery and torpedoes. There are 21 modifiers for gunnery, but only five for torpedoes, and one of those is for torpedo aircraft. If the direction of a ship matters enough to create a ‘Centreline of target intersects the shooting vessel’ gunnery modifier, there should certainly be one for torpedoes. In the spirit of fast play, I would trade a little less detail in the gunnery rules, or the special-damage rule, for a couple of additional modifiers in the torpedo mechanics.

Examples and diagrams
The tactical rules contain no diagrams to illustrate how the rules work, and only one worked example (of an attack by three flights of Avengers on a Japanese cruiser). That makes the rules harder to understand and pick up quickly. A few worked examples of the gunnery rules and of the torpedo rules would help players understand how the rules work and clarify some detailed points. Having to refer back from the torpedo rules to the gunnery rules to try to work out torpedo resolution, for example, just makes the rules harder to pick up and play.
The only pictures in the rules are a series of nicely chosen black-and-white photographs of warships and aircraft from the Second World War. No miniatures are pictured in the rules either, which is a pity. Apart from the cover, the only colour in the otherwise black-and-white rules is on the diagram of gunnery arcs.

Game-playing aids
There are no markers, counters, templates, data cards or other aids to help you play the game, apart from the two-page quick play rules summary sheet. You are likely to need splash, smoke, fire and flood markers, as well as searchlight, starshell and illumination markers if you plan night actions. It would be helpful if a few simple ones were included in the rules for new players to print out. Aircraft counters or markers would be invaluable too, for players who don’t already have the relevant aircraft miniatures. Hopefully these can be added to future editions.

Summary
Find, Fix and Strike is a comprehensive and playable set of rules written by an experienced wargamer. The rules are simple and effective and play quickly, absolutely delivering on the fast-play promise. The scope is vast and there are few aspects of Second World War naval warfare that are not encompassed somewhere within these comprehensive rules. The rules are also very reasonably priced at $9.15 on Wargames Vault, offering great value for money.
However, as a game, Find Fix and Strike seems somehow incomplete. If you bought a board game like this, you would be disappointed because all you have bought it the rule booklet. There are no examples or illustrations to help you understand how the rules work. There are no scenarios to help you get started with your first game. There are no markers, counters, or templates to help you play the game. So setting up your first game of Find, Fix and Strike takes some time and effort. Find, Fix and Strike can seem like a game written by an experienced naval wargamer for experienced naval wargamers who don’t need any help, rather than for someone trying out naval gaming for the first time.
Fundamentally, this is an excellent and comprehensive set of Second World War naval wargaming rules that are excellent value for money. The rules just need more explanation (and fewer abbreviations). A second author or editor and a wider mix of play testers pushing for more explanations and illustrations would probably have helped to make an otherwise excellent set of rules easier to use.

[Tony S]

Very, very thorough and helpful review!   I think I agree with your thoughts.  I admit I was hoping for a bit cleaner system, to allow for larger actions to be fought in a few hours, but I too found it a bit dirtier than anticipated.  As you mention, a developer or second author might have helped streamline things a bit.  Like one little thing, that is easily fixed admittedly, but I think a trifle indicative of a need for a second set of eyes for a second edition, is the penetration factor.  The rules state to determine whether the shell is large enough to penetrate first, then roll for the salvo.  Should be attack roll first, then if the attacker actually does any damage heavy or higher, then determine penetration.  Minor thing, but a waste of time as written.

I also found the (S) and (I) interactions somewhat awkward.  Great idea, but I found myself constantly referring to the QRS.  As for lack of ship cards, I ended up printing out small labels to attach to the ships’ bases (I mount my vessels).

I did like the torpedo rules, both the chance of a hit and the inability of ships to “reload”.  I can only assume the lack of the bearing of the target is down to time scale, that a ship could maneuver fast enough to avoid a broadside?  And somewhat related, that the limitations of ship turning within the purported time scale is down solely to creating a certain “feel” that naval gamers are used to, rather than reality.  I seem to recall Mustafa in “Nimitz” mentioned that as well.

Reading of aircraft attacks was interesting!  I haven’t used any planes yet.  From the naval rules I’ve played (not too many) I think striking a balance is hard, especially as you note, carriers were rarely, rarely ever that close to enemy ships, but almost all naval rules have to include ontable carriers.

