Nimitz and the River Plate

[Mike Headden]

I decided to give Nimitz a whirl solo but the only painted things I could find that went together were the Graf Spee and the three cruisers from the River Plate battle. So a game inspired by, but not based on, the Battle of the River Plate was thrown together.

Data Cards for the four ships were created using the pdf versions available from Sam Mustafa’s site suitably chopped up and slotted in to an Open Office text file.

Ships are placed on the table so that the large guns of Exeter and Graf Spee are in range but the smaller guns of Ajax and Achilles and the secondary batteries of Graf Spee are not.

Play sequence is an admin phase, then move phase then fire phase. Move is by alternating Task Forces (groups of one or more ships in base contact). All groups moving slowly move first starting with a TF from the side moving first. Once all those moving slowly have gone those moving at normal speed move then those moving fast. Firing phase is again by alternatin TFs with secondary fire done first, then main batteries, then torpedoes. All damage is inflicted when rolled so those firing second may have lost weapons or speed as a result before they get to fire back.

The “sea” will be pulled taut before the game begins!

Each side rolls a D6 for initiative and the British win. They opt to have Graf Spee move and shoot first hoping this will let them close the range.

Graf Spee moves 9″ (normal speed) and angles away from the approaching British.

The British race forward 12″ (fast speed) which will make them harder to hit with Graf Spee’s big guns but also making it harder to hit with theirs. They wind up behind the Graf Spee and out of the range and/ or the arc of fire of the Graf Spee’s secondary batteries. The British have no secondary batteries so we move to main gun firing.

Thanks to the high speed of the British, Graf Spee just misses the Exeter with her aft main battery.

Exeter’s return fire is on target (needed a 6, rolled a 6) but doesn’t penetrate the Graf Spee’s armour but the critical hit roll inflicts a point of structure damage in the event of a non-penetrating hit. So, first blood to the Royal Navy.

There are no targets in any of the ship’s torpedo target arcs so on to next round.

British win the initiative roll and again opt to have Graf Spee move and fire first.

Graf Spee hits Exeter with her secondary battery doing two points of damage and knocking out one of her fore turrets. However Graf Spee’s rear turret misses completely.

Exeter’s return for from her two remaining turrets inflicts three more points of structure damage to Graf Spee and knocks out one of her port secondary guns. Ajax hits but fails to penetrate but eliminates another port side secondary gun while Achilles scores another non-penetrating hit that causes a point of structure damage if non-penetrating.

Brits win the third initiative round and Graf Spee turns to bring her undamaged secondary battery to bear

However, the Brits manoeuvre to keep themselves out of the arc of fire of the secondaries.

Graf Spee’s main battery inflicts a further structure point of damage to Exeter and knocks out her other fore battery.

Exeter’s rear turret has Graf Spee in her arc of fire and does a further two points of structure damage and destroys Graf Spee’s starboard torpedo launcher.

Ajax and Achilles hit but do no structural damage but eliminate two starboard secondary guns.

Exeter score a lucky hit (needed a 6 got a 6) to hit with her port torpedoes doing 3 points of structure damage to Graf Spee.

Graf Spee wins the initiative but opts to go first again.

Her secondary fire does no damage to Exeter but her main battery knocks out Exeter’s last gun turret.

Ajax and Achilles manage a point of damage each to Graf Spee’s structure eliminating the last blue structure boxes on her data card and as a result she is crippled. She is reduced to slow speed and will find it harder to hit. Fortunately for her the reduction in her AA capacity is not an issue. She also loses her rear main turret to a critical hit.

Last turn and the British once again win initiative, opting to go first.

 

Since slow ships move first and Graf Spee can only move at slow speed she moves straight ahead. Ajax and Achilles close on her rear while the now toothless Exeter powers off at high speed away from the action.

Graf Spee has no guns that can bear.

Ajax fires and the hit inflicted removes Graf Spee’s last structure point. She is a shattered burning hulk. The Brits move in to rescue survivors.

A fast, fun little game in which the German inability to shake off the British cruisers and open the range saw her slowly pecked to death.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Deleted User]

Will you be replaying this again? The initiaves through half the game pretty much gave RN all the initiative. I’m curious if a second play mgiht give a more even result.

[Tony S]

Very nice report.  The mat and ships look very good.  What scale and manufacturer are they?

I’m going to be trying Nimitz tomorrow actually, and have high hopes for it.  We’re going to try the intro “Operation Freya” scenario, and perhaps even a little WW1 action, which it isn’t designed for, but given the focus of effect versus rivet counting of the ruleset, should work well in an earlier era.

Glad you hear that you enjoyed the rules.  They seem very clean and fast.

