Back in the Pacific

Following the launch of "It's Getting a Bit Chile" I've been in correspondence with David Manley of Long Face Games. He specialises in "Naval Stuff", and has done a mostly Naval campaign for the War in the Pacific which uses his "Dahlgren and Columbiad" rules for resolving ship encounters ( a new version of this is due out, - it'll include rules for combining it with land actions using IGaBC.

We've played some of David's games before, so it was probably inevitable that we'd look at these as a group. I spent some time working up ship charts and so on and reading the rules. They look, on the face of it, ideal. They're fairly simple and suitable for small numbers of ships, which fits the Naval side of the Pacific War. If you had more than 6 ships a side it might become awkward to manage, so it's more of a skirmish game than a battle.

The turn consists of three phases of moving and firing for each side, the sequence of which is randomised by using playing cards. There are restrictions on how many times you can fire in each phase. Movement is standard tape measure and angles depending on ship type, so no turning circle required.

The combat system uses the core DBA mechanisms of opposed die rolls and then outcomes depending upon whether you double, treble or simply just beat the target's score. Mercifully the system dispenses with hull hit points, but uses a series of critical or less critical hit tables. On first read through I was attracted to this as an idea. There's also a neat mechanism to take into account armour and the penetrative ability of various artillery pieces.

Phil & I shared the Chileans, and Tim and Richard had the Peruvians. We all had an ironclad with a wooden steam sloop in attendance and came on from the four corners. I didn't feel the need to alter ranges despite using smaller ships than the author, as in any event you measure from the centre of the vessel so it makes little difference.

It's hard to follow the narrative. Above you can see Tim opening fire with the Huascar. He missed. This happened a LOT. Which is sort of accurate (in one early action in the war the Huascar fired 40 times and hit the target once, causing hardly any damage).

Phil was on my left, (off my Port bow, I suppose). As Richard steamed towards Tim to unite their forces, Phil tried to run down Richard's steam sloop, the Pilcomayo. Again, much firing but not a lot of effect.

Tim and I were circling round one another, trying to get a 2:1 advantage on either ship.

Fire is exchanged, but still no one is suffering. Phil took the first damage through a special event when he rolled a 1:6 when firing, and had smoke fill his pilot house. He was not amused.

I have got between Richard & Tim's ships (which might not have been the wisest thing to do), but we are still blazing away with little outcome. It is remarked that this might not be the most interesting game we have ever played. We have a short conversation on realism v fun in this type of game and reflect that in RFCM's "Hammerin' Iron" realism has gone out of the window, but they are fun.

Phil's ironclad, the Blanco Encalada, joins in the whirling action in the centre of the table.

Somewhere around now Richard's ironclad, the Independencia, gets hit, and the rule system has an escalation mechanism if you inflict a hull hit that means you roll on the next level of damage table until you fail to get a hull hit, or the vessel receives a wrecked result. Richard took a Light hit, which turned into a Severe level of damage in short order. We all sat up at this point. It's all a bit random, but this actually looks like early ironclad warfare. Interesting (this level of damage gives a modifier to the die rolls, which we overlooked, otherwise Richard might have been sunk early on).

There's a whole lot of firing going on, so much so that I ran out of black pipe cleaner bit.

Then it all starts happening. More special events cause my steam lines to fail (white steam marker). Then the Union catches fire...

.. followed rapidly by the O'Higgins. After a lot of moves of ineffectual firing suddenly everyone's ships are taking damage. The O'Higgins is hit again and becomes Wrecked. The Independencia has hardly any guns left and her armour has taken a beating. Richard decides to take her off the table before she is lost, and the game ends.

So, what did we think? Firstly I have to say I wasn't enamoured of the DBA based combat on my first read through, but it sort of won me over. I liked the way damage accumulated as real things, and it could escalate suddenly. As was pointed out, however, it isn't clear what you can really do to influence the outcome of the game other than do a lot of firing and hope for no 1:6 results. It helps to get as many ships as you can firing at a single target, but all the stuff that is relevant in Fighting Sail type games, like gaining the weather gauge and stern raking your opponents is irrelevant. And things that work in DBA aren't relevant here. There's no overlapping flanks for example.

That means it is difficult to work out what you are supposed to be doing to win the game. In fairness, that is probably true of the other Ironclad rules we've used for this period. However as it is easier to hit that's less of an issue. You are inflicting damage, so you aren't cudgelling your brains to work out how you can hit something when your shells keep bouncing off.

I keep coming back, however, to the fact that the outcome was really plausible. What David has got here is a mechanism that does what I was trying to work out how to do, using techniques I wouldn't have looked at. Are there things I'd change? Of course, I'm me and that's what I do. The Special Events and the Damage tables are based on experience in the ACW mostly. I would probably go and amend them to have something more like the actual incidents that happened in the Pacific War.

This leaves me in a sort of no man's land. David has done what I was looking to do, and I don't know if I want to re-invent the wheel. I think I need to try these again, probably with the West Country team and a proper scenario.

And what I would do is put them on squares. Yes. I would certainly do that. Perhaps that's where I start.