I think for me the attraction are indeed the campaign rules, and the free campaigns Mr Manley is kindly offering.

But once again, thanks for a solid and well explained review.  Highly appreciated!

[AdmiralHawke]

Yes. There are parts of the rules that just become a bit fiddly. I had overlooked that Renown is classed as inferior (I), so I probably got that part of the rules wrong. But that is exactly the sort of detail that slows you down and emphasizes the importance of playing aids like ship cards and examples.

The rules on the bearing of a target ship just aren’t consistent. To have a modifier for a ship that is pointing directly towards or away from a ship firing at it but not have something similar for torpedoes makes no sense. I’ve yet to read a single account of a Second World War warship that avoided steering directly towards or away from the enemy because it would increase the chance of being hit, whereas the near-universal reaction to torpedoes being fired was to turn away or turn towards. Ships would jink or zigzag to try to throw off the aim of enemy gunners, i.e. to be 100 yards closer or further away by the time shells landed, but that’s a different manoeuvre (covered by the evading rule).

But these are indeed minor criticisms of an excellent set of rules. I quite agree that getting a balance is really hard.

I agree on the campaign rules. I’m looking forward to seeing whether I can use Find, Fix and Strike to replay Matapan and maybe the Coral Sea with miniatures.

PS You are quite right that Nimitz has a similar turning restriction in what I reckon is a much longer game turn. Sam Mustafa expains it as ‘designed mainly to look good’.

[madman]

Working through your review (it is big for me and I have to take it in bites). Thank you for the effort.

I have not played much (maybe 3 times) WWII Naval but have these rules as a possible into to the genre. Sounds like the game scale is right on for me. Now I am a miniatures nut and often convert board games into miniatures (usually keeping the hexes) but in this case I was wondering if by using the traditional 1/2″ counter for the ships some of the issues with scale differences may mitigate?

The other question, at this time, is you mention torpedoes could be better done. Do you have ideas for a solution? Could there be a forum with potential solutions (for some of your other concerns as well)? I ask as I looked at Board Game Geek and there is no discussion or files despite a glowing rating (albeit from very few (8) respondents). I just put in to join the facebook group again with the same thinking in mind.

Thank you for the time and effort you put in. I may (probably will) have a few more questions as I digest your review.

[AdmiralHawke]

madman wrote:

Working through your review (it is big for me and I have to take it in bites). Thank you for the effort.

Thank you. I hope it is helpful. I didn’t set out to write such a long review. There’s just a lot to the game. 🙂

Smaller ships or counters definitely help: the distortions increase the greater the difference between the model scale and the sea scale. The problem is not unique to Find, Fix and Strike: it’s common to most Age of Steam wargames (among the worst affected are Warlord Games’s Victory at Sea and Cruel Seas because of their large models). It’s not a big problem with Find, Fix and Strike; it’s just something to beware of.

The torpedo rules have lots of good points:

• Fired in salvoes, rather than singly;
• Realistic chance of scoring a hit at 11+ on two dice;
• Bigger torpedoes (e.g. Japanese) scoring more damage.

The problem is that ships in the game can’t manoeuvre to avoid torpedoes — but that’s exactly what ships in the Second World War did. The easy and obvious fix would be the ‘torpedo attack avoidance’ rule from Si Vis Pacem: if ships turn away from the torpedoes there is a -1 modifier; if they continue on course there’s a +1 modifier. That forces a decision of whether to stay on course and risk a greater chance of a torpedo hit, or turn away to reduce the chance. I don’t really understand why David Manley didn’t simply copy that rule into Find, Fix and Strike.

I didn’t know there was a Facebook group. [I’m not a fan of Meta because it knowingly promotes extreme opinions for commercial gain.]

[AdmiralHawke]

I said that I haven’t seen many Find, Fix and Strike game reports in my review, and that is true.

The best one I have seen is this one of a game the Battle of the River Plate, featuring beautiful miniatures. It’s not my blog; I just enjoyed reading it: http://shellsplash.blogspot.com/2020/01/battle-of-river-plate.html.

[madman]

AdmiralHawke wrote:

madman wrote:

Working through your review (it is big for me and I have to take it in bites). Thank you for the effort.

