If the answer is 7725 miles, what is the question?

I watch films while I'm painting etc, usually old war films cos, well I'm sixty now so each viewing of The Battle of Britain could be the last :-)

I found Sink The Bismarck! on youtube so watched that, and the algorythm started pushing Bismarck related stuff at me, of very mixed quality. 

So I started reading some books, and listening to audiobooks too. Why not do a game? It's only a few models afterall and I can print them so I got on with it. I chose 1:1800 because my eyes are less sure than they were in my youth, and also it matches the Warlord Victory at Sea (VAS) models. 

Rules - I fell out of love HARD with Nimitz by Sam Mustafa. The rules are great, the campaign system looks sound too. Problem is the much acclaimed writer \ author made a design decision about where he drew the line with secondary armament so created a situation where some ships shoot twice as often as others of similar class - so 5" class as secondary armament but 4.5" dont. This basically screws any ship with sub 5" secondaries and totally screws scenario balance too. It's a designer decision, and it can be corrected by users, but to do so is a LOT of work that I'd rather not do.

General Quarters - I have 1 & 2 and as far as I am concerned the series stops there. They're a benchmark for larger games but a smallish scenario like Denmark Straights lacks depth (geddit?).

So Victory at Sea. Warlord did their usual sub optimal job on balancing points for ships, but the rules are solid, and work well in scenarios. Also if I'm at our club there's a better chance of netting new players if the rules are available easily and the shp stocks Warlord, so VAS it is.   

Problem is, the historical events of Denmark Straights is almost impossible to recreate without putting a very heavy thumb on the scales of balance. Unless Hood suffers a rather rare but devastating critical hit early on as happened in real life the Germans will either lose, or will be so badly beaten up that they turn for home.

However, a far more interesting scenario (thanks to the reading) is what happens after Hood explodes and the Royal Navy shadows the Germans. So I thought I'd try that - Prince of Wales and the two County Class cruisers against Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, with German objective being to disengage Eugen. I'll write the scenario up another time if I can, but that's not what this post is about.

Having printed out Hood, Prince of Wales, Norfolk, Suffolk. Bismarck and Eugen, I thought , well, why not Vians night attack? I printed some Tribal Class DDs and N Class - some = at last one more than actually needed in case there was a partial print fail. If I use Prince of Wales as King George V and print a Rodney I can pretty much do the Bismarck's Last Stand!

Hmm - the models are nice. I could do a Berwick v Hipper in that convoy clash. 

How about River Plate ? Only four ships. Printer says whrrrr. 

Now I have Exeter what else can I use it for? 

Java Sea! 

So I now have a Japanese Fleet, and Rob and Mark have been roped in to paint the ABDA ships we need.

I'm enjoying painting and designing the scenarios and we are looking at doing Java Sea as a demo . Maybe :-)

So the question is , how far is it from the Denmark Straights to the Java Sea?

Pics next time

Possibly

Cheers!