Wartime Thanksgivings

While we enjoy Thanksgiving at home with friends and family it's appropriate to remember our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and others serving overseas and dining on MREs or less at cold outposts in Afghan mountains, at sea or inside missile silos and all the other places where duty requires.

THANKSGIVING DAY 1863
By the President of the United States : a Proclamation

...In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union...

...I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

SOURCE: Pilgrim Hall Museum website, which lists a sample of wartime proclamations from 1898, 1917, 1943, 1953, 1967 and 1991.

Solitaire Santiago

Today I did something I haven't done in a bit, play a complete solitaire game of a new S&T magazine title. I figured I didn't have any likely opponent for The Santiago Campaign of 1898 on the horizon, so it was up to me alone.

Fortunately this isn't that hard a game to play solitaire. It has a straightforward IGO-HUGO turn sequence and while the Spanish units have hidden combat values it wasn't that hard to "fudge" past that, as the rules suggested.

I decided to try an all-or-nothing Spanish strategy with the goal of doing better than the historical commanders. I was going to assign the Spanish troops blindly to the different sectors, but I pulled out the artillery units first. It seemed like committing them to the jungle fighting would be unfair to the Spanish and simply result in them being thrown away in overruns. So the three Spanish artillery batteries went to hang out in Santiago for later use and where they would be safe from marauding Cubans.

I placed four Spanish units near Daiquiri because it was the most likely US landing site (33% chance in the first wave, 1/6 chance in the second wave.) All the other beaches got two units, which seemed enough to cover the roads leading from the beaches and at least delay the Americans.

The Cuban roll was a 6, which was good for the US because it put a large number of Cubans near the Daiquiri action and around Santiago.

I went ahead and sent the US Marine to Guantanamo, as it seemed the prudent course of action.

So the first US Landing went to El Sardinero. In order to satisfy my own sensibilities and make it a little harder for the US, I played with a mild form of "divisional integrity" where I endeavoured to keep the historical OB more or less intact, although there's no requirement or benefit in game terms. Given the random landings, the US initial attack wasn't as efficient as it could have been. The 3rd US Cavalry destroyed a troop of Spanish cavalry in hex 2821 but was also reduced in the "Bloodbath" result. Meanwhile a couple of regiments from the 2d US division "stalled" in their attack against a stronger than average Spanish battalion in 3319.

The Second US landing went to Daiquiri, which presented an interesting situation, because it suggested the Spanish might be able to defeat the US in detail. Only five units land at the second landing site, so the US didn't have a numerical edge. Making it worse, one of the five US units was the cavalry troop and another one was an artillery battery, both of minimal defensive use at the jungle surrounded beach. The US attempt to fight its way past the Spanish stalled.

The Spanish response was to send the Juraga beach defenders over to help the Daiquiri force while the rest of the Spanish troops delayed the US main body. The Daiquiri Spanish pressed the US landing force hard.

The next several turns saw the Daiquiri beach head embattled while the Cubans tried their best to harass the Spanish attackers. Eventually the Spanish managed to eliminate one US battalion for its inability to retreat, which meant that the US could win no more than a marginal victory.

On the main front the initial Spanish delaying action cramped up the beachhead so not all 15 US units could land on Turn 2, but soon the superior US numbers told. There simply were not enough Spanish units to cover all the possible routes, especially after a couple more were lost. They did inflict some step losses in blood baths and a DE result from the elite 20-factor 65th Spanish Infantry. Here's where the Guantanamo Marine move paid off, because the Spanish Guantanamo roll resulted in no reinforcement from that sector.

While the three US divisions drove on Santiago, the two independent brigades went to relieve the Daiquiri force.

With too few units to cover all the trenches the US was able to enter Santiago just as the Manzanillo reinforcements arrived. The Cubans were able to block the roads enough so that the US forces won the race to the city walls, keeping the large Spanish force out. A truce turn delayed the inevitable slightly, preventing the American from finishing off the last city garrison. There was some indecisive fighting between the Manzanillo relief force and US units just north of Santiago while the independent brigades relief force surrounded the Spanish Daiquiri force in the east.

The die roll ended the truce the next turn (Turn 7) and the US troops mopped up the last Spanish troops in Santiago, ending the game.

