Battlefleet 1900 Cruiser Clash

I see almost a month has slipped by without a post, so I made an effort to get some photos from a game Mike and I had last night.  It was just a simple Battlefleet 1900 game - I've played it before, but not for a long while.  My interest in pre-Dreadnought naval warfare is strong as ever, and Mike hadn't played this ever, so I thought it'd be a good chance to have a try.

I played the Russians (as in our recent Russo Japanese War campaign), using the cruiser Pallada and destroyer Zorki.  Mike opposed me with the Chitose and the Sai Yen.  In this case, my ships were bigger, faster, with a large number of small calibre guns and very poor armour.  Mike's ships were smaller, slower, with a single huge gun and much better armour.  We both had roughly equal tonnages, so the game was evenly-matched.

(Note to sticklers out there - the Sai Yen and Zorki were stand ins, as I don't yet have the models!)

My Russian ships at the bottom.  I had one tiny ship, and one (relatively) large ship, facing off against two moderately-sized foes.  Their guns would have been big on battleships, let alone these cruisers, which were designed as simple gun platforms.

The Chitose scores five hits to the vitals with this incredible set of dice rolls!

But the game turned round for me here.  Ganging up on the small ship allowed me to sink it with comparitive ease, using my higher speed (and lucky rolls) to run rings around Mike and avoid that nasty 13" gun.

The Chitose proved a much tougher nut to crack, and it was only a lucky torpedo hit which brought her down in the end.  The ships are all from Tumbling Dice's 1 : 2,400 range

My favourite!  The Pallada is a lovely ship, and well-suited to these sorts of engagements.  Lots of rapid-firing guns using HE is a sure way to whittle down the crews of larger ships.

 A word on the rules - as anyone who's ever played BF1900 will allow, they are fairly complicated to get your head round, and there is a lot of pencil-scribbling and logging of damage when the shooting starts.  For that reason, I only play small engagements of one or two ships.

I will say that I tried to adapt the rules for a super-fast play version (there are a couple of examples of these mods on the official website as well), but gave up once I realised I'd be losing the attraction of playing these super-detailed games.  Not one I'll be playing every week, perhaps, but one which will always be at the front of my mind whenever accurate and nail-biting pre-Dreadnought naval warfare games are called for.

That's all for now,

Ed