Action In The Pacific

Last night we played 'Broadside: Empires of Steel'. It was a fictional game set in the 1920, with an aggressive Japan throwing its weight around in the Pacific and a Royal Navy looking to justify its existence and budget by showing them who's boss.

Naturally two flying squadrons ended up fighting.

Thanks to Ralph for these pictures of the cards and models for each side, as I'd forgotten all of the names.

Here's the IJN - one battlecruiser, two armoured cruisers, four light cruisers and a trio of destroyers.

And the Royal Navy - a battlecruiser, and armoured cruiser, three light cruisers and six destroyers.

Initial moves - Japanese on the right and the Royal Navy on the left. We pretty much matched up by type of ship pushing our destroyers forward against each other, followed by the battlecruisers and armoured cruisers. The light cruisers faced each other on the other side of the table.  

The Japanese force. That's the mighty Kongo taking centre-stage there.

The destroyers quickly encountered each other, and HMS Marksman was teh first casualty, sunk by gunfire.

But a Japanese destroyer was sunk in turn, and the superior numbers of teh Royal Navy small ships told as they surged forward towards the Japanese capital ships. Kongo fired everything it had at the approaching vessels.

In fact the gunnery at this stage on both sides was terrible. Hits were being scored, but with 'anything but a one' scoring actual damage we rolled a prodigious quantity of ones. Ralph rolled five in a row.

The Japanese armoured cruisers move up to support Kongo. But even their fire couldn't slow the British.

Two Japanese destroyers survived the fight long enough to launch torpedoes. The first scored a hit on HMS Invincible, but didn't sink it.

The British show how it's done - a single spread of torpedoes sank Kongo,

The second Japanese destroyer finished off Invincible.

But the British got one of the Japanese armoured cruisers too.

Now a peculiar feature of Broadsides is that ships don't sink until the end of the turn, so if they haven't taken their action yet then they can continue to do so. Kongo was lost, but hadn't acted, so got to blaze away one last time. A single salvo sank HMS Warrior, whilst its light guns polished off a British destroyer. Then it sank.

At that point we called an end to the proceedings. Both sides had lost two capital ships (the Japanese had one rather oddly armed armoured cruiser left), and all of the destroyers were out of torpedoes. The remaining battle would be between the light cruisers, which had hardly engaged so far and, unsupported, would probably retire.

So, all in all, a bloody draw.

Thanks to Darren for putting together a great little game.