In one sense the Spanish strategy did work, because the Spanish kept the US to a marginal victory, which was better than the historical result. Being able to concentrate six units against five US (and five Cubans) provided a chance to actually eliminate a US unit. But on the other hand, the Spanish were not really close to actually winning with this approach. The total US losses were just 6 steps and Santiago was captured on Turn 7. The sparse Spanish force left after committing so much to the Daiquiri front was inadequate to slow the US down much. The US force actually beat the Manzanillo relief column to Santiago and the outer Spanish defense positions such as El Caney and San Juan Hill played a minimal role.

It would be interesting to try this again. Because of the random US landings it appears there could be a lot of replay value. The biggest question in my mind is what options the Spanish have.

Interesting contrast

I received my S&T Issue 258 game package today -- The Santiago Campaign of 1898.

It appears to be standard S&T fare, with 11 pages of game rules, a standard-sized map and 98 counters, mostly units. It does look like it has some interesting twists. More on that later.

The game also includes a bunch of variant counters for Red Dragon Rising, which appears to be one of the most popular S&T games in years. I wouldn't be surprised to see it juiced up for a boxed release someday. A could of the counters are errata for the original game but most represent order of Battle variants. There are also a couple of pages of variant rules that add some new operations for the base game and there are counters and rules for a "Hyperwar" variant that adds some more what-if options.

It struck me that there's quite a contrast between the US forces represented by the two games.

The 1898 US Army was an anachronistic force, not all that different in character from American troops of a century before. Sure, there were some hints of modernity. The rifles were modern bolt-action types, there were Gatling guns and even an observation balloon. But in organization, training and general level of professionalism it was an early Nineteenth Century army, with battalion-sized regiments, ad hoc brigade and division organizations, politically connected officers, volunteer militia, spotty supply services and minimal staffs. It's only because the Spanish in Cuba were even more backward and ill-led that the Americans found success. The Navy, of course, was well along in its transformation into a modern fighting force, but it doesn't appear in the game except on its margins.

On the other hand, the US Army and all its sister services in Red Dragon Rising is the epitome of high tech warfare. While the 1898 US Army would have been a recognizable force to Anthony Wayne's 1796 Legionaires. I doubt that an 1898 veteran would recognize much about his 2009 descendent, particularly at the higher levels. The 1898 Army and Navy barely talked to each other to the extent that the game doesn't allow the player any control over where to land or who gets landed. Warfare in the 21st Century is all about jointness and there's little evidence of interservice rivalry now. Navy, Marine, Army and Air Force assets are used completely interchangeably -- and also integrated with Allied forces.

It's just coincidence that these two games shared a counter sheet in this issue of S&T, but it does illustarte how much has changed.

Naval what-ifs

Avalanche Press' Great War At Sea series (and the sister series Second World War At Sea) are notable for the large number of scenarios included. There are, literally, several hundred scenarios between them.

This marks a significant break from naval wargames published in the "golden age" of SPI/AH games in the 0s-80s. Typically they included just a historical battle. The classic Midway has just one scenario, as did the original edition of Jutland, although the second edition of Jutland added a couple of others. Games covering the South Pacific battles around the Solomons usually depicted all the historical carrier battles, but that's it.

This is rather remarkable, in hindsight, because naval miniatures wargamers there's been a very long tradition of creating various "what-if" battles and not just sticking to historical fights.

Naval battles are, compared to land battles, very rare. Nearly every war will involve a lot of fighting on land. Even before the 20th Century and the rise of continuous combat, land battles were much more common than naval actions. There are at least four dozen full-scale Napoleonic land battles, where fleets met just a few times in comparable fights. Many wars see hardly any naval warfare at all.

But even wars with a large naval component usually see a lot more land fighting. Huge armies of British and French grappled with their German foes on a daily basis in the Great War. But actual naval battles between the Germans and their enemies added up to maybe a dozen or so, depending upon how generous a definition of battle you use.

There are many reasons for why naval battles are rare, but probably the most significant is the enormous cost of warships and the difficulty of replacing losses, especially in capital units. As many countries have demonstrated, it's possible to raise a large army in a relatively short period of time. Indeed, it's normal for most of the people who serve in a war to have enlisted after the start of the war, unless it's an unusually brief conflict. In contrast, aside from light ships, it's rare for a Navy to end a war larger than it started. Even in those exceptional cases where a major navy grows in wartime, it's usually based on a pre-war building program. The enormous World War II U.S. Navy's large ships were all started before the war and most of the major units started after the beginning of the war were never finished.

