From: "Louis R. Coatney" Subject: ROCK CON After-Action Rpt: British beat Japanese! Well, I got 0 hours of sleep Thursday night and 3 hours of sleep Friday night -- getting ready -- and got to ROCK CON (in Rockford, Illinois) in good time on Saturday morning. The gaming area was large and noisy, with the dealers at one end. I discovered that my table for SKY, SEA, AND *JUNGLE* was ROUND! Boardgame play was impossible, so ... I set up the game, and then set up BARBAROSSA FILE, to study the historical game-start. People dropped by, interested in my cardstock model( ship)s at first, usually, and then progressed to looking at the game art ... and then finding out about the games. I discovered that I had left the 1ST ALAMEIN units back in Macomb ... of course ... so left after a few hours, to find a copy shop. The cardstock I photocopied the o/b onto was so heavy it was like thin cardboard ... and later I folded the corners down to make the pieces easier to pick up, so things worked out. I also dropped by Rockford's compleat Royal Hobbies (store). That afternoon, I ran a "Naval Action" game of THE RESCUE OF THE BISMARCK ... only to discover that I had left half of the ship status sheets back in Macomb, too! AAAAAAARGH!! I did have SHEFFIELD & RENOWN (Force H) and DORSETSHIRE and 4 Tribal class destroyers ... as well as the BISMARCK/PRINZ EUGEN sheet, so we played an ersatz scenario of S&R having "They Shall Not Pass" orders, with D and the DDs racing to catch up and close in for the kill when B and/or PE was damaged. (After we had set up, I remembered that RESCUE OF THE BISMARCK is one of the scenarios in the Naval Action rules sets, but we had become interested in seeing how this scenario would turn out, so didn't pirate one of the NA copies.) My old friend Jim Beck ... who bears much of the credit/responsibility for me finishing my "Naval Action" rules, because he gave me a copy of Morison's Java Sea volume in return for the promise that I would finish up NA and reserve a copy for him ... commanded BISMARCK. Alan Sch., a prime-mover in the mushrooming! Wisconsin naval wargaming group, had PRINZ EUGEN. Paul P. had RENOWN and SHEFFIELD, and I had the D/DDs. Basically, RENOWN and SHEFFIELD proved little more than speedbumps-at-sea for B and PE, which sank them, respectively. There should have been *some* damage on the Kriegsmariners. DORSETSHIRE was firing stern- chasing 8" salvoes at PE every turn, but ... nothing! :-I Anyway, Alan -- at Rock Con only on Saturday -- is interested in trying out Naval Action as a simpler/faster game system for large fleet operations games. Saturday evening, everyone was tired, and I played an almost-relaxing game of 1st ALAMEIN with Ray, who is a long-time gamer about my age. Ray seemed to like to set games up, rather than play them. (In a noisy, crowded convention hall serious boardgame play *is* difficult.) He is a very slow, thoughtful player, and it was an unusually long game. To get better odds on an early counterattack, I sortied 18. Indian Brigade out onto the desert, alone, from the safety of my Deir el Shein box. Ray *immediately* pounced upon and destroyed it. Consumed with revenge, I threw my armor against a couple of similarly exposed Italian infantry divisions, teetering on the brink of the Qattara Depression escarpment, but couldn't push them on over. Ray then immediately smashed into my center, and everything went downhill from there. He won in the 9th turn and seemed pleased with himself ... having successfully completed a game ... but then told me he prefers The Gamer's games for their greater historical detail. OK. :-) I overnighted with my brother and his family, and then made it back to Rockford by 1PM on Sunday, to run THE BATTLE OF THE MALAYAN SHORE. (Something neat: My 8 yr old niece has to bring someone to class she thinks will interest her classmates, and she chose me ... or rather, my games and models, tales of Alaska, etc., etc. :-) ) We had our own room, off in the back, and 3 guys from Freeport, Illinois, were keen to find out what 1:700 models on the floor are like. I had PERTH and the destroyers. Joe had PRINCE OF WALES and HOOD. Ed F. (who had been a deadly destroyer captain in a Naval Action tabletop game of mine at Rock Con, 2 years ago) commanded