GHQ's WW2 Micronaut rules...

[dougeagle]

Hey all,

As part of my on going WW2 wargaming, I'm quite possibly looking into the naval warfare aspect and was wondering about GHQ's WW2 naval rules. Can anyone give me a brief run down of them such as game play- easy, moderate, hard and so forth?

[dougeagle]

WOW 67 views and no answers.

Does anyone on here use the GHQ micronaut WW2 rules at all?

[hussar62]

This may be of help. A review I posted on this forum some time ago

We just played our 2nd game of Micronauts. The engagement pitted 5 US DD's (4x Fletcher, 1x Allen Sumner) against 4 IJN DD's and 1 CL (3x Akitsuki, 1x Shimakaze and CL Agano). Scenario was set in 45' with the IJN escorting a group of 4 transports. All IJN had type A radar with the majority of the crew being raw, and poor in damage control. The majority of the US ships had type C radar and a mix of trained and vet crews with normal to exceptional damage control. The action was fought in daylight with calm seas.

Suprisingly the IJN won this encounter by a fair margin. The 6" guns on the Agano contributed greatly, not by out right sinking any US DD, but the hits made caused relatively heavy damage (to a DD). These hits reduced the combat potential of the US DD's quickly taking out guns and reducing their speeds. The US relied on the respectable torpedo batteries on their ships and actually hit 2 of the Akitsukis with their spreads.

End result after 3 1/2 hrs of play:

1x Fletcher crippled and exiting area
1x Allen Sumner Sunk by Long Lance
Remaining 3 Fletchers had 1 5" gun remaining among all of them and were all reduced in speed due to hull or engineering critical hits. They were all out of torpedos and no where near the Japanese transports with the Agano closing to point blank range. That when the US called game over.

for the IJN:

2x Akitsuki sunk by torpedos
1x Akitsuki with minor damage
1x Shimakaze with minor damage
1x Agano took only 1 or 2 hits the entire battle

Since this was only our 2nd game and the 1st game where torpedos were heavily used we had the following observations:

1. Sequence of play for torps conflicts between various charts and the rules. Some examples:

A. The big one page Combat Table Card list Torpedo Impact as Phase 4 and Tactical Movement as Phase 5. This is also the squence detailed in the rule book (5.2 Sequence of Play)

B. The Turn Sequence listed next to chart C-9 list Tactical Movement in Phase 4 and Torpedo impact in Phase 5. This sequence is supported by torpedo combat rule 10.4 which in part states,

"The range the torpedos travel is the distance from the launch point (marked by a torpedo counter in step 2) to the point where the target ship ends movement in the subsequent turn (unless the initial range is under 2 Kyrds as noted in rule 10.3)"

We used the sequence out lined in B as it made more sense, since rule 10.3 already accounted for an immediate impact under 2 Kyrds. If sequence in A was followed there would be no ship movement before a torpedo strike for an over 2 Kyd run.

2. In the game torpedos don't have the devestating damage potential they had historically. Sure, one torpedo will absolutely wreck a DD, but when looking at the possible damage they can cause to a larger vessel its not so bad. As a matter of fact looking at the hull points on the NC class BB (90) it would take 15 Long Lance torpedos to sink her (assuming normal 6 point hits). Seems excessive, even if we account for some of the hits doing double or triple damage it may take 9-10 hits.

In the actions around the Solomons in 42-43, no US cruiser survived more than 2 Long Lance hits ( don't recall any of them surviving 2 either). With the damage currently caused by torpedos a typical US cruiser can take a Long Lance hit and still be making 28 kts. (possible? yes, probable? no). Simple solution, possibly modify chart C-12 so that triple or double damage is now the norm, while still leaving some base damage results that may allow a DD to survive a hit. Another solution would be adjusting the values in C-13, however I feel this would take more carful consideration and work to yield historically accurate results.

3. Final observation. This came from some of the players who questioned why they had to have squadrons roll for cohesion. To their "gamers" mind they felt it was beneficial to have every ship independant and roll individual cohesion. This came up due to having the IJN CL designated as a Fleet Flagship, and a single ship squadron (which would not get a +4 modifier for being out of formation), while the DD's were broken into Divisions, with designated Division leaders. My thought was every ship can not have a command staff and the additional communications gear to provide them with the "big" picture of the engagement. Should they decide (in a future game) to designate each ship as "independant" then all of them, with the exception of the one with the admiral on board will get the +4 out of formation modifier. (I'd even consider adding the +2 "flagship not in lead" to dissuade them from this idea).

[ed*b]

I've only watched one game of Micronaught rules, and looked over the charts and rules quickly, but my impression is that the rules are limited in reproducing the actual mechanics of weapon effects (e.g. armour penetration, damage results, etc.) and much more oriented towards more intangible aspects like command and control and damage control. The playing surface requirement was quite small - a 4' x 6' tabletop would be adequate for most 5 to 10 ship actions.

If you want a lot of tables to plow through, the Seekrieg 4 rules are apparently now available as a free download from the Seekrieg website. Note however the developers have raised some valid observations around the unreality of some of the game mechanics in Seekrieg 4, explaining why there is a major revision to most tables and processes in the (somewhat expensive) Seekrieg 5. If you want a game with straightforward but reasonably accurate mechanics, though not as much chrome plated damage as Seekrieg 4, you could check out the free downloadable Graf Spee scenario on the Supremacy at Sea website. Those are the rules I regularly play.