So every admiral is well aware that any loss he suffers is likely a permanent one for his nation, making admirals notoriously cautious about committing their biggest ships to battle.

Wargamers, of course, have no such qualms, but the historical reticence of admirals means that there really aren't too many naval battles to model.

Avalanche Press ignore the limits of history to provide wargamers with so many scenarios that one is highly unlikely to ever play all of them. With the notable exception of U.S. Navy Plan Orange, which has an atypically sparse seven scenarios and the unique Cruiser Warfare. the rest of the line has a dozen or more each, most of which are hypothetical to some degree or another. And U.S. Navy Plan Orange, along with the plan Gold , Red and Black games, is wholly hypothetical.

But even Jutland and the Mediterranean games, which are firmly grounded in well-researched history, are mostly made up of battles that didn't happen. In many cases these are battles that almost happened. It wasn't uncommon for fleets to steam and yet fail to make contact. Many others postulate some significant departures from actual events, often to include ships that were planned but not built. Not a few of the scenarios are fanciful, imagining that a power such as Turkey might actually be able to afford and man a battleship squadron or that the United States and Austro-Hungary might fight a naval campaign off the U.S. coast.

Liberated from the constraints of history, AP has given naval gamers an entire line of games and supplements and helped usher is what may truly be the "golden age" for naval gamers, if not wargames as a whole. There's still plenty of history and near history for players for whom some of APs more extreme flights of fancy might be too much. A Canadian battleline bombarding Virginia Beach ( Operational Sc. 9 - in U.S. Navy Plan Red) does require leaping a pretty big chasm for the suspension of disbelief.

In defense of this kind of scenario, however, there's this to consider. For Jellicoe or Scheer, the historical Jutland was an unprecedented event. They didn't know how it might turn out or what the possibilities were. The power of hindsight means that any gamer replicating Jutland has a very unrealistic level of knowledge about the battle. Recapturing some of the uncertainty faced by Jellicoe is actually easier in a hypothetical battle, especially one based on an unprecedented situation. Drawing up plans for a campaign that never was such as an Austro-Hungarian war with America (Dreadnoughts scenario book, Imperial and Royal Warship Projects section, scenario one "Plan Black, Austrian Style, April 1924) may be a much better test of admiralship than refighting Jutland for the umpteenth time.

Shipbase III still useful

Fifteen years is an eternity in the world of software, so it might seem strange to write a review of a DOS-based computer program that first came out in 1993, but the game-assist program Shipbase III is still a great way to play detailed naval miniatures with a minimum of fuss.

The game is a text-based computer program with minimal graphics, but that's OK because the graphics are provided by your miniature warships in any case.

The game comes with a rule book explaining the manual procedures needed to move the ships and determine what data to enter into the computer to determine firing and damage. There's a second book listing hundreds of warships in game terms and counters for six battles so you can get right into the game without acquiring miniature warships. The six scenarios present a good mix of eras, sizes and ship types to provide a feel for the game's potentials. (The battles are Santiago 1898; Tsushima 1905; Jutland 1916; Denmark Straits 1941; Coral Sea 1942 and Komandorski Islands 1943.)

The turn sequence follows an intuitive order of movement, air ops, gunnery, torpedoes and end-of-turn status. Scales are completely adjustable by the player, making the game easy to use for any sized ships and floor space. I've used 1:4800, 1:2400 and 1:1800 ships but any size is possible.

The computer system can take into account most of the usual factors affecting naval combat such as smoke, relative angles, salvo chasing and the like. With one person handling the computer the rest of the players can simply concentrate on playing and command issues. Rather large battles can easily be fought in a short period of time, especially compared to rules of similar detail.

The game includes rules for playing at the strategic and operational level, but this will require considerable prep by a game master. While the game accounts for the shape of the Earth, it doesn't account for shores, so the game master will have to ensure players don't take shortcuts across landforms.

The game is best for resolving tactical level fights, however, and I've routinely run battles involving a couple dozen ships during a single four-hour convention time slot to a conclusion, including set up, rules explanations and tear down.