[Not Connard Sage]

Nice AAR

You spelled taut correctly too. Swoon. 😀

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

[Mike Headden]

Thanks for the comments, folks.

I believe the ships are from Navwar, they are 1/3000 scale. I bought a batch of WW2 and WW1 stuff second hand with most of the WW2 stuff painted but the WW1 stuff was unpainted … and still is!

I have left the table set up and plan to run a second game tomorrow.

I have a pile of unpainted WW2 stuff I bought from Navwar a while back and plan to paint the Operation Freya ships. So far I only have the Nurnburg, one of the painted items from my second hand buy.

As for “taut” …. I can spell but can’t always type 🙂

 

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Not Connard Sage]

• I have a couple of dozen Navwar ships that I bought back in the 80s for use with some unfathomably complicated rules with pages of charts and tables.     They’re currently in drydock waiting a new paint job and rebasing for Nimitz. 🙂

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

[Mike Headden]

Replayed the scenario this morning.

Graf Spee sunk, Exeter sunk, Achilles crippled, Ajax with only a single point of structural damage so basically unscathed.

Graf Spee went down with only her front turret still in action. Rear turret, secondaries and torpedo tubes all knocked out.

Exeter hammered Graf Spee’s structure but kept “knocking out” by now non-existant torpedo launchers! In return Graf Spee whittled away Exeter’s structure just as fast and Exeter has less of it.

Ajax and Achilles were finding it hard to land a penetrating blow but picked away relentlessly at the weaponry.

Exeter and Achilles lost a main turret each but Graf Spee kept doing penetrating hits and then rolling the “do a point of structure if you failed to penetrate” as a critical hit.

A longer and more even game second time around.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Tony S]

We just tried Nimitz this morning too.  We used the intro “Operation Freya”, a hypothetical encounter during the Norway invasion.  Repulse, Hood and three destroyers versus the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and the light cruiser Nurnberg.

Our first game, I launched torpedos as soon as I could, for no effect except to slow the Nurnberg.  Then later I made the brilliant move of rolling a magazine hit on the Scharnhorst, so it blowed up good.  That seemed the way to go, so I did the same to the Gneisenau a couple of turns later.  (I rolled 12 on 2d6 twice).  My opponent, a most sporting individual, took it well.

We played it again, same sides.  It was much more even this time, but ultimately I ended up winning again, but by a single point.

I’m not take an experienced naval gamer, but it seemed a bit less attritional than the other naval games I’ve played.  When shooting, for example, your entire broadside hits entirely, or misses entirely.  On a single die. The old “anything but a one” was well in evidence for us.

The author also makes some very broad strokes, which caused some raised eyebrows from some onlookers.  All large guns have the same range.   Most ships move the same speed.  In our scenario all our vessels were capable of the same speed for example.  All ships turn the same, Yamato or Fletcher – all turn 90°.  Every hit, even from destroyers peppering a battleship, get a automatic roll on the critical table.  Admittedly, it’s not as “critical” as the name implies.  In a lot of cases, nothing happened.  Mind you, when you roll 12, and you penetrate the armour, very dramatic things occur.

Very fast, very clean.  We managed two games in three hours, despite have never played the rules.  Although I enjoyed it, I think much like Blucher was for me, it’ll really come into its own when the battles are integrated into the campaign system.  Gives the fight that extra depth.

[kyoteblue]

Nicely done. Thanks for the AAR.

[AdmiralHawke]

Excellent. Thank you for posting this and sharing your impressions of the rules.

It is always interesting to read about (or see) how rules play out. I know Sam Mustafa has a good reputation among wargamers, but I have never played one of his games so I don’t have a good sense of his design philosophy.

The River Plate is a good scenario for a test game: just a few ships and the result can go either way. These seem like a fairly simple, fast-play set of rules with a lot of detailed abstracted.

I’m fairly sure those are indeed Navwar ships as I have the same ships from Davco (ex-Skytrex) in 1/3000 and they are slightly different. I even had to make the same substitution of a County-class cruiser for Exeter when I played it as I didn’t have an Exeter at the time.

Tony — for what it’s worth, it turns out that the Fletcher-class destroyers *did* have a turning circle larger than a battleship: the Fletcher-class destroyers (fitted with a single rudder) had a tactical diameter of 950 yards at 30 knots; the Iowa-class battleships, fitted with twin rudders, had a tactical diameter of 814 yards at 30 knots. But being only able to turn 90 degrees seems odd.

[Tony S]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Although as I mentioned, I’m not terribly knowledgeable about naval matters, I actually did know that turning radii are not necessarily related to the size of the ship, despite so many wargaming rules insisting on larger ships having larger circles.</p>
But fascinating to learn about exactly how nimble the mighty Iowas were!  Thanks!

