Battle For Hong Kong

For the third week in a row Daniel and I played Memoir '44 on our Thursday evening club-night.

Last week we did some non-WW2 actions. This week we did two linked WW2 battles, set around the Japanese attack on Hong Kong. They introduced a few new things to Daniel, (and one new thing for me): special national characteristics for the British and the Japanese, bunkers, wire, night-fighting and the beach-landing board. 

The first scenario we played was The Gin-Drinker's line, which sees a Japanese attack on the British defensive positions outside Hong Kong. 

The British position looks strong, with wire and trenches, and even a bunker in the centre, but it's night so weapon ranges are severely limited and the Japanese infantry can move quickly and still attack.

I played the Japanese in the first game. There's some interesting objectives in this one - the bunker and a hill beyond it. They count for whichever side has possession, so the British start with two medals. It does tend to put the onus on the Japanese to focus their assault on them as well. And, fortunately, I was blessed with a hand of cards that enabled me to assault aggressively in the centre, and then keep assaulting. 

Before it got light enough for the British artillery to be really dangerous I'd grabbed both objectives. Then it was just a matter of mopping up a few units to win the battle. 

Naturally we swapped sides. Daniel's attack wasn't as all-out as mine and the bunker in the centre changed hands a couple of times. Daniel managed a bold attack on my left that broke through the lines and reached the outskirts of Kowloon, but it wasn't enough. I held both objectives and, with the casualties inflicted on the attackers mounting I picked up a win for the British. 

The key bunker, still in British hands at the end (but not the original defenders). 

We then set up the second game, which covers the Japanese landings in Hong Kong itself, and the subsequent fighting. The Japanese have numbers on their side, but the British can whittle them down as they come ashore. I took the Japanese in the first game and started with a strong attack on my left that, sadly, quickly petered out and was broken up. 

There's armour in this scenario - the British have one unit and the Japanese three. So we had a 'tank' battle in the centre. By this stage I was ashore in the centre and had defeated the British defences there. After some hard-fighting teh Japanese won 6-4.

Time to swap sides. Daniel ponders how to get everything ashore whilst I planned my defence. 

This was an epic game. Daniel got units ashore across the board. I spent a couple of turns hitting each infantry unit just to remove one figure and stop them getting their horrible close-combat bonus for being a full-strength unit. The British armour attacked right down onto the 'beach', the Japanese air-force put in an early appearance, the 'stiff-upper lip' rule claimed a few Japanese figures, and we even had another tank battle. 

Both sides were on five medals, and the next casualty would decide the battle. I found a quick easy kill on my turn, got it and scraped a narrow win for the British. But it was a great fight. 

Thanks to Daniel for four great games. And we played them through in just over two hours. 

Dancing In The Dark

One of my views of simple scenario design is that you simply chuck plenty of troops into the mix, randomise some entry times and entry points and let the situation develop from that. Sometimes it doesn't work, but most of the time it produces entertaining results.

Anyway, that's what I did last night for a club game of Torpedoes & Tides. I played Torpedoes & Tides because (i) Daniel asked for a game (ii) Naval games were the theme for the week and (iii) Yesterday was, by a staggering coincidence, International Naval Wargames Day.

I set up the Grey Christmas scenario from the book. This sees two British steam gunboats (HMS Grey Owl and HMS Grey Wolf) opposed by a air of S-boats. One vessel from each side is elite (the British one is commanded by Peter Scott) and there's a patch of mist to keep things interesting.

But I added more. For a start I added another patch of mist. Then I gave each side reinforcements. The Germans got a minesweeper and a large flak boat with an 88mm gun. The British also got a minesweeper (one of my Halcyon-class models making its debut) and a Round Table class armed trawler. 

If you look at the stats in the rules you'll see that just about everything in the game has 'big' guns. Only the S-boats are relying on smaller weapons. But they are the fastest things on teh table, and not only have torpedoes but have torpedo reloads. And they can't be torpedoed by the British gunboats. 

The gunboats and S-boats start in the centre of opposite edges. From Turn 2 onwards each side rolled a D6 at the start of their turn. On a 5-6 one of their reinforcements would show up. It could appear on their starting edge, or the left edge or the right edge - equal chance of each. I then randomised where on the edge it appeared. 

And that's it. Simple but, hopefully, chaotic. 

Oh, and there's no moon, so visibility is limited. 

I played the British and Daniel took the Germans. 

Here's the position a couple of turns in. One British gunboat has been spotted, whist ahead of it the second (the elite one) is hiding in the mist. The other three markers are the S-boats and the flak boat (the 'Thor')

The elite steam gunboat tore out of the mist, revealing an S-boat that promptly opened fore on it, causing damage and a fire. The British replied to no effect, and then sped into the other patch of mist. 