Although elderly for a computer program, it can be run by Windows machines off the DOS prompt and is very stable. I've never had it crash during a game. The program comes on a 3.5-inch floppy, so you'll need a floppy drive. The program is not copy-protected (honor system) so you can make a copy on a DVD that will work just fine on newer machines.

The program is very flexible and the scenario designer can modify ships as needed.

Light ships seem to be too vulnerable, however, and the game master may wish to incorporate house rules in order to keep battleships from unrealistically sniping at destroyers at long range. The game program seems to underestimate the difficulty of targeting very small ships at very long ranges.

Overall the game still works remarkably well and is still a unique product. The designer had started some work on a Windows-based successor, but no final product ever emerged.

Despite the passage of time and software generations, Shipbase III is still a winner.

Remember the Maine: A review

It was 110 years ago this spring that the United States battled its way onto the World Stage with the "Splendid Little War" against Spain in 1898.
It was a one-sided affair, especially at sea. U.S. battle deaths were in the hundreds, so ships were lost. One particularly colorful character played a big role in the affair from start to finish and literally rode that fame into the White House (Teddy Roosevelt). The U.S. ended up with overseas colonies for the first time and Cuba won its Independence. The war also closed the last door on Spanish pretensions of great power status.
Usually such lopsided outcomes are hard to make a satisfactory wargame out of, but things aren't quite as grim on that score as they might appear, as shown by Remember the Maine!, the issue game in Strategy & Tactics magazine No. 108, July 1986.
In truth, the Spanish didn't make the most of their opportunities in the historical event. More energetic or imaginative leadership could have made the U.S. task much harder.
For example, while the American Navy was better than the Spanish fleet,it wasn't very large. Between the need to protect the invasion fleet, guard the U.S. coast and maintain a blockade of Cuba there were opportunities to catch portions of the American force at a disadvantage. Likewise, the American ground forces did not have a big edge in quality and no edge at all in numbers over the Spanish land forces. A less passive commander might have been able to take advantage of the ill-organized U.S. landings to score a major victory.
These opportunities are well reflected in Remember the Maine!, which is really three sub games in one.
The first subgame is the tactical naval game, which uses a very simple line-em-up-and-shoot system that works well because actual tactics of the time were fairly simple. Both navies lined up in a single battle line for fleet actions and blasted away. Ships are rated for the number of primary guns and secondary guns and their ability to take hits. This subgame includes two scenarios: The historical Battle of Santiago and a hypothetical fight between the U.S. Flying Squadron and Spanish Adm. Cervera's force.
The second is a straightforward set of hex-and-counter land combat rules with mechanics familiar to anyone who has played that sort of game. Both armies were mostly infantry, with cavalry uncommon and often dismounted and artillery scarce as well. The most noteworthy twist is that troops are rated in quality from A to C, with "A" being good troops like artillerymen, U.S. regulars, some Spanish regulars and the Rough Riders. "C" quality troops are mostly Spanish militia and Cuban guerrillas, with "B" being everybody else. C-rated troops don't have zones of control, but other units do, with the usual rules about units in ZOCs being required to attack. These rules also include two scenarios: The historical Battle for San Juan Hill and a hypothetical battle for Havana.
Pulling it all together are a set of campaign rules which cover things like raiders, amphibious invasions, naval searches, coaling, random events and hurricanes. While the Spanish still have a challenging time ahead of them, the situation is not hopeless as the Americans will find themselves stretched pretty thin covering all the possible Spanish options.
The naval battle scenarios will take just a few minutes to play and the land battles can be finished in an hour. Playing the entire campaign is easily doable in an evening. The game is detailed enough that players will feel like they've gotten a good sense of what was historically possible while not getting too mired down in details.
The errata is fairly minor and won't affect gameplay significantly.