Thank you. I hope it is helpful. I didn’t set out to write such a long review. There’s just a lot to the game. Smaller ships or counters definitely help: the distortions increase the greater the difference between the model scale and the sea scale. The problem is not unique to Find, Fix and Strike: it’s common to most Age of Steam wargames (among the worst affected are Warlord Games’s Victory at Sea and Cruel Seas because of their large models). It’s not a big problem with Find, Fix and Strike; it’s just something to beware of. The torpedo rules have lots of good points:

• Fired in salvoes, rather than singly;
• Realistic chance of scoring a hit at 11+ on two dice;
• Bigger torpedoes (e.g. Japanese) scoring more damage.

The problem is that ships in the game can’t manoeuvre to avoid torpedoes — but that’s exactly what ships in the Second World War did. The easy and obvious fix would be the ‘torpedo attack avoidance’ rule from Si Vis Pacem: if ships turn away from the torpedoes there is a -1 modifier; if they continue on course there’s a +1 modifier. That forces a decision of whether to stay on course and risk a greater chance of a torpedo hit, or turn away to reduce the chance. I don’t really understand why David Manley didn’t simply copy that rule into Find, Fix and Strike. I didn’t know there was a Facebook group. [I’m not a fan of Meta because it knowingly promotes extreme opinions for commercial gain.]

Thank you for the courtesy of the reply. Sorry for the long quote but it is late for me.

If you think WWII is odd for ground vs miniatures scale try anything cold war to modern. With cruise/anti ship missiles with 100s of kilometers range and the ranges of more modern aircraft. I attempted to dabble with Harpoon and Warship Commander back in the ’80s. I love minis but in order to keep it on a very big (as is) table I think I will try with counters. At least to start.

WRT torpedo rules. I know nothing of their effectiveness and do not have Si Vis Pacem. Is what you posted all that would be needed to add to the existing rules? Or should there be more and you have just given an example or what would make the most effect? I see no files on their FB page addressing F,F&S either.

I also looked into your review some more and you mention data cards. Big fan back in the day (Tractics for micro armour) again do you have examples (specific to the game) or a “fill in the blanks” form you use (will use) or suggest?

Thank you for the efforts and answering my questions.

[AdmiralHawke]

madman wrote:

Thank you for the courtesy of the reply.

My pleasure. Thank you for your questions. That’s why I posted to this forum.

madman wrote:

If you think WWII is odd for ground vs miniatures scale try anything cold war to modern. With cruise/anti ship missiles with 100s of kilometers range and the ranges of more modern aircraft. I attempted to dabble with Harpoon and Warship Commander back in the ’80s. I love minis but in order to keep it on a very big (as is) table I think I will try with counters.

Yes. I agree. In the missile age, major warships are highly unlikely to come within sight of each other, so would almost never be on the same table in a wargame.

madman wrote:

WRT torpedo rules. I know nothing of their effectiveness and do not have Si Vis Pacem. Is what you posted all that would be needed to add to the existing rules? Or should there be more and you have just given an example or what would make the most effect?

I tried to write my review from the perspective of whether the rules play fast and deliver historically plausible outcomes. I described the torpedo rules in Find, Fix and Strike as written as ‘broken’ because they neither encourage nor allow ships attacked with torpedoes to turn away. I re-read John Winton’s account of the sinking of the Haguro in May 1945 this morning; at one point in the action the Haguro turned away from the British destroyer Venus because Haguro thought Venus had launched torpedoes, though the destroyer had actually failed to do so. Find, Fix and Strike isn’t meant to be a detailed tactical miniatures game, but avoiding torpedoes is a fundamental tactic of age of steam naval warfare.

That rule from Si Vis Pacem would largely fix the problem. There is not much more to the rule than what I wrote above. I want to respect copyright, but in the spirit of encouraging people to buy the rules, the rule is basically:

• -1 modifier (to hit) if ships turn away from the torpedoes, parallel to the torpedo tracks;
• no modifier if ships turn towards the torpedoes, parallel to the torpedo tracks;
• +1 modifier (to hit) if ships continue on course.

I would also be inclined to rewrite the modifiers that are based on damage to be based on speed. A ship that is moving slowly, or is stationary, should be easier to hit than one that is moving fast. It was not being damaged that made a ship easier to hit; it was being slow (which can be a result of being damaged). If you have a stationary target (e.g. an anchored ship), that should be a lot easier to hit than a ship moving at 30 knots.

