More Small Boats

I took Torpedoes & Tides to the club last night and played a couple of games against Daniel. 

We started with a basic fight scenario, with three British MGBs taking on a couple of larger and faster S-boats. I played the Germans and Daniel took the British. The night was moonless and most encounters were down to boats bumping into each other. This exchange of fire saw both boats lightly damaged.

More firing as other boats emerged from the darkness. Daniel kept scoring hits that suppressed rather than damaged the S-boats , but it meant that I was removing suppressions rather than shooting back.

Oh no! A couple of boats from both sides bumped into a minefield! Fortunately neither of them struck a mine and everyone studiously avoided that area for the rest of the game.

Boats studiously avoiding a minefield.

A long-range shot from one of Daniel's boats inflicted hits on one of mine. This was considered an outrage.

Meanwhile since my boats were constantly suppressed I was struggling to inflict hits back. 

One of Daniel's boats had been badly shot-up in those initial exchanges, and he opted to have it run for home. And one of teh S-boats decided it had had enough after its fellow fired a few shots at it by accident. This left one S-boat against two British boats.

The lone German put up a decent fight bit eventually its commander also decided that he'd had enough and he fled. So a win for teh British. 

No boats were lost by either side, although one British boat was crippled.

With time in hand we set up a convoy attack. Daniel took three S-boats against a British east coast convoy of three freighters, two launches and an armed trawler.

He struck out of a patch on mist on a moonless night.

Some blundering about in the dark by both sides saw a minor collision that damaged the lead British launch.

Daniel cut in between the convoy and the land, hiding his small boats against the coast. His first torpedo salvo missed.

The trawler opened up with its Big Gun giving Daniel a few scares. Owing to activation failures the trawler was pretty much doing all of the work for the British. It did manage a hit that knocked out a gun on one of the S-boats.

Daniel fired off more torpedoes and continued to miss. His boats sheered off so some of them might reload. At that point the trawler scored another hit, damaging an S-boat's engines.

All three S-boats were stalking one freighter now, but the British escorts were beginning to get their act together.

Not so the Germans, who managed a collision in the darkness that damaged one of their boats so badly that it sank!

Daniel's last salvo ...

... scored a hit!

With the escorts closing in Daniel decided not to pursue the other freighters and decided to head for home. The escorts tried to take on the S-boat with engine damage, but couldn't finish it off.

Despite their blundering this was very much a win for the British who got two freighters off their edge of the table and didn't lose a single escort. The Germans did get a freighter but at the cost of one boat sunk and another badly damaged.

Anyway, both games ran smoothly with lots of entertaining incidents, chaos and unpredictability.

Thanks to Daniel for an entertaining evening!

Some photos from Daniel