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.