By now the Germans had both of their reinforcing vessels on and closing in on the fight. Both S-boats and gunboats were revealed. Commander Scott extinguished the fire on HMS Grey Owl, but decided the damage was too great and headed for home. 

The S-boats and the other British gunboat (HMS Grey Wolf) hid in the mist. And that's where they collided. HMS Grey Wolf was undamaged but the elite S-boat took a hit. 

Owing to my inability to roll a 5 or 6 I was now a few turns into the game with no reinforcements. Since Grey Owl had buggered off, this left Grey Wolf facing four German vessels alone. HMS Grey Wolf is marked with a red dice. 

The German minesweeper chased after HMS Grey Wolf, which wisely dodged and hid as much as possible, looking for a chance to torpedo one of the larger ships. 

As the German minesweeper turned past the mist the first British reinforcement arrived - the minesweeper HMS Parthenope. It lasted one turn. It spotted the German vessel who, in turn, shot at it and set it on fire. On the next turn the Parthenope's crew decided to head home. 

It did manage a wild parting shot that damaged the German minesweeper, though. 

HMS Grey Wolf managed to shoot up the flak boat Thor, knocking out some guns. 

But now the sneaky elite S-boat captain saw his chance and launched torpedoes at the Grey Wolf. They missed. The S-boat disappeared into the darkness to reload. 

The other British reinforcement finally turned up - HMT Sir Mordred. It immediately engaged the Thor, damaging it. 

The second S-boat fired torpedoes, but it was a bow shot and teh plodding trawler easily evaded them. 

The trawler took a shot at the S-boat, but couldn't hit the fast-moving German vessel. 

A big aerial view of the action. Some ships have returned to blinds because they were out of sight of enemy ships. Top right you can see HMS Parthenope heading home. 

The Thor fired starshells (the yellow counter) to try and help the the S-boat's gunnery, and the trawler was damaged. 

HMT Sir Mordred kept up the fight, damaging the Thor again. 

Meanwhile on the other side of the board a long-range (at least as far as the darkness allowed) shot from the German minesweeper hit the Grey Wolf and - you've guessed it - set it on fire. Fortunately the British crew extinguished it fairly rapidly. 

Thor and Sir Mordred continued their fight. 

HMS Grey Wolf came up on the Thor and fired torpedoes. Naturally they missed. 

Grey Wolf shot up the Thor some more, knocking out its guns, and the German flak boat broke off the action. 

Meanwhile the German minesweeper had had a strange time of it. It had to roll on the All At Sea table three times in three turns and each time got a turn to either port or to starboard, so had weaved a strange random course across the board. The Sir Mordred came up and put a shot into its bridge, battering it. The minesweeper returned the favour, damaging the trawler's engines. 

The trawler was no battered and it too was steering wildly. It veered across the course of the S-boat, there was a collision and the trawler was sunk. The S-boat escaped without damage. 

And that was it. A final shot from HMS Grey Wolf failed to finish of the Thor and we called the game.

The Germans had a crippled minesweeper, a badly damaged flak boat and a lightly damaged S-boat (the elite one that had, after firing off all its torpedoes and missed with every one, simply given up and gone home). The second S-boat was undamaged and even had a torpedo left. 

The British had had Grey Owl lightly damaged, Grey Wolf damaged, HMS Parthenope damaged and HMT Sir Mordred sunk. We decided that it was nominally a draw but that the sunk British vessel gave the Germans a marginal edge. 

All in all it was a splendid and chaotic game, and a perfect way to celebrate International Naval Wargames Day for 2026. 

The Adventures Of Harvey Knight - 11

Harvey Knight's las mission had been aborted when his flotilla had run into a German destroyer, and encounter that had left his boats seriously mauled even if they eventually sunk the enemy vessel. This it was that in terms of operational ships he could now only count on one MTB (Edward Stewart's MTB 414) and the two MGBs (Lennox Dean's MGB 91 and Ewan McDonald's MGB 103). His own MTB 413 was still badly damaged, and the flotilla was waiting on two replacement MTBs.

So this was the perfect time for a war correspondent to turn up, looking for a chance to do a story about the flotilla by accompanying them on their next mission. To be fair Harvey felt that maybe his reputation could do with a boost. All he had to do was keep the journalist alive.

The much depleted flotilla was assigned the task of picking up a friendly agent from the Belgian coast. For a force that was primarily gunboats this wasn't a bad mission to be assigned, so long as they didn't run into any large enemy vessels. 

