DANG: Lepanto

Each year Dave Schueler sends out his missive in October or so, prompting those of us who make the pilgrimage to his house on the Monday after to Christmas to play in his annual naval game.  The October e-mail always offers us the opportunity to choose from his suggested naval topics, ranging from the ancient period to the near future.  For the last several years Lepanto, the climactic 16th century naval battle between Ottoman and Holy League forces has appeared, but never garnered enough votes to be the big winner.  But this year was the year and today was the day.

 Daveshoe went with this interesting period, and ordered the Lepanto fleets by Noble Miniatures.  Through some fits and starts of receiving the minis, Dave managed to get them all painted, and they look quite nice.  Rules were an interesting choice. Christian Fire and Turkish Fury is a Fire and Fury one off. Ships scale is 1:7 and the units are squadrons.  There is a maneuver table, fire tables, and close combat table that would seem very familiar to any veteran of Rich Hasenauer's most wonderful ACW game. The adaptation is by David Manley who has written many games, most notably Action Stations.

Dave Schueler's 15mm Barbary Wars project.  The two vessels on the left are Thoroughbed minis, while the unfinished vessel on the right is scratch-built.

 Eight of us trekked to chez Schueler in West Seattle and nicely divided the forces into four Holy League and four Ottoman commanders.  As always, Dave had some operational commanding to do.  The rules for the operational moves were easy and quick, giving each side the opportunity to pick up some stray victory points by raiding.  As an Ottoman player, I commanded the elite Barbary squadron, and followed the orders of David Sullivan, aka, Ali Pasha the overall Turkish commander.  My mates were Paul Hannah and Dave Creager, both veterans of DANG wars past. Our squadrons were a bit dispersed, so our challenge was to try to gather our fleet together while using some of our dummy counters to disperse the Christian fleet into chasing our phantoms.  They, of course, were trying to do the same to us.

Dave's super cool operational level map.  You can see the starting positions of the fleets.

 We agreed to try a raid, as the Christians were doing the same.  We combined our fleet and moved to Crete to take on the Holy League base there, as the Christians were doing the same to our base on the Dalmatian coast.  We cheered as the Christians were forced to give up their move for the next turn.  We were horrified when our raid failed utterly and our entire fleet lost boarding factors.  We were forced to refit, taking two operational movement turns.  It also convinced us our best shot was to confront the Christian fleet as soon as possible.  Two turns later it was so.

David Sullivan and Scott Murphy commanded the Ottomans and Holy League respectively. 

As dummy counters are encountered they're removed.  Eyeball to eyeball the fleets get ready for action

 We had already assigned squadrons to the various commanders.  Each commander had certain specific characteristics.  I commanded the Barbary squadron, which was the best of the Turkish ships.  We agreed Paul, who drew the aggressive commander, would advance along the right wing Holy League, while David Sullivan would advance in the middle.  Dave Creager had two squadrons that advanced on the right.  My ships formed the reserve, intended to mop up the broken bits of center left when David got done with them.

Two views of the fleets coming into action.  The Holy League to the left and the Ottomans on the right. The nasty galleasses lie between two Christian squadrons.

Our plan was constrained a bit when Daveshoe laid out the map.  Islets on the right and left constrained the board, our fleet would struggle just to stay off the shoals.  It would also maximize the Christians' firepower advantage.  Well, always trust to the bayonet..  We followed through with our plan as best as possible.

Paul's wing was first into action.  In order to stay off the rocks, he advanced in line astern formation and tried to deploy beyond them.  Because his orders required that he move full speed he couldn't wait for the Holy League to come get him. Unfortunately he didn't realize quite what he was facing.  One squadron of galleys and another of galliots left Paul quite unprepared for Mark Waddington's two squadrons of elite Venetian galleys and some shaky die rolling.  Though they fought on for three or four turns, the left wing of the Ottoman fleet was quickly dispatched.

Death ride of Son of Barbarossa.  Constrained by the shoals Paul had to advance in an unfavorable formation.