Mr Mustafa admits his turning rules are a bit Hollywood, done merely for looks.  Given the time scale, ships could spin rather freely, but it would just look bizarre on the table.  So he restricts the turning abilities.  (Ships can make a single 90° turn at any point during their move).   It is very simple and clean, which dovetails with his design ethos.

On the other hand, he allows ships to decelerate and accelerate much more than they should be able to, but again this is done for gaming reasons, just to keep things simple and eliminate having to track and calculate speeds.

[Mike Headden]

The author’s notes from Sam Mustafa admit that the turning thing is a fudge for playability. Given the ground and time scales most ships could dance the tango in the given space and time. It’s another example of “getting the right result for the wrong reasons” which, let’s face it, is better than the reverse!

I like Nimitz because although it plays fast and loose with reality it gives a game I can believe in. I’ve now played two games of my River Plate scenario and one of Operation Freya, the intro scenario from Sam Mustafa’s website, and the games felt right.

I play a lot of World of Warships and when I first heard of Nimitz it sounded a lot like WoW which is what I wanted from a new set of WW2 naval rules. something that let you concentrate on manoeuvre, firing and the options the initiative roll gives you. I’m happy to abstract out all the weight and type of shot versus composition, angle and thickness of armour type calculations and let the game engine deal with that. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but I like it and look forward to trying the Halsey campaign rules too.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Steve Burt]

Nice report. I see you made the same mistake we did with the rules. Firing is by alternating ships/formations, but movement is not. First side moves all slow ships, then second side, and so on.

The tactical rules are simplified, but they give a good game with plausible results. The real attraction of these rules is the Halsey campaign system, which has rules for carriers, air strikes, search, submarines and convoys. If you want more crunchy surface encounters, you can always use another set for more detail (like the excellent GQ3), but as usual Sam has done a good job of getting the essentials right and ignoring too much detail

[Deleted User]

Thanks for replaying the battle. The second time round sounds much more even. Along with Tony S’s game it sounds llike results could swing pretty wildly based on dice results? I see possiblities for humorously narrative games.

[willz]

An excellent AAR, just like reading “Battle of the river Plate” the movie.

[Mike6t3]

Great write up and the rules sound both playable and fun.

One question I have is that of table size. I’ve read they are for 6ft x 4ft tables, would they work on 5ft x 4ft as this is the maximum I have available ?

I’d probably be using 1:3000 models but could go to 1:6000.

Get there fastest with the mostest and roll highest.

Mike

[Mike Headden]

Thanks for the nice responses.

Steve Burt wrote:

Nice report. I see you made the same mistake we did with the rules. Firing is by alternating ships/formations, but movement is not. First side moves all slow ships, then second side, and so on.

Good catch! Thank you.

Wouldn’t have made much difference to the three games played so far but nice to do things right.

Mike6t3 wrote:

One question I have is that of table size. I’ve read they are for 6ft x 4ft tables, would they work on 5ft x 4ft as this is the maximum I have available ?

Don’t see why it wouldn’t work. The idea is that if ships reach “the edge of the world” you move everything the same distance in the same direction until everything has room to move. That is unless the ship(s)  is/are eligible to leave the table and escape. My stuff is 1/3000 and they kept within a 4′ x 4′ area I reckon. Different scenarios would be different.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Mike6t3]

Thanks for the reply Mike.

I’m tempted by the sound of these and always wanted a playable set of Naval rules.

Get there fastest with the mostest and roll highest.

Mike

[Darkest Star Games]

Say, how well do you think these rules would work for Imagine-nations or say, “generic naval forces”?

"I saw this in a cartoon once, but I'm pretty sure I can do it..."

[Not Connard Sage]

Darkest Star Games wrote:

Say, how well do you think these rules would work for Imagine-nations or say, “generic naval forces”?

 

Don’t see why it should be a problem.

 

 

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

[Mike Headden]

You are encouraged in the rules to amend ship cards if your vision doesn’t match Sam’s so I’d say you have explicit permission to create if not imagine-nations then certainly imagine-navies 🙂

If you have basic graphics skills and software such as GIMP creating data cards shouldn’t be too taxing.

If you don’t have those, there’s always pencil, paper and coloured pens and pencils.

I say go for it.

There are 100 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who can work from incomplete data

[Not Connard Sage]

I printed some gunfire and shell splash markers for Nimitz, just because.

This is a quick and nasty paint job to see how they look in action.

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

[Guy Farrish]

I wondered how the 3D printing was going.

Pretty well I’d say – b****y show off!

Good stuff – nice ship as well.

[Not Connard Sage]

Thanks.

Bismarck, 1/3000 from Navwar mid 1980s 🙂

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

[Author]

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