I have just returned from the second NAVCON annual naval wargaming convention, organised by the indefatigable Paul Dalley, in the (usually) peaceful, scenic town of Picton.
As with the first NAVCON, the centrepiece of the event was a series of games of Littoral Commander, this time the new Australian expansion, but there were other games played as well.
Arriving just before lunch on Saturday (fortified by a 150 minute drive over the hill from Nelson), I found Chase and Richard engaged in a game of the Avalon Hill classic Midway. It's a game I remember fondly from a couple of sessions with Pat Hirtle, and it was just at the point the action was moving from the campaign map to the battle boards. Paul was umpiring it in true double-blind fashion, and as the first torpedoes launched and the first dive-bombers wheeled onto target, I pushed off to pick up Darryl, who was getting to the ferry terminal after coming over from Wellington. He had started his day at 4:30am, which put my drive into perspective!
After lunch Darryl and I played a moderns miniatures game pitting my Spruance and Oliver Hazard Perry classes against his Kashin and Kara. Richard ran the game, using a set of rules whose name I forgot to jot down, and employed his 1/3000 models. Richard is a talented and prolific 3d model designer, and hopefully we will get to see more of his creations before too long. His are some of the nicest I have seen in this scale.
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| Mine |
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| Darryl's |
The rules were somewhat dense, and Richard manfully took to the task of explaining them. There was an interesting and tense period of radar cat-and-mouse (to use or not to use was the question) and it was Darryl who turned his on first. He failed to find me but I was able to get a bearing on him and fire off a pair of harpoons. The rules searching got more intense the closer the harpoons got to target, and as the day drew to a close we found that the table used to resolve AA against the incoming harpoons seemed to have some issues. Both harpoons were shot down, and the others that I had sent after them would have no prospect of getting through the Soviet AA guns either. Something did not quite add up. The upside of this was that it has given Richard more incentive to put together his own set of rules to use with these exquisite models.
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| Sea-skimming harpoons about to be shot out of the sky by the Kara's AA guns. |
On the other table Paul and Chase were playing out a game of U-Boat. It is a co-operative game that used an app to drive the action, and there were periods of hurry-up-and-wait interspersed with loud alarums and frantic responses to incoming attacks. At close of day they were dealing with a concussion to the engineer, four dead or wounded after being caught on the surface by an air attack, and a likely boat-wide bout of dysentary due to the cook being diagnosed with the same shortly after having served the crew a meal!
Who would be a submariner?
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| Das boot |
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| The men respond to an air attack |
The venue for NAVCON is a museum, and as there was a cruise ship in port we were frequently approached during the day by folk wandering through and wanting to know what on earth we were doing. It was quite amusing as various members of our party grappled with inquisitive museum visitors, imposing rule books, insistent apps, and duties of care to all concerned. I had taken a spot in the back, so all I had to do was smile, wave, and occasionally confirm that the day was indeed sunny, the displayed artifacts from another time, or that the visitor was quite right that the wind had picked up a bit as the day had worn on.
Day one came to a natural conclusion as the harried museum volunteers singly and in chorus reminded us of their closing time. Accordingly we headed off for dinner and a review of the day.
Following dinner I had the great pleasure of spending the evening with my old mate Nige (who also has editing rights to this blog) and his family in nearby Rarangi. We had a wine or two (we are in Marlborough, wine central, after all!), righted many of the world's wrongs, and listened to the correct music until my sofa bed was engaged around 1, 1:30, or 2, depending on which couch cushion you talk to. We had learned from last year and called it a night before 3am!
With a bacon sandwich and a couple of hot drinks in me I hit the road back to Picton Sunday morning for the Littoral Commander games.
Chase and I played the first Australia expansion scenario while Darryl and Richard did a scenario with submarines. This allowed all of us to get back into a Littoral Commander rhythm for the afternoon multiplayer game.
My People's Republic of China forces managed to give Chase's Aussies a bloody nose, but given we had forgotten to apply terrain modifiers in a crucial ground attack, the win was somewhat hollow. It was a scenario designed to familiarise players with the new 'dismounted' troops types. In this it succeeded, and Chase displayed canny tactics bombarding Port Moresby for victory points while I tried to find where he had hidden his men. In the other game Darryl lost a pair of Virginia class submarines to Iron Bottom Sound in a close-run fight that came down I believe to a last 50/50 die roll. I was too engrossed in our game to pay much attention to what was happening in theirs, I regret to say, but it was clear from the conversations that both games generated tense narratives and opportunities to reflect on strategy and tactics.
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| PRC units and the damage to Port Moresby's infrastructure from the Aussie bombardment. One group of the Australians has been found and dealt with, but where is the other? |
For the afternoon game Paul and Richard's PRC took on Darryl's Americans and Chase's Australians in a pure naval encounter with each player controlling three vessels each. The winner would be the side that best preserved its forces.
Both sides closed to visual range early: the PRC dangled one vessel as bait, and then struck the American taskforce with almost everything it had while the Australians looked on aghast. The allies faced 'interoperability' challenges (this added a negative die roll modifier to certain actions such as using Australian missiles to defend against incoming attacks on US ships) which the PRC exploited adroitly to give them the best chance to overwhelm allied defences.
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| PRC about to strike the Americans with missiles. |
Once the American strike power had been destroyed, the allies were reduced to calling in assets from other arms to support them, but it was not enough and the PRC was victorious 22 points to 10.
Day two was very good and it is to be hoped that next year will be just as enjoyable. Many thanks again to Paul for his generous hospitality and to the players for travelling to the event. It was for all of us the first opportunity to get Littoral Commander: Australia to the table and I look forward to exploring it further.
There was no official MVP this year, but if it were up to me Richard and Paul would share the honours.
It was good to meet up with some of the same folk from last year and nice to see hard evidence that there are other wargaming freaks around the country!
Thanks again to Paul. Until next time!