Wargamers like to tinker with rules, and you could always add more rules, but the more rules you add the slower the game will play. So I think that ‘torpedo attack avoidance’ rule would be enough, because it would force the player commanding the ship(s) being attacked to take a decision, and either turning away or turning towards would disrupt the formation as a torpedo attack would.

Si Vis Pacem is basically the same game as Find, Fix and Strike, without the air operations rules, but with statistics for the warships of the First World War.  It is well worth buying if you have a similar interest in First World War naval warfare.

madman wrote:

I also looked into your review some more and you mention data cards. Big fan back in the day (Tractics for micro armour) again do you have examples (specific to the game) or a “fill in the blanks” form you use (will use) or suggest? Thank you for the efforts and answering my questions.

I have not yet made ship data cards for Find, Fix and Strike, apart from a few simple aircraft carrier operations cards (a few boxes in PowerPoint, with a profile picture of the carrier). I have been writing the statistics on a scenario sheet. I think I will make cards for Matapan and/or Coral Sea, but I have not got that far yet. I have a Guadalcanal campagin to finish first. 🙂

[madman]

Movement

You dislike the limits to ship’s turn ability. Thoughts on alternatives? What about larger ships must move partial distance before the next X degrees can happen. Do the same for all ships, X is dependent on size, damage, etc.? You can turn before movement but again limited.

Is there something unknown being represented here like command and control from higher ups perhaps?

Carrier Ops

Thinking of doing rules/ideas for tracking flights’ status in carrier ops? I like your idea of a little more detail but again no real knowledge, but I would learn from a good game. Or add an idea/rule from one of the other suggested rules sets?

Air attacks

Same as Carrier Ops.

Abbreviations

If you hate them like I do NEVER pick up ASL (advanced Squad Leader). It had a few pages which define them in the original edition. I cannot find it in the 2nd edition. Just the fact it takes pages tells all.

Support

Long Face has a facebook presence, if you do FB, but I didn’t see any FF&S files. You could either search the discussion (never had luck myself) or ask away.

Examples and diagrams

Again need to ask on FB, then make some files to put there.

 

[Not Connard Sage]

AdmiralHawke wrote:

I said that I haven’t seen many Find, Fix and Strike game reports in my review, and that is true. The best one I have seen is this one of a game the Battle of the River Plate, featuring beautiful miniatures. It’s not my blog; I just enjoyed reading it: http://shellsplash.blogspot.com/2020/01/battle-of-river-plate.html.

They’re GHQ Micronauts ships, and they’re a pain in the arse to assemble. I gladly sacrifice detail for one-piece castings at 1/3000, and I’m prepared to do the same at 1/2400 🙂

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[madman]

Not Connard Sage wrote:

They’re GHQ Micronauts ships, and they’re a pain in the arse to assemble. I gladly sacrifice detail for one-piece castings at 1/3000, and I’m prepared to do the same at 1/2400

The same for many of their micro armour mins. Also CinC who doesn’t always give good features to align or attach (plug and socket joints) to make assembly easier. Follow that up with no instructions on what goes where. You are supposed to find pictures on the ‘net which answer those questions.

[AdmiralHawke]

madman wrote:

Movement You dislike the limits to ship’s turn ability. Thoughts on alternatives? What about larger ships must move partial distance before the next X degrees can happen. Do the same for all ships, X is dependent on size, damage, etc.? You can turn before movement but again limited. Is there something unknown being represented here like command and control from higher ups perhaps?

Apologies for the slow reply. Busy week.

My dislike of the turning limit is because it is not historical. I think miniature wargame rules should reflect what historical units could do and often did (as opposed to freak occurrences, like cruisers depth charging submarines or gunnery hits at 26,000 yards). Battleships and cruisers not only could but frequently did turn 180° or even 360° in battle:

• The British battleship Warspite famously turned a full circle under fire at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 because her rudder jammed. But she also deliberately turned a full circle at the Battle of Calabria to let her slower sister Malaya catch up.
• At Jutland, Vice-Admiral Beatty ordered his battlecruisers to alter course in succession 180° to starboard at 1640, about two minutes after sighting the High Seas Fleet. The fact that Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas aboard the Barham couldn’t see the Lion’s flag signals and so didn’t turn until 1654 is another story. But Evan-Thomas too ordered his four battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron to turn 180° in succession.
• At Matapan in 1941, Vice-Admiral Pridham-Wippell ordered his cruisers to turn away together to 180° (from a course of about 300°, so a turn of about 120°) immediately after sighting and coming under fire from the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto.

