Friday, 17 May 2024

Recent Nimitz Game - US Navy v IJN

It was nice to get a few of my recently painted WWII ships out for a game of Nimitz. I took the US Navy and Dale the Imperial Japanese Navy, with an allowance of 250 points each. We have played three previous games at 200 points per side and I wanted to see what difference the additional 50 points would make:

I deployed with a destroyer screen, a line of cruisers and four battleships:



Whereas Dale organised his fleet into three battlegroups, with a battleship, cruisers and destroyers in each line:

The side who gains the initiative gets much more scope in terms of where and the direction in which they can deploy on the table. I lost the initiative role and so deployed first. The first two moves were spent closing in to gun and torpedo range:






Large guns have a range of 24", small guns 16", while most torpedoes including those carried by the USN have a range of 12". The Japanese long lance torpedoes however have a long range of 24" and hit on the roll of a 6 on a D6, and they carry a lot of them. 

Torpedo attacks are resolved after all shooting has been done, so I blazed away with as much as I could enjoying the better USN odds due to superior radar and fire directors, and managed to inflict a fair bit of damage on the Yamato leading the closest battlegroup. I then held my breath as Dale fired his first dozen torpedo salvos, the Missouri suffering two nasty hits but managing to remain afloat.

Shooting is by formation on an IGOUGO basis, with the side winning the initiative for that turn choosing a formation to fire first. This is therefore an incentive to keep as many ships in formation or base-to-base contact as possible.

Turn 3 saw me finish of the Yamato which which exploded in a fireball, although it had already suffered significant damage, while the Japanese accounted for the Missouri and a couple of cruisers. Some of my destroyers managed to cross the Japanese line for a close-range torpedo run:


Turn four saw the demise of the Yamato's sister ship Musashi, while the Japanese sank the South Carolina which can be seen peeling off from the line, having lost buoyancy and been reduced to a quarter of its speed:


That left me with two battleships, the Massachusetts and North Carolina, with a gun turret missing on each, versus Dale's older Ise battleship. He however still had an advantage in the number of cruisers left and also outnumbered me in destroyers:



We both basically surprised each other at this point and simultaneously conceded that the other had most likely won, so decided to call it a draw.

This was a lot more of a slug-fest than the previous three games and I'm not sure whether the additional 50 points was the cause, but the other games felt a lot more tactical. In Nimitz you can retain half points value for any damaged ship which exits via its deployment zone, but the temptation is to keep them in the fray and pound away. In the absence of a campaign's in-built incentives to preserve forces I'm thinking that if two-thirds or three quarter points were retained for exiting ships then there might be more of an incentive to disengage earlier. 

I'm keen to include aircraft for our next game as this will add a whole new dimension, but we are about to delve into General d'Armee 2 which looks like it could be a decent set of rules for a few Napoleonic games.

14 comments:

  1. Great to see you get the opportunity to use a small portion of your huge WWII naval collection Lawrence - sounds like the Japanese blinked first - they possibly could have won that game?!

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    1. I think the draw was probably a fair result. There weren't any torpedoes left on either side, and the USN had two battleships to the IJN's one. However the Japanese still had more cruisers which, while they weren't capable of penetrating the battleship's armour even at point blank range, would have cleared up the one remaining USN cruiser and the handful of surviving destroyers. Given the heavy losses on both sides to that point a draw seemed the most likely outcome.

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  2. Lawrence, it is a treat to see your fleets out on the table for action. Being unfamiliar with Nimitz, did the decision to deploy your fleets with different composition (differences between Japanese and American ship deployments) have a tactical difference between the way in which the two forces fought?

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    1. I think the main difference was the furthest Japanese battlegroup had to close to get in range, whereas I could bring the firepower of all four USN battleships to bear on the lead IJN grouping before their furthest battlegroup was in gun range, which gave them a one-turn advantage to inflict damage. The IJN advantage in torpedo range did however mean that they could let loose a dozen salvos before my destroyers could get within range, which gave them an edge there.

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  3. Really cool to see the ships in action. I love the battle lines and can picture the broadsides in my mind.😀
    I’m curious to see how carriers work as well.

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    1. The carriers are usually meant to be off table in Nimitz, unless they are escort carriers, but I have painted so many of them I'll be putting them at least on the table edge.

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  4. Enjoyed your report Lawrence. Lovely to see even a portion of your fleets in action.

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    1. Thanks Richard, I'm enjoying being able to give these some game time. I'm keen to get the Italians out against the British in the next run.

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  5. That looks spectacular Lawrence! Interesting the way the lines intertwine. Nice table cover. Many years ago AirNZ had an advertising graphic looking down on the ocean from altitude all printed on foam board. I always thought that it would make an excellent naval games board. I have been trying to find one, of at least the original digits, artwork, but to non avail. Even thought of getting my helicopter brother-in-law to take some pictures next time he is flying over water!

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  6. I have two table covers, but mine are quite a bit darker and have more of a mid-Atlantic look to them. This one is Dale's which has more of a shallow water look to it, but it made the ships easier to see with the contrast to the darker blue bases. I think an aerial shot would be a great idea for a mat, as long as Rangitoto doesn't end up in the middle of it.

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  7. Nice quick game. I have both Nimitz and Find, Fix, and Strike by David Manley. I'm leaning towards the latter at the moment, making aircraft flight counters.

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    1. I'll have to have a look at Dave Manley's set Vol. Sounds interesting.

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  8. Amazing battle lines Lawrence. I assume that the scale is incredibly reduced to have the ships in such close proximity? There even seemed to be a bit of crossing the T, or at least bisecting it, à la Napoleonic naval?!
    Regards, James

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    1. The scale is very much reduced James. I think the crossing the T may have been a hangover from our recent Napoleonic naval games, although in this case we only did it with destroyers in an attempt to bring to bear torpedoes which hadn't already been fired.

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