In my previous post And We’re Off! Nimitz On Table Action, At Last: Part One I summarised the action in game one set in the North Atlantic, and I also covered the forces being deployed for game 2, which was set in the pacific at night. You can see the detail of the 2 fleets in part one, but in summary the Imperial Japanese Navy had 1 (dreadnought era) Battleship and 3 Cruisers (2 heavy & 1 light) versus the United States Navy’s 1 (modern) Battleship and 2 heavy Cruisers (1 USN & 1 Australian). So in the Solomons, somewhere around Guadalcanal, at night, the IJN had the advantage as the forces approached each other…
Somewhere in the Solomons (continued…)
11 Feb 2024: Note that I have updated this post since first published to better reflect accurately the details of the game. Details of the torpedo attacks have been revised based on feedback from the other players, Richard and Andy, which I had initially misremembered…
The Japanese were approaching the U.S. fleet on a roughly parallel (but slightly closing) course and speed, both sides cruisers moving at high speed and within secondary battery range (but not close enough to see each other, yet). The Allied vessels were on the Japanese port side (Portland leading Canberra), the leading vessel marginally ahead. Outside them on either side were each fleet’s heavy battlewagon, the Washington running behind the 2 Allied cruisers a small way, while Ise was alongside to the rear but heading slightly to starboard (so angling away) from parallel to the Japanese cruisers (Haguro leading Atago with Yubari in the rear). The cruisers will doing maximum speed (so high speed from a ‘Nimitz’ perspective), while both Battleships were also doing their full speed, but that only rated as normal speed compared to the cruisers. The latter were almost in maximum range of each other (if they could see)…
Initial moves saw some aggressive manoeuvring by both sets of cruisers. The Allied cruisers veered to starboard and headed to cross the ‘T’ of the Japanese, while the latter continued on at full speed veering slightly more to port facilitating the Allied ‘T-crossing’. Both battleships continued on roughly parallel courses at full speed just out of long range of each other (but undetected as yet). The leading Japanese cruiser (Haguro) was now visible to both Allied cruisers and vice-versa – the Japanese had the advantage but opted not to fire maintaining the cloak of darkness as much as possible – Portland opened up with her secondaries, then her & Canberra with their primaries and did some good initial damage on Haguro.
The Allied cruisers continued their aggressive manoeuvring to across the Japanese path even further to starboard as they began to turn to come about, however the Japanese cruisers speed on closing on, and turning to run parallel to, the Washington who had maintained her current course…. Ise also veered her course to port to start closing on the Washington (now visible to the IJN cruisers) and to cut inside the Allied cruisers.
Pretty much every ship now opened up – the Japanese cruisers let loose with everything they had at the Washington (primary & secondary), the Washington pounded the Haguro, the Ise replied at the Washington, and the Portland and Canberra split their fire between Haguro and Ise. Haguro took more notable damage, Ise lost a starboard casemate gun, Washington took a hull box from a lucky non-penetrating cruiser hit while missing Haguro with it’s primaries (but her secondaries still did damage). The sky was lit up with flash markers! But more importantly, all 3 Japanese cruisers let loose at Washington with every torpedo they had on their port side!
20 Torpedoes were speeding their way to the Washington at close range, 3 spreads of 8 torpedoes each from Haguro & Atago, and 4 from the Yubari – I was confident of a surprise early Japanese success! Atago was successful, hitting with some of her 8 (I scored maximum penetration for the torpedo spread, but it’s not quite enough to outright sink a Battleship – if Washington was a cruiser it would have broken her keel and sunk her outright). Most likely 2-3 (or more) of the 8 torpedoes had hit her. The remaining 12 Japanese torpedoes all missed… so a bit of an anti-climax as I was confident of being successful with 2 of the 3 spreads – I think the Washington probably used up a couple of it’s 9 lives though!