 David commanded the Ottoman center, and they advanced on the Holy League defenders.  Each side had two squadrons of galleys, but the Christian center was pinned on three stands of galleases, oared round ships.  Though slow, they were armed with a passel of guns, and about a 270 degree field of fire.  We believed that these were dangerous, but should be through the fire in a turn to engage in close combat.  Wrong.  In the first turn of fire, David lost four ships in one squadron and one in another.  By the end of the second turn his command was wrecked and just trying to hang on, which he did, gamely, for another couple of turns.

Dave Creager commanded the two right hand squadrons.  He was faced with the difficulty of maneuvering into position while skirting the shoals, and aligned his ships into two rank lines. He engaged George Kettler's squadrons.  Both sided gave pretty much as good as they got for several turns.  Dave eventually emerged the victor on the right, but his fleet was in very ragged condition and unable to continue the fight.

The Barbary Squadron moves to the attack.  The remains of David's Turkish squadron to the left, Dave Creager's squadrons attack on the right.

 As my reserve squadron pressed past David's survivors in the center, we were met by an attack from Dale Mickel's Christian squadron.  The Barbary galleys were untouched and I began a pretty solid string of die rolls.  My flagship joined the squadron to make it six models and the action wasn't in doubt.  They came under ineffective fire from one of the galleass models and pressed on to attack the next of Dale's squadrons.  The result was the same, except that I was in range of one of the galleasses after the action, and could attack with a breakthrough move.  Galleasses were the uber-vessels in the action, and suffered no ill effects from the fact that I out numbered him 6:1.  However, David had disordered it in the last round of fire, and that combined with my elite status was enough to destroy it.

Final positions in the middle of the board.  The Venetian squadron is fully intact beyond top of picture.

 This left both fleets pretty ragged.  The Holy League had their right flank largely unscathed and their middle half intact with two galleasses ready to blow my ass off.  Their right was gone and ours was tattered to say the least.  Though my squadron was unhurt, it was just a matter of time until the superior Christian numbers and firepower began to take its effect and we called the game a Holy League victory.

 I really enjoyed the game.  We needed a few things to break our way to win.  They did, but too late, and we had nothing to pin the Christian left wing.  The rules were very fun and Dave and Lynn Schueler did a brilliant job of hosting as always.

DANG: The Truth

DANG, or Dave's Annual Naval Game is officially enshrined on my annual gaming dance card, together with the Museum of Flight day and Enfilade. Everything else is gravy, but these are must-do's. I've written about DANG before, Dave Schueler's shindig at his home in West Seattle. This year we played Action Stations, featuring miniatures from Dave's collection and my own.

DANG has three important characteristics. The first, and maybe the most important, is a social aspect. We get to hang out at Dave's house for most of a day, share news and swap lies. This year was no different. We had some DANG veterans-Dave Creager, David Sullivan, Arthur Brooking, and myself-but we also had a pair of DANG noobs; Dale Mickel and Scott Murphy. This year I was teamed with David and Arthur, and being the vets we were, we took nothing terribly seriously, which, under the circumstances was a good idea. We were the Axis side, tasked with running supplies to the trapped German and Italian forces in Tunisia in 1943. Not a pleasant task considering the quality of some of our vessels.

Another important DANG characteristic is the planning phase. Dave gives us our mission(s) and we allot our resources to complete our various tasks. Sometimes the mission planning can be quite complex, and beyond my limited administrative abilities. This time the DANG missions were easy to plot out. Five days with three action periods per day, units required to rest after completion of a mission. I nodded my head, David Sullivan did all the work. This is also the phase of the game in which we conduct psychological warfare against our opponents. We listen in on their noisy conversations (though most of the intelligence we gather in this way is wrong!!) We loudly proclaim our propaganda, make improbable threats and generally make fools of ourselves. Most importantly its a time in which we can snack on all of the tasty treats Dave and Lynn have set up for the participants.

