Favourite WW2 Rules?

[DM]

Evening all, a bit quiet here at the end,  so a question- what are your favourite WW2 naval rules and why?

[irishserb]

My favorite are a homebrew set written by Craig from Gaming Models.  They are were written for use with 1/700 scale models, and individually mounted aircraft.  I like them because they are fast playing, while being very detailed, and offer very visual games, whether playing torpedo boat attacks or the battle of Midway.   The best of all worlds for me.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer them for sale, though we continue to push him in the direction.

[kyoteblue]

I played the WW11 version of Cordite and Steel but that was 30+ years ago.

[Rules Junkie Jim]

Hmmm, I’m surprised at how easy a question that is for me… turns out I haven’t played much WW2 naval.

Victory at Sea it is then!

 

[MartinR]

Iron Ships & Wooden Heads by Tim Gow (based on Be Bellis Navalis by Colin Standish).

DBA with battleships, so more of a focus on command and control, less on the minutiae of guns n’ armour.

Amongst more conventional rules, GQIII. Fast, relatively realistic, even if there is still scope for ships to go wandering off on their own.

I still have a soft spot for SPIs ‘Dreadnought’ – like ISWH, much more of a focus on C3, fast and furious.

The main problem I have with most naval rules is that ships inch across the map/table while blazing away at each other inffectively turn & after turn – very much the heritage of Fletcher Pratt (a truly awful set of rules imho), whereas real naval battles feature a fair bit of manouvre as evidenced by all those swiggly lines on the maps of real engagements.

Cheers

Martin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[DM]

I guess I’d better chime in as I started the thread in the first place (I was on my phone at the time, not good for typing sizeable amounts of text)

My afvourite set varies depending on the scale of the game I’m playing. For coastal games its Action Stations (no surprise there), although for quick games I do sometimes use “chnell Rules for Schnell Boote” a set of fast play rules that I wrote for an NWS competition a few years back. They work nicely for larger coastal games such as big convoy enaggements.

For a good old fashioned cruiser and battleship slog I like the old Skytrex WW2 rules (with the diving Ju-88 on the front cover). Nicely detailed, I play a variant of those. We used them for the NWS 60th anniversary refight of North Cape on board HMS Belfast in 2003.

For bigger games, campaigns and carrier battles I go back to GQ1/2 time and time again. I know I ought to be playing GQ3 but the older rules have q real charm to them (again a few house rules needed to sort out some irregularities, such as the “Trento Effect”), I guess another reason why I stick with them is that I put together a load of campaign rules, enaggement flowcharts etc, which make them easier for me to play with. Plus a shedload of SDS sheets already worked up for many battles and campaigns.

“Irn Ships and Woden Heads” sounds like fun, I’ve tried various DBA variants for pre-dread and WW1 so it would be good to see how a WW2 set feels.

Honourable mentions – Victory at Sea and Naval Thunder. Fine rules both.

 

[Etranger]

I was going to mention Action Stations but some chap has beaten me to it  …. I’m in the fortunate position of being able to play test Mal Wrights various WWII rules along with a few other sets that he’s working on.

[MartinR]

“Irn Ships and Woden Heads” sounds like fun, I’ve tried various DBA variants for pre-dread and WW1 so it would be good to see how a WW2 set feels.

 

Ah well, if you like DBA naval variants, here is ISWH in all its glory:

http://megablitzandmore.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/iron-ships-wooden-heads.html

Cheers

Martin

 

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[grizzlymc]

GQ3, the learning curve seems steep but they give a quick game, easy consistent mechanics and just the rght sort of granularity for 4-20 ships on the table.  Not sure it could handle Jutland in an afternoon.

[Steve Burt]

GQ3 for me. I’ve also used a couple of home brew sets, Victory at Sea and Naval Thunder.

Those latter two are OK but a bit simplistic. One of the two home brew sets was over-complex. The second one simplified a lot of stuff an played a bit like Naval Thunder.

GQ3 does a very good job of including enough complexity to make an interesting game, but not so much that the whole thing bogs down in a morass of charts, tables and armour penetration caluclations.

It’s always a fine line with steam-age naval rules; without terrain you need a certain amount of complexity or the whole thing is just a dice rolling exercise.

[grizzlymc]

I have spent a few idle miinutes, maybe hours, wondering how to make Seastrike work for wwII.

[Steve Burt]

Seastrike is a terrific game, but the actual mechanics are pretty simplistic. What makes it interesting is the hidden objectives and the fact that you can build whatever force you want to try and meet your objective. Always fun when one side takes submarines and discovers the other has taken planes to bomb their HQ and has no surface vessels for the subs to hunt.

 

[RogerBW]

I rather like Fire on the Waters (link is to my blog review) – it’s a free system that doesn’t use damage points, rather every shell or torpedo hit is to a specific compartment and the effects it has are based on what’s in that compartment. It doesn’t cope with air (there’s an add-on, Fire in the Skies, which does, but it’s more about looking for enemy fleets than actually attacking them) but it’s a great deal of fun even so. Best for small battles, though.

RogerBW's Wargaming Blog

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