Atago’s maximum effect hit against Washington meant the latter lost way, it reduced her to ⅔ of her maximum speed, which now made her a slow target for the Japanese (i.e. easier to hit). The manoeuvring continued with everyone maintaining max speed except Atago & Yubari who broke off from Haguro to turn to port (the latter was now well on it’s way to being a floating hulk – but not quite yet, but had also done it’s job on point during the early part of the action, of drawing fire away from Atago, the best cruiser in my Japanese squadron). The Allied cruisers continued to come about to retrace their steps, while Washington surged on amongst the Japanese cruisers…
Another volley of firing saw more damage everywhere – about this time Portland took a broadside from Ise which did significant damage, and Canberra lost a torpedo launcher to Haguro, who herself was on her last legs and reduced to her last hull boxes (so also dropping to slow speed like the Washington) and also lost one of her two remaining torpedo launchers as well. The Japanese then launched all their remaining torpedoes (Atago a spread of 8 versus Washington, Haguro 4 vs. Canberra) and although Atago missed (as the slower speed of Washington was offset by the difficult target aspect due to Atago shooting from Washington’s stern quadrant – see below), Haguro hit. Again the Japanese had a decisive penetration (so likely multiple torpedoes actually hit) and Canberra took buoyancy damage and was reduced to ¾ of her maximum speed (but luckily not enough to make her a more vulnerable slow target).
Around this time Canberra also fired off her (surviving) torpedoes (4) at Ise, and did score a hit.. But it was ineffectual and did no buoyancy damage due to not penetrating, simply inflicting 1 hull box of superficial damage. Atago and Yubari then turned away from Washington to temporarily retire, as Haguro got pounded into a hulk by the latter’s secondary armament, and began to slip under the pacific waters… Ise closed in on the port-stern-quarter of Washington (working to come along side for a broadside duel), as Portland and Canberra, now both with some not-insignificant damage, continued to come about and close on Ise from starboard… All the Japanese fleet focussed their fire on Washington, unless they didn’t have a reasonable firing solution, and the latter was swamped with volley after volley of non-penetrating hits from the Japanese Cruisers and eventually Ise’s secondary casemates… Washington steadily took hull box hits, one at a time, from this fire over the course of several turns – losing 5 in total from it eventually.1
As Ise closed in on Washington; despite the protestations of impartial tactical observer, historical advisor, rules assessor and advice giver Andy who was adamant she was sailing to her doom! Washington focussed her vengeance on her and pounded her relentlessly, taking out several hull boxes along with both her ‘A” and ‘Y’ Turrets (eventually reducing her from 12 guns to 8). But Ise got in her sting too, her casemate secondaries took out the Washington’s rangefinder, and she landed two good primary battery broadsides… suddenly Washington stopped, shuddered, and began to slide beneath the waters, all nine big guns still blazing… By this time Yubari had also gone under, Portland and Canberra were on their last legs, and even Ise was down to but 1 hull box! Atago however was only moderately damaged, still had over half her hull boxes (7) and minimal superficial damage (so intact primary battery of 10 guns, 3 of her 4 secondaries, and a fully operational director).
As Ise endeavoured to limp away a departing salvo from her broke the Canberra, and Atago closed in to cover her finishing off the Portland in the process… All three Allied ships had succumbed rather suddenly, and despite dire predictions Ise had both survived Washington’s deadly gunfire and managed to finish the latter off with her own gunnery. All this was all at night, but the vessels were largely so close to each other, and there was so much continual gunfire from all (flash markers) that it might as well have been day – only in the first couple of turns and briefly at the very end, did night protect some of the vessels from being targeted.
- You can understand why Sam lists in the advanced rules the option to eliminate these ‘lucky non-penetrating hits’ from the critical damage table. But more on that in conclusion/closing thoughts. ↩︎
Conclusion & Initial Thoughts
After thinking about it for a day or so I’m pretty happy about Nimitz, it didn’t disappoint and I think it plays well and looks good. I really like the way Sam has structured some of the rules (such as your number of guns firing aids getting a hit, but you don’t resolve them individually; and when you hit the variability of the penetration determines if you do a lot of hull damage, a little or none, the cause of which is left open that it could be from multiple shell hits in a large volley, or from just 1-2 really critical hits in a small one). It’s got me enthusiastic about WW2 Naval again, and being able to play it realistically in a ‘larger’ scale (1/2400).