It was a moonless night, so good for the kind of work they were doing. However as they approached the rendezvous it was obvious a large German patrol was in the area. The two MGBs sped towards the coast before the Germans could spot them, whilst MTB 414, commanded by Edward Stewart, but with Harvey Knight and the journalist on board as well, headed towards the patrol in order to act as a distraction. 

The MTB bumped into an R-boat, which opened fire. 

Meanwhile the rest of the German patrol had been worryingly active, and as MGB 103 reached the pick-up point a Vorpostenboot ranged up and opened fire, causing some light damage. 

MGB 103 sheered away, and returned fire. 

(This was a mandatory turn on the All At Sea table, so I assumed that it would cause the boat to break contact with the pickup.)

MGB 91 came up in support, but another Vorpostenboot appeared as well. Firing became general. 

The fourth escort was another Vorpostenboot; the flotilla had obviously run into a major patrol. And Harvey had lost contact with his two gunboats in the general melee. 

Under heavy fire from two V-boats Lennox Dean brought MGB 91 into the pick-up point. Amazingly he only suffered light damage; it helped that his small boat was hidden against the shoreline.

The R-boat was also coming up, hotly pursued by MTB 414. The MTB opened fire and badly damaged the R-boat, which began steering erratically. 

Despite the fire being directed at them, Dean's crew picked up the agent, whilst their commander assessed how they would make their escape. 

MGB was running close to the V-boats, and had even damaged one with gunfire. However it had taken another hit in return. 

In desperation McDonald threw his boat across the bow of one of the V-boats, launching depth-charges as he did so, but they exploded too far away from the enemy vessel to cause any damage. 

(An All At Sea roll caused him to turn directly towards the German vessel, so any move would have been a collision. But he had the two actions needed for a depth-charge attack, so went for that instead of shooting and then colliding.)

The R-boat ran into some rocks off the coast and was soon hard aground. 

At the same time one of the V-boats ended up stuck on some nearby shoals. MGB 91 was now making a run for it.

Eager to impress the journalist, and at least contribute to the mission in some way, Knight got Edward Stewart to bring his boat around and make a torpedo run at the immobilised V-boat. 

The torpedoes passed close, but missed. 

Unfortunately at the same time MGB 103 ran aground on the same rocks as the R-boat. The two crews worked together to save their crews, but with two V-boats now turning back int the fight there was no change of a rescue for the British crew, and they would end the night as POWs. 

Surviving long-range fire from the grounded V-boat the two other British boats headed for home.

The crews of both boats picked up some valuable experience. Indeed Stewart's crew are close to being Veterans now. But the loss of MGB 103 and its crew soured the mission. The journalist got his story, but Harvey Knight got no increase in reputation out of it. And things got worse. Harvey was invited by a neighbouring squadron to give a talk on tactics - he was an experienced officer with much action under his belt, after all. But still shaken from his recent adventures his talk was poor and his listeners learned little. Harvey was beginning to beginning to doubt himself, and both his mental and physical health were in a bad way now. To make matters worse there were still no replacement boats available. 

On the plus side, the repair crews worked like Trojans and completed nearly all of the repairs, so Harvey got MTB 413 back. Only MGB 91 needed minor repairs still. 

So for the next mission Harvey Knight can only call on two MTBs and a lightly damaged MGB. 

Will things start to look up for Harvey Knight? Find out in the next episode. 

Action In The Gulf Of Riga

One thing I've wanted to try with Torpedoes & Tides is a fight between large vessels. Obviously within the scope of the game, large is a relative term (Indeed it's relative to motor launches and gunboats for game purposes). And their stats don't have as much granularity as the smaller vessels. If something's big it's pretty much dangerous and difficult to damage.

Still, his afternoon I gave it a try. I adapted another scenario from 'Clear The Coast, this one being set in the Gulf Of Riga in November 1944.  The Germans are evacuating troops from a peninsula to the north of the Gulf, and have sent in a patrol to sweep for Russian vessels looking to disrupt the evacuation. They come across three Russian gunboats.

Here are the forces.

The Germans have two minesweepers (I used the M1935 stats) and two Vorposteboot (I used the Medium Vorpostenboot with the 88mm gun for each). 

The Russians have three gunboats. These gunboats were converted from German dredgers and are listed as Moskva class in the rules. In the scenario in CtC they have a different class name, but are still converted dredgers, so I assumed that they were the same. One is armed with three 76mm guns, whilst the other two have two 130mm guns. For game purposes I classed them as the same. 

I changed the stats in the rules slightly to allow for the gunboats' forward armament and the fact that they seem to be very slow indeed (dredgers aren't built for speed, after all):

Q3 C4 - Slow, Large, Large Calibre, Secondary Armament C2, Unarmed (Stern)

Here they are, since the models are new. 