I discussed turning circles a bit in my review of Grand Fleets rules. For example, according to Norman Friedman: the Iowa-class battleships, fitted with twin rudders, had a tactical diameter of 814 yards at 30 knots. Similarly, the USS New Mexico had a tactical diameter of 690 yards at 21 knots. Given that the sea scale of Find, Fix and Strike is 1” to 1,000 yards, that means that an Iowa-class battleship could reverse course in the space of less than 1,000 yards or 1” on the tabletop. That is, of course, a fraction of the length of the overscale models we use, so it doesn’t look right. Thirty knots is 30 sea miles an hour, or half a sea mile a minute, meaning that an Iowa at full speed could steam about 1,000 yards in a minute. Doubtless there would be a substantial loss of speed from what is effectively a handbrake turn in a battleship, but the point is that a battleship could reverse course or turn a full circle in a lot less time than the six-minute turn in Find, Fix & Strike.

I don’t see a good reason to limit turning given that even large warships were (and are) perfectly capable of reversing course in a couple of minutes. I don’t think an alternative rule is necessary. I will simply ignore this particular rule (indeed, it hampered my Renown in the scenario above), but keep the restriction that turning for large ships must be at the beginning of movement (to avoid players being gamey with gunnery arcs).

However, it was more difficult and more dangerous for large ships to turn together, rather than in succession. Turning together at night, to avoid the submarine Tambor, was what caused the collision between the Mogami and Mikuma at Midway.

Thank you for all your other comments. I probably need to play Coral Sea, or at least Matapan, before I can offer useful suggestions. The air operations at Calabria were pretty straightforward.

I always liked the idea of Advanced Squad Leader but never tried it. I don’t suppose I ever will.

[madman]

AdmiralHawke wrote:

I always liked the idea of Advanced Squad Leader but never tried it. I don’t suppose I ever will.

Same for me, except I have played it a few times. But back on the shelf. Just they threw every rule they could think of and you need to know them to play. That and, based on my limited experience, the players generally play only it and very intensely so when us newbies give it a go not only are we up against the rules but usually very very good players. I understand that completely as back in the late ’80s and early ’90s I played Air Superiority at that level. Just it for about 3 years, went to Origins ( biggest game convention in North America) and held my own in the world wide (yes, really) tournament every year.

What I have done is play some original Squad Leader (working from start on) and maybe incorporate some of the additional units and scenarios but at the “lower” level.

[madman]

Just had a though of an idea from modern skirmish (land) gaming. Would it be more realistic to limit either the ability of a “unit” to turn? Since most ships are grouped into squadrons have a base ship (admiral’s) be the centre of all maneuvers and it does the movement and turns then place all ships in that squadron in position relative to that base ship after movement?

Another is similar all ships in a squadron remain within X distance of a base ship (or all within a Y diameter circle). Then move the ships to end their movement in the same foot print at the end of movement. The diameter could be based on ship type, number of ships or whatever (maybe picked by the player). There would be pros to a tighter area and cons for a more open one. At the end of movement any ships too close to each other would check for potential collision from during the movement. So a reason to spread out but I am sure gunnery requirements would dictate closer positioning.

Just thinking out loud.

[Albert of Winterpig]

Odd on the torpedo rules, as turning away from them was for a reason, to lower the speed the hit happened at, if it happened, a torp hitting a ship  with both running head on, can be effectively hitting at a speed of 50 knots, instead of 10 knots if turned away.

One of the other frustrations most wargamers have is that an exceptional gunnery ship, has a hit ratio of 5% at her best, in good conditions and a calm sea…..

Even huge ships are very very small targets at normal opening engagement ranges. Part of the reason the Bismarks hit on the Hood is such an oddity.

[AdmiralHawke]

madman wrote:

Just had a though of an idea from modern skirmish (land) gaming. Would it be more realistic to limit either the ability of a “unit” to turn? Since most ships are grouped into squadrons have a base ship (admiral’s) be the centre of all maneuvers and it does the movement and turns then place all ships in that squadron in position relative to that base ship after movement?

