Sink the Bismarck!

 Another week, another team play outing on a solo game, this time Worthington Games 'Bismarck'. Rules summary etc here: https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/bismarck-solitaire

The solo game is aimed at playing it from the German players pov, but for this game Jim also had some British player(s), namely John and Jerry running the Home Fleet and RAF/Coastal Command respectively. 

The Kriegsmarine were Mark (Bismarck and CinC), myself (Prinz Eugen) and Tim (U Boat Fleet).

The Germans roll up a random mission, and ours was help the effort in North Africa by staging a strong raid into the North Atlantic, sinking at least 8 points of ships and ideally at least three convoys, then returning to Bergen or Brest at some point after turn 15. To give an idea of VPs, Hood is worth 3, PoW 4 and a convoy just 1, so we'd need to do rather better than historically to 'win'.

The campaign was plotted on this map of the North Atlantic, it has an 8x8 grid of major sea areas, each subdivided into four quadrants. Our ships started at sea east of Iceland and north of Scotland.

The ship stats can be seen underneath, combat is really simple in these - ships have flotation boxes (eg Prinz Eugen has six as does Hood) and they are sunk when they are all crossed off. Ships typically fire 2-3 dice each round of combat, hitting on a 1-3 (why not 4-6 ffs?), so combat is very attritional. No sinking Hood with one salvo.

The Germans can try and close or extend the range with various bonuses and penalties and both sides can opt to break off after a round of combat, but breakoffs aren't automatic.

On the first turn, the Germans declared where they were, but after that we used hidden movement, communicating via the Zoom chat function.

And here is the Bismarck! A fine old ship. Its speed was 2 sea quadrants, but could burn extra fuel to move 3, whereas PE could do 3 quadrants, 4 on maximum speed. Extra fuel was limited however, Prinz Eugen had two loads and Bismarck four.

So what made the whole game work is this fearsome looking chart. There are several different versions of these (you dice for which one to use for a particular mission), and each turn you dice to see which of the twelve sub charts are used.

The various different coloured boxes show effect patterns on the main map for different types of encounter ie they semi randomise the encounter types in the various boxes of the main map. eg the pink boxes are Hood and Prince of Wales, the light blue boxes are various types of RAF/RFA activity, the orange boxes are convoys. If any German ships are in any of the coloured boxes for a particular chart, then a potential encounter takes place. On this sheet charts 1, 3 and 2 are particularly depressing as the entire Home Fleet scours much of the North Atlantic. Presumably this mechanism is to maximise the solo replay value, but it is an interesting concept I've not come across before.

Anyway, briefly our sortie via the Denmark Strait was intercepted by Hood and Prince of Wales. Admiral Lutjens was a bit gung go and closed the range and we managed to sink both Hood and PoE! Sadly this was at the expense of damage to both our ships, which didn't bode well for the rest of the trip. Prinz Eugen actually delivered the final blows to both British battleships (torpedoes maybe?).

While this was going on the U Boats were having a fine old time attacking convoys and we rapidly gained 9 VP, more than enough for mission success. 

After that the Germans played it safe and skirted across to Greenland and then due south. Prinz Eugen was released to head south to the convoy routes and then to Brest, while Bismarck played at fleet in being and floated gently back towards Bergen. 

Prinz Eugen did make it down the convoy routes and found a convoy, only to discover it was escorted by HMS Repulse! It turned out on encounter sheet 2 that all the convoys were escorted by battleships, which we hadn't realised.

Taking on a Battlecruiser in an 8" cruiser seemed a very foolhardy thing to do, but the Germans were forced to fight one round of combat anyway. I focussed on the convoy and hit it, but Repulse in turn hit the Eugen. Down to two hits left I tried to break off, failed and took another hit!

I finally managed to break off and headed for Brest at top speed sailing due west. I burned all my extra fuel and made it to the map square just outside Brest. At this point, inevitably, the RN rolled chart 12 and poor old Prinz Eugen had an encounter with King George V just outside the port. I managed to extend the range which saved me from one salvo, but then  although the breakoff attempt succeeded, took another hit and poor old Prinz Eugen limped into Brest with irreparable damage and was classed as 'sunk'.

What a shame. With hindsight I should have sailed south into Biscay then run into Brest from the south at top speed, which would have avoided the British patrols, but hey ho, hindsight is a wonderful thing. At least Bismarck made it back to Bergen, albeit missing half its flotation points.

Totting up the the VPs, we got seven for Hood and PoW, five more for convoys sunk and lost three for losing PE. Net total nine, so a decisive victory, as we'd sunk more than three convoys as well.

That was really good fun, although the game itself is so abstract in many ways it barely bears much relationship to naval warfare apart from the map plot. Not so much the operational decision making which was OK, but the minutiae of the combat system, such as it was. It worked very well as a team effort, even if Admiral Lutjens couldn't figure out how to use the Zoom chat function, but we are used to doing this sort of thing.

I couldn't make it to the Wednesday session but they were going to try it with a different operations map sheet. Many thanks to Jim for putting it on.