Ulster Wargames Society - Battle Of Tsushima and more

Society meeting today and I took part in a very engrossing naval game (not a genre I have played much at all) with Battle of Tsushima 1905 set up by Dave T using his very nice 1/24000th fleets.

I played as Japanese with Dave B as Russians with each ship model representing 2 real life equivalents.

Ground scale was I believe 10cm to 1 nautical mile, bit of record keeping required for each ship but nothing onerous as essentially just marking off hits/damage.

Rules were a set called Tsushima (no idea of publisher) and were pretty easy to grasp and play with each Division (2-4 ships) activating alternately with winner of turn initiative having choice to go first or second but firing first in firing phase.

Ships rated for armour in various aspects (hull, main guns and secondary guns) with varied amounts of main guns and secondary turrets to fore, aft, port and starboard with some having torpedoes.

Game sets up with Russians heading north shadowed by some Jap Cruisers and a horde of lowly Destroyers and main Jap fleet moving intercept from north.

Once units got into firing range things soon became a sort of slow moving 'dogfight' as I tried to maneuver to surround the Ivans.

Highlights were Russian shooting in general being awesome despite being inferior to Japs, Dave B just rolled a fearsome amount on 10s to hit (on D10) and I had a couple of ships with lots of holes but still afloat. 

Jap shooting was less than stellar with their Battleship flotilla shooting woefully throughout even when at short range with full broadside and 'crossing-the-T' for maximum opportunity !!

However  I did manage to roll two Critical Hits (out of several possible) that caused catastrophic explosions, with Ivans (I think) causing flooding and steerage damage with couple of their Critical Hits .

However even slowing a Russian tub effectively means it cannot escape (the Russian main aim) and I did send a few ships to bottom or damaged whilst suffering a couple of losses.

Another....umm......highlight was one of my Destroyers managing to hit a friendly Battleship and send itself to bottom in a sort of reverse Kamikaze.

As we wrapped things up it was decided that whilst Russians could likely exit two main ships the rest likely bottled up and so a marginal Japanese victory was declared.

Fun stuff and much kudos to Dave T for running the game.

Tough to take decent pics with phone of such tiny items which is a pity and nicely detailed and painted.

Japs disrupting the support types, note sunken marker for Russian vessel sent to find Mr Jones locker

My heavy Squadrons (centre right) after more ineffectual shooting on Ivans target (orange dice indicates Division has fired)

A Jap Destroyer has gone beneath the waves  after slamming into Fuji in middle of my Battleship flotilla

Divisions of both sides going hither and thither (red marker indicates a stopped vessel)

Both sides circling like sharks trying to get drop on enemy

One my Cruisers dead in the water (red marker) but managed to survive and repair dame to get underway again albeit slowly. His mate (at bottom) forced to break off from action

Jap light Cruisers use Evade status (Green marker) meaning slower, but hard to hit and less effective shooting as they try to go fore and aft of Ivans. Those bloody deadly Ivan yellow D10 visible

The frankly useless Jap Battleships (at bottom) steam ahead trading shots 

My Destroyer fleet ( at right) unable to join action until later

One of better pics of Russians at set up (Blogger insists on putting pics in reverse order)

And shadowing Japanese

Another view of Ivans at start

Bulk of their main fighting ships to left

Jap shadows at start

Also as club were other games (usual proviso that I had little time to see what occurred in each) 

Leslie and co played a Sudan game with very nice 10mm kit (rules unknown)

Andy ran a 28mm 'what if' 'Napoleonic game using GDA2 and Brits vs French (this was a small scale affair by Andy's usual standards)

Charlie and co had a Battle Tech game on some nicely complex terrain.