Ships in Find, Fix and Strike are, or at least can be, grouped together for movement (see page 11) though not for gunnery. It is far faster, and more historical, to group ships into squadrons and move them together than to move each one independently.

My point is really that any turning restrictions are unnecessary and unhistorical in a six-minute turn. I will just ignore the rule. Adding rules will generally slow a game down.

Albert of Winterpig wrote:

Odd on the torpedo rules

Yes. I think maybe there just was not enough testing of that part of the rules. Perhaps Tassafaronga should be used to test a game’s torpedo rules.

Albert of Winterpig wrote:

One of the other frustrations most wargamers have is that an exceptional gunnery ship, has a hit ratio of 5% at her best, in good conditions and a calm sea….. Even huge ships are very very small targets at normal opening engagement ranges. Part of the reason the Bismarks hit on the Hood is such an oddity.

Yes, agreed. One of the things I like about Find, Fix and Strike is that each turn is six minutes. So while the chance of a hit from any individual salvo at long range is low, the chance of a hit from multiple salvos in six minutes is a fair bit higher. I think the Hood was fatally hit by the Bismarck after about eight or nine minutes of gunfire at rapidly diminishing ranges.

There is an excellent video by Drachinifel on YouTube about how the Bismarck may have managed to penetrate Hood’s armour (spoiler: by hitting below the armoured belt).

[AdmiralHawke]

When I first wrote this review, I had not properly tested and thought through the air combat rules. Now that I have, I’ve added a new section into the review above which I hope will be of interest to my fellow naval wargamers.

I will repeat it here for anyone who has already read the review as a whole.

Air combat
Air combat in Find, Fix and Strike uses the same opposing die roll system as gunnery, which is more intuitive for air-to-air fighting than it is for gunnery.
Let’s take an example of three flights of American F4F Wildcats engaging a flight of Japanese E13A float planes, which ought to be a pretty uneven combat.

The Wildcat has an air-to-air factor of two (2), compared with nought (0) for the E13A. There are three flights of Wildcats, but only two can attack, with the second only adding half its air-to-air (A2A) factor to the calculation. Each flight of aircraft now rolls a die and adds its air-to-air factor. The Wildcat flight rolls a one, adding two for its air-to-air factor and another one for the support from the second flight, for a total of four. The E13A flight rolls a two, adding nothing. Doubling the enemy’s score is only enough to damage and drive off the Japanese float planes. To destroy them, the Wildcats would need to triple the Japanese score.
Air combat uses the same results table as anti-aircraft fire. This seems efficient, but the table is not nearly lethal enough for air combat. Because aircraft need to triple the opposing aircraft’s score, a flight of Wildcats has only a 25% (9 in 36) chance of destroying a flight of float planes like the E13A in the first round of combat. A flight of Wildcats cannot shoot down a flight of A6M Zeros in a single attack because it is impossible to triple the A6M’s air-to-air (A2A) factor of three, plus a minimum roll of one, whatever the Wildcats’ die roll. The best the Wildcats can achieve against A6M Zeros is a damaged result, needing another damaged result in a second round of combat to destroy a flight of A6Ms. Even the F4U Corsair and the F6F Hellcat have only a 1 in 36, or 3%, chance of destroying a flight of A6M Zeros in the first round of combat, and vice versa.
Damage is a far more likely outcome than destruction with almost any combination of aircraft. That means you have to track damage for individual flights of aircraft, which is unwieldy in battles with more than a few flights of aircraft and too much tracking for a fast-play set of rules.
There are two easy fixes to make air-to-air combat a bit more lethal, and hence combat air patrols a bit more effective: either treat the ‘damaged, driven off’ result as a ‘destroyed’ result or alternatively instead of having to double or triple the opponent’s score, base the outcome on scoring two or three points more than your opponent.
It’s easy to quibble with individual unit ratings in any historical wargame, but I can’t help thinking the A6M Zero is probably overrated in the game as the equal of the Hellcat and the Corsair: yes, the Zero was fast, well armed and highly manoeuvrable, but its lack of pilot armour and self-sealing fuel tanks made it vulnerable once Allied pilots learned not to dogfight with it.

[Author]

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