I’ve played a lot of General Quarters, both GQ2 back in the day and a little GQ3 when it came out 10-15 years ago. They are good rules but that style of ruleset just doesn’t excite me anymore. GQ3 is a really good set of rules, but it’s just, frankly, tiresome to play. Victory At Sea (VAS) I’ve always found looks superficially good on table but is very much a gamey game and doesn’t feel very historical when you play it; while Naval Thunder (NT), which I haven’t played but purchased copies of a few years ago, is aimed at fast play. But it is largely a conventional rule set like GQ slimmed down and simplified (although does share a couple of general play concepts with Nimitz) – so for me it was the best option at time of purchase but doesn’t really ‘reimagine’ WW2 naval gaming in a way that makes it fast, furious and fun – like Nimitz does now its here. I’ve also looked at Fire At Sea (FAS) but haven’t felt compelled to take it further. So for me Nimitz looks the goods for the foreseeable future, but perhaps I am biased since I am a big fan of Maurice, Longstreet and Lasalle (and helped playtest Blucher).
Lastly Richard and Andy who played these games with me might think otherwise and have differing views – like me they have a strong history with GQ and have played GQ3 recently – so this is by no means the view of all 3 of us. But hopefully we will get a few more games under the belt soon, to have a more conclusive opinion!
Quick Thoughts on Critical Minimum Damage
Just in closing I wanted to expand on my footnote above on the Critical Damage result of Minimum Damage (1*) – which provides for non-penetrating hits to have a chance of doing a hull box of damage. While you can see the reason, as it helps provide a fast, furious, bloody game, and means cruisers have some chance of whittling down a battleship if there enough of them, it also can (perhaps) get a little unrealistic. In our pacific game above the USS Washington lost half (i.e. 5 of it’s 10 hull boxes) to these types of critical ‘non penetrating’ minimum damage hits – so likely, if this was not present, Washington would have won the day above. You can therefore see why Sam has the advanced rule option to dispense with these and a critical roll of ‘7’ becomes simply ‘no effect’. This is likely a rule I’ll adopt fairly quickly, but it does rely on some forethought with scenarios – so you don’t end up with an unsinkable opponent for one side! Maybe its a rule you turn on or off each game depending on the scenario?
My closing thoughts on that is that it might not be too onerous to retain the existing critical result of minimum damage but constrain it a bit – for example to a maximum of 1 hull box destroyed per vessel per game from this result. You’d still need to avoid the unsinkable opponent issue for scenarios though. But if so this could be done by either:
- When the result occurs against a vessel you mark off the box with an asterix (*) which then serves as a future reminder you have had that result so (like a director or flak hit) further hits of that type have no effect (i.e. you can’t have 2 or more * boxes), or
- When it occurs you always mark off the last (i.e. bottom) blue box on your hull strip regardless of other damage, and can only ever mark of that last/bottom blue box with this critical minimum damage result. So once that box is gone by any means (even a normal hit) this result can never have any further effect. It also means you can’t apply it against the pink/red (crippled) boxes, so a crippled ship could also never be sunk by this result if down to it’s last box (even if it hasn’t had this hit result previously in the game).
- [EDIT] A third even simpler idea is taken from the above and you simply say the 1* result can never be applied to a pink/red hull box. So this critical hit result can never inflict further damage to an already crippled vessel (i.e. it can reduce it to crippled but it can never then sink it).
Just some initial thoughts on that specific rule and alternatives to the advanced rule of completely removing it – always welcome feedback on these, my posts and our game report(s) and people’s other related thoughts on Nimitz? Overall a great game in my opinion on first impression (both the rules design and our actual games).
Read more on our Nimitz gaming and fleet builds here: Nimitz 1/1800 Eye Candy.