So after an impulse (Read "Drunken eBay") buy I've ended up with a load of 1:2400 ships. (16 Japanese and 26 American.) Any recomendations as to a half decent ruleset that leads more towards fastplay fun rather than in depth tactical simulation?
Or shall I just stick them back on eBay?

I have been looking at this topic myself and will get back to you.

I've come across General Quarters 3. Seems to tick the right boxes and scores well enough on BGG, $30 for digital version, I could maybe stomach that.
Into rules here.

General Quarters does seem to be 'the' set of rules. I was thinking that they were a bit too complex.

I've played "Victory at Sea", it's not overly complicated as far as I can remember.

Victory at Sea, and the World War 1 version (Clash of Dreadnoughts, I think it's called) are not very complicated, and are quite good 'games'. I would have my doubts as to whether they're any good as historical simulations though. This is not intended as a criticism of the rules, just pointing it out, since some people prefer a more historical set. I quite like them for a fun game. The other side of the coin is indeed rules like General Quarters, but they can be fiendishly complicated. Like many periods, 20th Century Naval games struggle between 'accurate' and 'fun'.

Personally, given the ranges involved in World War 2, I'm not confident it can be done right on a table without a whole load of strange spatial assumptions.
For instance - HMS Warspite is credited with scoring a hit at approximately 26000 yards, or 13 nautical miles. That wasn't her maximum gunnery range (from memory, the modernised 15" gun mountings on British battleships in combination with some clever new aerodynamic shells were good for 32-33000 yards). For the last generation of Dreadnought Battleships, ranges in excess of 35000 yards were possible. That sort of thing is hard to do on a table top, even with a 1:3000 scale model.
It gets even worse when you include carriers and airyplanes. Most of the naval warfare in the Pacific was done without either Admiral seeing any of the others ships, just plenty of his planes.
All of which is why I prefer World War One. Only 2 dimensions to worry about for a start.
Very little to worry about in terms of aircraft, submarines are pretty much a static problem you may or may not run across, gunnery ranges are not as obscenely long, and most importantly, the Dreadnought Battleship rules the waves.


Good luck finding a good set of WW2 naval rules. Please tell me if you manage

With regards ranges, didn't Fletcher Pratt advocate playing on the floor?
Might pick up his (Reprinted.) set of rules from the History of Wargaming Project. I believe they have been well recieved.

I have been playing a lot of General Quarters 3 at the moment.

They have a good feel with not too much minute detail to bog it down without being overly simplistic. You can pick them up very easily in an hour or so gaming.

In a four hour session at the club the other day we played both the Battle of the Bismark Strait and the Battle of the River Plate to a conclusion, these both have a total of four ships 2-2 and 3-1 respectively.

We also played the Battle of Empress Augusta bay (12 USN vs 10 IJN) to a conclusion in three hours during a recent session.

If anybody fancies a game of General Quarters 3 down at Maelstrom let me know and I'll run you through the rules.

We play over two tables at Maelstrom, with two 4ft tables with a 3 ft gap you can start 11ft apart which equates to about 33000 yards in General Quarters which is the most extreme range band and requires spotter aircraft. During our recent Denmark Strait Game we had a total of four 6ft x 4ft tables with a total of four models on the lot of them
There are lots of surface engagements during WWII in the Pacific, look specifically at the engagements in the Battle of the Java Sea and the Guadalcanal campaign. I'm just painting up the ABDA force now.

Here is the recent Empress Augusta Bay forces that I did:





It only worked out at about £20.00 for both fleets from Navwar and there are three spare cruisers and four spare destroyers for the Japanese in there too.

He did indeed. His rules were quite popular in the interwar period. I believe he used to use Ballrooms and gymnasium floors to stage some rather large battles.

If you really want old school, and you can find them, early versions of Janes Fighting Ships had a copy of Mr Janes rules. They're not that difficult to find (yeah, right), I have a 1970's reprint of the 1906 book!

Why did you leave 2 ships out?



A lot of those Pacific surface engagements took place at night though, and the later part of World War Two in the Pacific (actually, from post Midway) has a sort of grim inevitability about it. The Japanese are simply doomed - it's only a matter of how long.

Nice work on the fleets, btw.

I am willing to make those spatial assumptions (scale of models does not have to match scale of game).



I agree. I have been doing some reading on naval actions in WW2. The carrier actions get the headlines but plenty of small surface engagements out there, Heavy cruisers are one of the unsung heroes of WW?

Some people are, some are not. The WW1 rules I have used use the base size of a 1:3000 scale warship (around 3") as the space taken up by two actual warships. Real ships didnt sail quite so close as you see in some games. Even then, and with gunnery ranges being at a maximum of 20000 yards (and that's optimistic), I've always played those games on the floor



Heavy cruisers if it's the US Navy - Light cruisers this side of the globe

I think as wargamers we already make a lot of spatial assumptions, unless we play nothing but skirmish games, we are used to figure ratios etc to get games to fit on the table. (Look at FoWs exponential scaling.) So that wouldn't be hard to swallow. I think after having a look about and with scrivs recomendation GQ3 it will be. (Found seakreig but at $80 and half the stuff on CD maybe it's a bit too much for what I want.)
Now have to persuade the LGS to turn the 8'by12' into a sea table.

Norfolk and Suffolk were miles away and took no part in the engagement but did shadow the Bismark afterwards. We could have played on even more tables and had them steaming towards the action.

The early stuff around the Java Sea and Guadalcanal has a lot of very interesting scenarios. The Indian Ocean Raid gives a lot of good 'what if's' too.

Thanks, they are a doddle after 28mm Napoleonics

All the more reason to include them. 'What if's' are the lifeblood of wargames
And in this case 'miles away' equates to 'just far enough away for KM Bismarck not to be bothered opening fire'. I believe they remained in visual contact througought the engagement, and a County Class Cruiser was certainly faster than KM Bismarck.



Might I also recommend 'it was a bit foggy, and the Japanese aircraft couldn't find HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse' or they actually did bring a carrier with them like they were supposed to - whatever. End result is that they don't get sunk, and close with the fleet about to invade Malaya, which was being covered by 2 'Kongo' class Battlecruisers/fast Battleships (take your pick), IJNS Kongo and IJNS Haruna, I think. I'd assume a couple of Japanese heavy cruisers and a few destroyers would be there too. That would have made an interesting engagement.

Well I have ordered GQ3.
And Mr Janes rules and Mr Pratts rules from the History of Wargaming project. Hopefully that'll keep me going for a while.

Now has anyone any tips for painting little ships so you can tell the fleets apart at a glance? Is base labeling acceptable, or frowned upon as "You should know your silhouettes."

That will keep you busy!

As to basing, whilst I do know the silhouettes, I have the problem that whilst I'm a bit of an anorak for old Warships, my opponents generally aren't, so I find labelling the bases to be most helpful. I usually put a small ensign in one corner of the base too - name on the Port Quarter, ensign on the Starboard.

I don't put names on the tops of the bases, but I put a numbered label on each base and a corresponding number on the ship record.

Underneath the base I write the ship name.

To re-iterate how simple these rules really are, tonight Greg and I were playing the Battle of the Java Sea - over 32 ships from five different navies needing 4 different national characteristics sheets.

On turn 7 we had a query and I decided to check out the rule book - I'd forgotten to bring it. Not bad to get in seven turns of gaming without even needing a rule book.

We have probably played no more than half a dozen games of this previously.