It's difficult being the Axis player when the world begins to go to shit. Hah-Sixth Army is trapped in Stalingrad-no biggie. I can go you one better, the Afrika Korps is surrounded in Tunisia. Our job was to save 'em with a couple of obsolete S-Boats and a slow, underarmed minesweeper with a green crew. The third phase of the game is to actually complete the missions. Some resulted in on-the-table battles, some didn't. In virtually all the battles, the gods of serendipity were on the side of the Axis.

In our first action, night of day one (all the battles were night battles,) our two R boats (minesweepers) were minding their own business sweeping mines off Port Endopincochle or something equally unpronounceable, when two big shadows showed up in the distance. Why is it that when big shadows show up in the distance we just can't seem to leave well enough alone? For whatever reason, Arthur and David decided to go check out the big shadows and discovered they were British destroyers. Destroyers don't sound like a big deal if you're used to playing 1/1200 or 1/2400 fleet actions, but in Action Stations, destroyers may as well be the Yamato. R-boats, on the the other hand, are like rafts made of Popsicle sticks mounting a slingshot and a broom and dustpan. Once the destoyers were spotted, David and Arthur did the only smart thing-they ran. Unfortunately David's boat was not quite faster than a couple of 4-inch shells, which quickly morphed him into splinters. Arthur's boat, however, drew one of the tin cans a little too close to the shore batteries, which succeeded in damaging the vessel and thoughtfully lighting him afire for the amusement of the other destroyer, which cleverly stayed out of range.

After a desultory Day 2 of searching and missing the limping the destroyer from the air, our little flotilla based in Tunis headed off for Bizerte just in time to meet up with some friends-two Fairmile D gunboats and 2 Fairmile D torpedo boats, each bristling with small boat nastiness. Our flotilla consisted of two old S-Boats recently released from training command. We paid careful attention to the one 20mm gun thoughtfully mounted facing to the rear of our boats. This time it Arthur and I each in command of an S-Boat, surrounded by barking bad guys. Somehow I managed to get my boat turned around and dodged the rain of shells of all calibers pointed in my direction. However, Arthur's tactic of having his steering damaged and destroying his enemy, and himself, by ramming, seemed to be the most effective tactic of the day. I escaped with the loss only of my radio. Whew.

The final action occurred the next night when the five S-Boat flotilla out of Port Imbecile decided to exact revenge on the game master for constantly being out-classed, out-gunned, everything but out-lucked. We decided to make those nasty Brits pay. Someplace in the Straits of Sicily, we once again encountered the Big Shadows. To our way of thinking this had to be easier than the previous nights. We'd already shot up one destroyer, how many more could they have? The answer was easy-two. Even though we were five heavily armed, torpedo lugging fools, two destroyers are a lot of destroyers. Coming on pre-plotted courses at maximum speed, the DD's were on us like stink on poop. David had two boats and I had one. We were quickly observed and taken under fire. One of David's boats was able to snap off a pair of torpedoes, wide from the mark. I could never really get a shot. Arthur's two boats were unseen, launched torpedoes and wisely retreated, but David and I were left with two destroyers on our hands. I tried to maneuver close enough to get inside his guns, and avoided much damage. On the other hand, I peppered his bridge with 40mm and 20mm rounds causing a fire, knocking out some unprotected weapons and making Dale wish his mama was nearby. David was desperately trying to avoid a rerun of the first night's entertainment, and his wish was granted when Scott's retreating DD tripped over the mis-aimed torpedoes, did a spectacular pirouette and disappeared beneath the Med. Gack!

While all this fun stuff was going on, we Axis players were able to do the routine things as well. Our silly airforce was able to keep the Allied silly airforce from bombing us into oblivion. We completed an important intelligence related mission involving, cloak and dagger, a U-Boat and the Ark of the Covenant. We also managed to sneak a convoy into Tunis without loss and resupplied the entire Italian army with condoms. Not quite sure of the effect of this on the campaign but Dave declared the Axis the winners. So, I was on the winning side for the first time in four years.

At top we have a picture of an S-Boat-a much better armed S-Boat than most of my commands. Below that is a Fairmile D class Motor Gunboat. It's a great picture, starting with the bow shot of a nasty 2 pdr autocannon, and getting worse as it works its way astern. The last shot is actual footage of Scott Murphy's destroyer as it does the torpedo dance. It was a very brief video.

