Posties Rejects WW1 Naval Game Report and Pictures.

The Rejects met up on Saturday for a WW1 Naval Game hosted by John and played in Posties shed (man cave), the rejects were Richard, Smithy, Ray, John, Postie, Lee and myself, the game was already prepared and we were using John's home made rules.

Myself, Richard and Smithy were playing the British fleet, I started off with 4 capital ships, the Tiger, Warspite, Inflexible, Indomitable and the destroyer Pettard.

Ray and his 4 german capital ships steam towards me.

A closer view of the lovely models used.

Ray http://onelover-ray.blogspot.com/ laughing like a hyena with Richard in the background.

Smithy and John (umpire), apologies to John for the pits picture but it was bloody hot in that shed.

Contractual and obligatory Postie shot hard at work doing paperwork which was a big factor in this game.

If your ship had 28 knots in speed that meant you could travel at 7" as 4 knots equalled 1" but you could increase your speed by 8 knots (2") per turn or decrase per 4 knots per turn (1"), this caused problems for everybody.

Capital ships could change their direction by 45 degrees by turn as long as it was written down but destroyers could change direction by 90 degrees.

At the end of your movement and everybody moved at the same time, you could then write down the target you wanted to fire at, capital ships had to wait a turn to switch to another target with their main arnament unlike destroyers who could target anything within range.

Things are getting close and interesting, the closer the better for capital ships but especially destroyers as they had little chance against capital ships except for their torpedoes.

The charts every player had to keep track of their speed, damage and targets. 

The water explosion markers were used to show what ships are been fired at, they are just the tops of cotton buds on a counter (brilliantly done and very visually effective).

You will notice in the top of the picture a little bit of ramming between destroyers which was another effective way of destroying ships and this time it worked but resulted in a lot of damage to the rammer but the object of the ramming was sunk.

Lee http://bigleesminipaintingblog.blogspot.com/ who was overall german commander surveys the battle from a safe distance, he and smithy spent the game exchanging fire at great distances until the end when they got into better range.

The oil slick markers bear testament to the damage being done at the other end of the table.

Another oil slick marker bears testament that destroyers should not try to ram capital ships because the outcome was a sunken destroyer and the capital ship only lost 4 knots of speed in damage.The destroyers were lethal when they got into torpedo range though.

A better view of one of the excellent water spray markers, the game ended after twelve turns with the british fleet victorious with 5 german ships sunk (3 to me, 2 to Richard) including the only capital ship sunk to only 2 british ships sunk, there were a lot more ships in trouble and would have difficulty reaching dry dock but I had never played these rules or period before and I thoroughly enjoyed the game and the day except for the bloody heat in that shed and my suggestion to Postie about an air conditioning unit was met with abject derision and scorn.