Sunday 9 October 2022

Herring Wars

 Tim was planning a large naval game set in the early 1900s using a naval relative of Little Cold Wars. The clash was set in a fictional war between Norway and Denmark over fishing rights, as if that would ever happen.

As background to the face-face game, we had a planning session to manouvre the opposing fleets at set he scene for the the initial engagements. The overall fleet commanders sent in their general intentions via 'telegram' aka email, and the rest of us set about coming up with the operational implementation.


A large group of reprobates turned up on Zoom to run the opposing fleets. Pete and John were the Norwegiens, and I was attached as an advisor from the Austro-Hungarian navy. Our remote Admiral was Paul. Bob and Russell took the wicked Danes.


The action was resolved over this map. Our overall intention was to establish a blockade of the Danish ports, defeat their fleet (should it come out to play) and then conduct landings to sieze and destroy harbour facilities in Denmark. 

Our fleet was divided into a Main Force centered around our (only) battleship and a Flying Force with cruisers, both escorted by destroyers. The former would establish a distant blockade, the latter a close blockade. We also had a number of transport ships which could carry landing parties and/or be used as blockships, and also an airship for scouting and dropping bombs!

After a few turns of manouvering we discovered that the Danish ports were empty of warships, but packed with disappointed fishing boats. Then an alarming number of sighting reports came in of unidentified warships, apparently both fleets had decided to concentrate in very close proximity to each other....

Well, the face to face players will have plenty to do later in the week. Having got to that point, we settled down for a chat instead, showing off our various recent purchases. Funnily enough the actual resolution of the battle (reported on Tims blog) coincided with my cruise to Norway and Denmark, so I was sailing through the Skagerrac just as our fictional fleets were fighting.



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