DANG 2008

I'm just back from my sojourn to Dave Schueler's house in West Seattle. Today was the date for the 2008 edition of Dave's Annual Naval Game, one of my most looked forward to gaming events of the year. I'm not quite sure what number or edition or version of DANG this year's hoo-hah was, but I think I'm a veteran of at least five DANGs.

Dave begins planning these affairs months in advance of the date, doing his best to be as inclusive as possible. They are almost always in the week between Christmas and New Years when most of us have some time off. After pinning down a date, Dave proposes several (usually six or seven) naval topics ranging from Lepanto, which always seems to make the list, to hypothetical contemporary scenarios. Likely attendees consider the possibilities, make their priorities down, narrowing down the list, before choosing between the two finalists.

This year the masses opted for a modern naval conflict between disputed oil-rich waters dividing Indonesia from Australia using the Harpoon rules. Six of us made the trip to Daveland-David Sullivan, George Kettler, Paul Hannah, Arthur Brooking, Dave Creager and myself. We are all DANG veterans, so we knew what to expect-an interesting scenario with some tricky wrinkles, good company and tasty eats.

David, Paul and Dave opted for the Australians. I was talking to Dave's wife Lynn while we were choosing up sides, so I became an Indonesian by default, but I got to play with George and Arthur, my comrades in last year's Arab-Israeli massacre.

The game was built around conflict over some oil rigs around some islets. Arthur's command started on the board first. My task force would not arrive until three hours later (in game time.) In modern naval warfare that is an eternity. Arthur saw a blip on his radarscope and observed the commonsense modern naval maxim of firing on first contact. Unfortunately his Harpoon missiles were intercepted. The Australian missiles were not, however, and soon his missile boat and amphib vessel were smoking oil slicks. George commanded a frigate in this group, and though he lasted a bit longer the HMAS Newcastle soon had his way with him too. A photo of HMAS Newcastle appears at the top of the page. Within an hour the Aussies were in complete control of the board.

Our picture on the right is of Arthur's ships being relegated to smoking ruin.

It was looking a lot like last year's game when we simply could not bridge the gap between our armament and our enemy's superior weapons. We deliberately held back our 0500 reinforcements, so that they could combine with those arriving an hour later. We attacked the Australians only to have our missions fail due to superior AA defenses and better fighter cover. What could we do.

When the 0600 hour arrived the Newcastle had fallen into our trap. In an effort to eliminate the Indonesian oil platforms, the greedy Aussies had shelled our island port, and begun wrecking the platforms themselves. Newcastle and a small patrol boat put themselves firmly in the path of our new naval forces.

Though we prepared to extract some quick revenge, and retire to Djakarta with a declaration of victory, our old friend lady luck was still kicking us when we were down. My salvo of eight Harpoon missiles, entering the target rich environment, missed the annoying (and dangerous) Newcastle. One missile struck my own oil platform, converting it to twisted wreckage sprouting from an inferno. Three struck the little patrol boat, which sank faster than a twenty-four pound cannon ball.

One of Newcastle's sister ships popped up on radar. While George and Arthur let loose a blizzard of missiles on our old tormentor, I popped off four missiles at our new enemy-who fired eight of his own. Newcastle took three hits-finally and thankfully rolling over and plunging to the bottom. Meanwhile the incoming missiles sank George's corvette and Arthur's frigate. I nearly had the last laugh when the new enemy frigate took two hits from Harpoons, badly damaging it and knocking out the ship's radar. A second attack should have finished him off, but despite the damage, its phalanx gun shot down the attacking missiles. Life is unfair.

With that, Indonesians turned tail and fled talking up their tremendous naval victory, and preparing their statement for the UN Security Council as well as the international press. No, I don't quite believe it myself, but that's certainly how I'd talk it up.

As with each DANG it was a tremendously fun game, and quite the annual event. My thanks to Dave and Lynn and to all of my DANG colleagues.