Fire When Ready review

Fire When Ready was a Metagaming "Microhistory" game published in 1982 covering naval combat in the pre-dreadnought era.
First, a little bit about the components. Fire When Ready was published before the availability of inexpensive but good quality desktop publishing tools, so it can't be held to the same standards of more recent designs. Still, even by the standards of its time the game components are below average and not even equal to most other Metagaming games.
The map is the usual Metagaming standard of a heavy-stock paper. As it depicts a patch of open sea there's naturally no terrain, but rather ac countably the map is pink instead of blue.
The ship counters come in a light, perforated counter sheet. The larger fleet is red counters with blue printing, which is a difficult to read clashing color scheme. The smaller fleet is blue counters with white print. The counters themselves are simple, with an overhead view of the ship type, a large letter identifying the ship type (B:battleship; C: cruiser; D: destroyer; T: torpedo boat) and an ID number.
The final component is a 30-page rule book. It's not type-set, but appears to have been printed using some kind of computer printer, so it's not particularly attractive to look at, but it is legible.
It all comes in a small cardboard box.
Overall, even considering that the game is meant to be an inexpensive one, the presentation is substandard.
Fortunately there's a fairly good game underneath that poor presentation that succeeds in providing a surprisingly authentic depiction of pre-dreadought naval tactics.
Players have to create their own data sheets to track the ships in their fleets, but most of the battles are very small, so this isn't a problem.
Ships have five major characteristics: Primary battery, secondary battery, armor rating, speed and training level. In addition some ships have additional characteristics such as a ram bow or torpedoes.
Ship movement is plotted in advance and then executed simultaneously on a scratch paper. This is fairly typical for tactical naval games produced in the 70s and 80s. Again, the small size of the scenarios generally keeps this manageable.
After moving, ships fire. The gunnery strength of the ship's battery is cross-referenced on a range table to give a final strength. The target's armor differential is subtracted from this strength to determine a "gun to armor differential." That differential determines a column on a gunnery results table. The firing player rolls two dice and determines a "hit type" letter. That letter is then cross-referenced on a gunnery damage table for the final results, which are generally reductions in the gunnery, armor or speed values.
Various special rules account for things such as collisions, torpedoes, ramming, arcs of fire, critical hits and special ship characteristics.
There are six scenarios.
The first is Revenge of Fashoda, a hypothetical clash between two closely matched British and French battle squadrons, each with four battleships, two cruisers and four destroyers.
The second is the historical battle of Manila Bay, with Dewey's fleet of four cruisers and two destroyers (gunboats) massacring a Spanish fleet of seven "cruisers" (actually gunboats) and three "torpedo boats" (also gunboats). This is meant to be a solitaire scenario. Most of the Spanish fleet can't move and there is a huge difference in training levels between the two fleets.
The third scenario is another hypothetical one, Dewey Fights Again, which assumes that the tense relations between Dewey and a German fleet that moved into Manila Bay boiled up into actual fighting. The German force comprises two battleships, five cruisers and two destroyers. Dewey's reinforced fleet has one battleship (the Oregon, sent to Dewey instead of Cuba), five cruisers and six "destroyers" (actually gunboats).
The fourth scenario is the rarely-depicted historical Battle of the Yalu in 1894 between China and Japan which basically destroyed Chinese naval power for a century. It would be a hundred years before China owned even a non-functioning capital ship. The Chinese fleet comprises two battleships, eight cruisers, two destroyers and two torpedo boats. The Japanese fleet has one (very weak) "battleship" (really an ironclad) nine cruisers, a destroyer and a torpedo boat. The Japanese fleet has much better training, however, which provides a decisive edge.
The fifth scenario is the Battle of Santiago from the Spanish-American War, also meant to be played solitaire. The Spanish fleet of four cruisers and two destroyers attempts to escape from the American force of four battleships, two cruisers and a "destroyer" (actually an armed yacht)
The sixth scenario is by far the biggest, depicting the greatest pre-dreadnought era engagement, the Battle of Tsushima. The basic scenario covers the main fleet action between the poorly-trained Russian force of 11 battleships and a cruiser against the crack Japanese fleet of four battleships and eight cruisers. There's also a "Grand Tsushima" scenario which adds another eight cruisers and nine destroyers to the Russian force while the Japanese get five cruisers and 10 destroyers. With a total of 56 ships this is best played by teams and will require a total of four maps. (The rules suggest photocopies of the original)
For a long time there wasn't much in the way of competition for this game, but with the arrival of Avalanche Press' Great War at Sea 1898 and Russo-Japanese War this is mostly left as a curiosity, although it does have great portability. It's one of the few full-fledged wargames that can fit in a coat pocket.