HARUNA, KONGO, and the Japanese destroyers, while Ron conned heavy cruisers ATAGO and TAKAO. While we kept our ships together, Ed had the Japanese destroyers off to our left, and the cruisers and battleships together on our right. Joe and I cut to starboard ... east, that would be ... and tried a top-speed end-run. To our astonishment, the Japanese battleships and cruisers turned in separate columns toward us ... to close the range and increase the chances of hitting and penetrating ... but giving us a *double*-T to cross: TT ... instead of angling gently toward us, to maintain their full broadsides. After Joe slowed HOOD and PRINCE OF WALES to optimal shooting speed, he began registering hits ... damaging KONGO. With the Japanese destroyers playing catch-up, I turned PERTH and the DDs toward the Japanese cruisers and battleships. ATAGO was hit hard by HOOD and slowed with heavy damage raging out of control. Ron fired off the cruisers' first load of torpedoes, but my bold turn proved fortuitous, and I dodged them completely. (They did travel perilously close to the Japanese battleships.) Within a turn, JUPITER ... which had miraculously survived multiple secondaries' gunfire from the cruisers and battleships ... "shot its wad" ... of both 5-torpedo spreads ... at the heavy cruisers. Ron had disregarded *British* torpedoes, and TAKAO was passing crippled ATAGO *just* at the junction with JUPITER's torpedoes! :-) :-) :-) :-) :-) ATAGO was hit by 3 torpedoes and went down like a ROCK. :-) ... but TAKAO collected only 1 of the torpedoes left in the spreads. The next turn, my cruisers and destroyers passed TAKAO at point-blank range. Hitting was continuous, but penetration was nil. And then TAKAO smashed back with its full 10-gun-broadside of 8" guns. My pet PERTH, was *O B L I T E R A T E D* ... to the Japanese' great glee. :-I At least I wasn't torpedoing/sinking my *own* ships, this time, though. The next turn, ELECTRA fired her 4 torpedoes ... to no avail ... but TAKAO's damage *worsened*. (By contrast, HARUNA's heavy damage had been repaired back up to damage, and we kidded Ed about stealing the best damage control officers in the fleet from Ron's cruisers. :-) ) The difference in British and Japanese damage control performance ratings may have *seemed* slight ... during the pre-game instructions ... but they proved critical in the battle itself. The following turn, 1 of EXPRESS's torpedoes scored another torpedo hit on TAKAO, plus T's damage then "worsened" ... terminally ... for the final time. That left HARUNA to handle both PRINCE OF WALES and HOOD ... and thus it was done. "HOOD blew up. It just ... blew up!" -- see the movie :-) -- and then HARUNA and POW began bludgeoning each other. It was approaching the convention-closing hour of 5PM, and so ... after 9 turns in about 3 hours ... we called a halt. Basically, POW was in no condition to proceed to the Japanese transports and *was* in danger of being run to ground ... or bottom, anyway ... by the Japanese destroyers ... depending on whether or not the British destroyers' weaker gun armaments could have prevented that. (TENEDOS only sported *two* 4.7" guns! It may be lucky for the crews/survivors, historically, that those Japanese torpedobombers *did* take POW and REPULSE down where they did, so the crews could be rescued.) I called it a tactical(-only) victory for the British. Everyone seemed satisfied with the course of play, and I hope to be sailing with/against Freeporters again ... maybe against the Wisconsin Admiralty? We then all rushed to get out on the highway and home, with snow flurries and the prospect of much worse on the way. That night, I whipped off a 1:700 cardstock destroyer escort hull in about an hour and a half -- MUCH easier than 1:300 -- in celebration of another convention completed. I may take a game design break and do some more ships -- BENHAM (16 TTs) class DDs and ASTORIA class CAs -- now. On the other hand, I have this *neat* Leyte Gulf design in mind ... Rock Con is excellent and will be held next year on Halloween and Nov. 1st. Lou Coatney, mslrc@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu www.wiu.edu/users/mslrc/ (For your *free* 1st Alamein lunch-hour boardgame and cardstock model BUTLER class destroyer escort plan).