[Mk 1]

Two or three years ago, when the rules had just come out, I played two games with cbovil of this forum. They are posted on the AAR's thread, but I could not even guess on what page. (On edit: OK, maybe I can guess. I guess it is on page 11 of the AARs thread. )

I happened to be in his town (Las Vegas) around the time of a gaming con, and he was planning to run a game. The evening before he had a couple folks over to his home (myself included) for a "practice game" so that he (and we lucky few) could gather some familiarity with the rules before the con.

The evening game was a clash of cruisers -- Brit vs. Germans. The con game was a hypothetical clash of battle fleets -- the Brits bringing Hood, KGV, PoW, one or two of the older battleships, and some cruisers, vs. a German assemblage of the Bismark, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, a few Panzerschiffe's, and Prinz Eugen. Or some such. Was a few years back, so I may have gotten a couple ships wrong.

I am not a big naval gamer. I think I played two times prior to that event, and I have no idea what rules I played under before. But for what it is worth, here are my impressions.

Pro:
I think the rules played reasonably smoothly and quickly. In both cases we were able to get to a respectable conclusion in a few hours (3 or 4?). Ships maneuvered, guns fired, many misses were observed, some hits were shrugged off, some hits caused remarkable damage, fists were waved, curses were tossed over the waves, and a good time was had by all.

(Added on edit: Note the "good time" bit. The rules were indeed quite fun to play. Most of the time in the game was spent maneuvering and fighting, rather than turning pages in the rulebook. That counts as a good thing! )

Con:
I fear the rules did not meet my demands for realism. Not that I was seeking too much fine detail. Playability was good, and is important. But I would hope for rules that push players towards the actual tactics that succeeded in real life. These rules seemed to push players towards tactics that do not correspond to what made sense in real life.

For example the issue of torpedos mentioned above: in our clash of cruisers, one of the British boats made a mad rush at the strongest German, in the hope of changing the game with a close-in torpedo attack. Ach, but he took greivous damage, and his torpedos missed. Such a price to pay. So, all looks good and fine, no? But then, just a couple turns later, another cruiser DID launch, and DID score a hit, and then we found out that far from being a game changer, a hit from a torpedo was indistinguishable from a hit by a medium gun -- the difference being that you had multiple turrets with multiple guns firing every turn, but only 2 or 4 torpedos on the whole boat! The torpedos did so little damage that it was silly to even bother with them, and I expect no gamer would ever undertake a bold torpedo attack once he had experience with the rules.

Another issue was the gun ranges. The rules give ranges according to gun caliber -- bigger guns have longer range. In our battleship clash this lead the Brits to a strategy of standing-off and using the superior range of their 15-inch guns to batter the 11-inch gunned sisters down to the point where they were almost combat ineffective, before closing in. The problem is that, in real life, the German 11-inch gun outranged the British 14- and 15-inchers, and in particular outranged the 15-inchers on the older 20 degree mounts by a factor of 2!

So in both cases the rules were pushing the gamers to play with tactics that wouldn't have made sense in real life. It was almost as if we were playing a game with Micro Armor using rules which say that a T-34-85 outranges a Panther because it has a bigger gun. Yeah, it simplifies the rules, but you don't get any feeling for what a Panther was in that case. Might as well be playing with generic "medium tanks".

That said, I think the deficiencies I saw could be resolved with house rule modifications. If the game mechanics work well (and to my experience they did), then all that is needed is some adjustments to the data.

Hope that helps.

[TAMMY]

In my club we started naval wargame this ywìear. I proposed GHQ Micronauts as a starting ruleset as it was simple and easy to learn. My idea is to pass to more complicated rules like GQ III or Seekrieg 5 when the naval games are well accepted in the club. This was due to the fact that our usual games are on land from Ancient to WWII and I think that naval games need a different approach to play.

Obviously Micronauts has all the limits of a simple ruleset but as an introduction to naval wargame is enough.

To remain simple the author has chosen to consider the guns by caliber only rediucing by 90% the amount of firing tables of other rules.

The torpedo has the same limt. But in thois case I suppose he reduced the effect to compensate the high rate of hits particularly with air launched torpedoes.

A particular imcemvemient for us are the six palnes flight. This is okay for the Pacific but we started with Mediterranean engagements. Here the average British torpedo bomber attack at sea was doine with 4 to 8 planes at the time!

In any case I find the rules easy to use but too bloody. It seems to me too easy to seriously damage a ship (apart from the torpedoes) in respect of the reality. On the other side end an afternoon battle with no sinking may be too much for many players.

[kiasutha]

Two or three years ago, when the rules had just come out, I played two games with cbovil of this forum. They are posted on the AAR's thread, but I could not even guess on what page.

Con:
I fear the rules did not meet my demands for realism. Not that I was seeking too much fine detail. Playability is nice. But I would hope for rules that push players towards the actual tactics that succeeded in real life. These rules seemed to push players towards tactics that do not correspond to what made sense in real life.

Hope that helps.

Mk-1
I remember it clearly.
In my case it helped a great deal.
Thanks!

[dougeagle]

Hey thanks for the replies there gang...I appreciate it.
Now too decide if I want to get into naval warfare...that would mean more mini's

[Mickel]

Not many though... unless you want to.

[Baphomet69]

Not many though... unless you want to.

Uh yeah...that's what we all tell ourselves each time we are looking at getting into a new period, isn't it?

The power of the pewter compells you! The power of the pewter compells you!