I used the following setup The board is 60cm x 90cm for 50/80/120mm sticks. The long edges are north and south. There is no moon and there are two patches of mist, each places 1D3 medium sticks from the centre of the board in a random direction.  

The Germans are set up in a line heading east with the minesweepers at the front and with 1 x M between each vessel. The stern of the rear vessel is against the west edge, 1 x L from the southern edge. 

The Russians are also in a line, heading west, with 1 x M between each vessel. The rear of the line is against the east edge, 1 x L from the northern edge.

Roll for initiative to see who moves first.

I didn't work out any VPs. In the original scenario it's a straight fight, but I like the idea that the Russians are looking to get past the Germans and get off the western edge to harass German evacuation efforts. However they should have to sink or batter a couple of German vessels before they can score for this. The Germans are just looking to sink the Russian gunboats or drive them off. 

Any vessel can leave the northern edge. However it leads to the Sorve Peninsula, so is risky. Any vessel leaving that edge rolls a D6, subtracting 1 if it has taken damage and subtracting a further 1 if it is battered. On a 1 the vessel runs aground and is lost. 

The Germans can leave the western or southern edge safely. Any German vessel leaving the east edge is lost. The Russians can leave via any edge, but see above for the northern edge. 

Here's the game a couple of turns in, with the Germans bottom-left and the Russians top-right. Nothing is close enough to be spotted yet.

The Volga spotted a minesweeper and opened fire, missing.

The Germans were slow to react and the Bureya now came up out of the darkness. Its fire hit the bridge of the lead minesweeper. 

All ships were now revealed. To the left the two Vorpostenboots were moving to engage the Zeya. One fired a starshell to give the other a better shot. Meanwhile the two minesweepers engaged the Bureya. 

The Germans made good use of starshells to illuminate the Russians, and managed to score hits on all three gunboats. Volga was soon battered ... 

... whilst Bureya was sunk!

The minesweepers (right) began to turn back into the action. 

Volga was heading out of the fight now, but not quickly. One of the Vorpostenboots stayed closing, looking for a chance to finish it off. But the Zeya got in some accurate fire that took out some of the German vessels gun positions, reducing its fire. 

The Volga continued its attempt to escape as the Germans closed in on it. 

A minesweeper sunk it. 

The Zeya had disappeared into the darkness so could revert to a blind. In game terms this means it can move faster, and it quickly homed in on the German's battered V-boat. 

Looming out of the darkness its first shot finished off the German vessel. The V-boats are not large, so are more vulnerable to the Large Calibre guns of the Russians, and can be affected by regular firing as well. 

Out of sight of the Germans the Zeya reverted to a blind again. But the undamaged minesweeper was coming up through the fog. 

It closed in quickly on the Russian vessel in the darkness , revealing it but receiving a damaging shot in return. 

The Russian vessel was badly damaged by this stage, but kept up a steady fire on the minesweeper, damaging it again. 

The minesweeper managed a hit in return, battering the Russian gunboat. 

But its own damaged caused it to collide with the wreckage of the sunk V-boat, putting it out of the fight.

However despite command issues caused by its damaged bridge the other minesweeper was now back in the fight, and its shooting finished off the Zeya. 

So the Russians lost all three gunboats, whilst the Germans lost a single V-boat and had a minesweeper disabled by a collision with wreckage. All in all a fairly convincing German win. 

After a slow start the Germans got in some really good shots early on, which damaged the Russians beyond the point of recovery. After that it was really about the Russians trying to stretch out the fight on the hope the damaged Germans would do something bad. Which they did. But it wasn't enough. To be fair, in their eagerness to turn back into the fight the Germans came close to a couple of friendly collisions, avoided only by a careful choice as to which vessel to move first, and through not failing activation rolls. 

Still, I don't think that the balance is too off. If I feel the Russians are hard done by I may upgrade their vessels from Slow to Short, to give them more flexible movement. I'll certainly be playing this one again. 

Update: I've played this through a couple of times now and the balance seems OK. I've worked out a couple of VP possibilities.

In both cases play until only one side has vessels left in play.

The first assumes a straight fight. In this case both sides score 2VP for each enemy vessel wrecked and 1VP for each enemy vessel battered. 

In the second option it's assumed the Russians are trying to maul he German forces and then head west to disrupt German evacuation operations.

With this option the Germans continue to score 2VP for each enemy vessel wrecked and 1VP for each one battered. However the Russians now score points for exiting the western edge. At the end of the action, each unbattered gunboat that leaves the western edge scores 1VP for each German vessel which was wrecked or which left the fight involuntarily.