Naval Game Stories

So I was in a new campaign being run by my local club. Sort of a victory at sea style campaign, where history doesn't matter so much as the fun. The world was a bit like strange real, where nations having 100+ battleships wouldn't be out of place.

Anyway, my main battlefleet is composed of three Nassau, two Helgoland, one Kaiser and one Baden Battleships. These are supported by Armored Cruisers and Cruisers.

In my first match, I was up against this guy, who is like the living embodiment of the masterwork katana meme. He thinks that the Kongo's armour belt was made of glorious nippon steel folded 1000 times. Anyway, we set out the pieces for the match. My fleet's objective was to defend a port (this guy was trying to capture mine). Now he spent a lot of money buying a ton of expensive boats, where I wanted to be able to lose a ship and not be out of the Campaign. Anyway, he lays out this small but modern fleet of Japanese ships. Two Kongo's, and a Fuso, backed by Heavy Cruisers (which for japan are minibattleships).

I know he has a range advantage over a lot of my early dreadnaughts, so I park them in an area where he can't see them. I put my two modern BBs front and center, with a screen of cruisers.

This guy comes charging in, and for some reason doesn't exploit his range advantage, closing to 20,000 yards. I lose an armored cruiser almost immediately to a Kongo, but my battleships weather hits well. Then my Bayern scores a hit on the forward turret of the Fuso at about 10,000 yards. The shell penetrates, and a few lucky rolls later, the front of the Fuso detonates with the fury of 1000 suns. The GM comes over when he hears 'Oh for FUCKS SAKE" from Otakusperglord. Guy starts trying to blame the rules system, saying that there is no way that a WW1 battleship could hurt a WW2 BB.

GG DM smirks a bit, and says, "You know the Fuso was just a slap dash re-armouring of a WW1 era ship right?" Otakusperglord is in shock.
Then rest of my fleet appears.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=dcL5bJuFw4A
gwpda.org/naval/jut01.htm
gwpda.org/naval/foeseyd.htm
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

As the smoking wreck of the Fuso sinks beneath the waves, my Nassaus and Helgolands appear from behind an island chain.

At 10,000 yards from the enemy heavy cruisers, it is almost too easy. 12 inch shells smash into the Japanese cruiser force, who launch a flurry of torpedoes in response, and shell the crap out of the flanking force, but they are out of position slightly. I lose a Nassau to Torpedoes but the rest miss, or fail to sink my ships. A lot of them have holes in them, but they are still floating. The Japanese cruisers though are suffering from the pounding, critical hits to their fire directors, waterline belts, and engines, mean they can't shoot, and they can't run.

The two Kongos start a turn away, but this throws off their gunnery. My Bayern stays the course, and dumps some 15 inch love on one of the Kongos, having no trouble punching through armor at 10,000 yards. The Kongo is set on fire, and loses most of it's secondary armament on the side facing my ships. The Kaiser scores hits on the other Kongo, knocking the command team out of action.

By turn five, the Japanese are running from my fleet. A few of the more untouched ships get away, but the stragglers suffer continual punishing fire from the plethora of long ranged guns.

By the game end, the port is safe, I am down a BB, with two almost sinking, and two armoured cruisers underwater. But my opponent lost a kongo, a Fuso, a myoko, and three furutakas. He has no real strength left at all, and actually asked the GM if he could get a do-over for the campaign, which was politely declined.

I'm really tempted to try and steal a port from him on the next campaign turn. I also had enough money to requisition another Kaiser, and to replenish my losses.

TL;DR: If you have a range and speed advantage, don't throw it away because your guns are 14% better then your opponents and you want a higher chance to hit him.

Remind him the British used a group of older ships to hunt down Germany's best. Even if the Bismark and Graf Spee were scuttled, out numbered they were heavily damaged by out dated ships.
Sure they took some out in the process as well.

It's still all about who can bring the numbers and get local superiority.


The only ship battles I can relate are those from sci-fi. I've only played Star Trek, Star Frontiers Knight Hawks, Battlefleet Gothic, Babylon 5 Wars, Jovian Chronicles and Full Thrust.

But ships are ships.

>Hunting Bismarck with Older Ships

Prince of Wales was so new, it still had electricians and machinists on board fitting it out while it was in combat...

Hood was definitely out of date though, much like the Kongo in WW2.

Rodnol was modernized, and was a damn fine ship, armoured and packing a big punch by WW2. Only real downside was her slow speed imposed by concessions to meet treaty limits.

But your general note is correct, the British were never outnumbered in WW2 against germany.

Naval games are criminally underappreciated, and I'd love to get into them if there wasn't an utter dearth of players where I live (here's hoping for the Battlefleet Gothic re-release...)

Please share anymore stories if you've got them. I love hearing gunnery shitters get btfo by the power of Krupp steel.

>He thinks that the Kongo's armour belt was made of glorious nippon steel

It's funny because the Kongos were glorified Lion-class battlecruisers. That "nippon steel" was Vickers Hardened.Those ships were about as Japanese as tea and the queen.

Well, I'll certainly have more to say later this month when we have our next meet.

I actually came to Veeky Forums for help choosing my fleet a few weeks ago. some grea/tg/entlemen helped me choose the Helgoland group, which did really well. I was worried about my lack of speed, so on my first turn I decided to play defensively, so enemies would have to come to me, rather then I hunt them down. I plan to get a squadron of Von Der Tann battlecruisers to add some speed, but that will depend on how the next game goes.

If you visit Japan's only battleship museum, you can see the Sheffield Steel logos on a lot of the structural beams, and the guns are all made in the UK.

I think the Kongo's were basically the Tiger class battlecruiser, but with a slightly larger gun. You are right though, a lot of Japanese naval know-how and firepower was just bought from the best, the british.

What wargame were you playing?

Also, you should give the Standard-type battleships a try. I mean, who doesn't like a nice consistent battle line?

Sounds about right

I considered going with the US, but I found I could get more heavy units with a german loadout. We also get bonuses for having a consistent fleet, so mixing and matching is useful, but you pay for it on a campaign basis.

I also didn't know much about boats at the time, but I'm now really interested in them, doubly so after my old ships pushed my opponents shit in.

I meant a force composed entirely of Standard-types.

However, I suppose you can't go wrong with a heavier force overall.

>Smoking wreck of the Fuso

Game is historically accurate at least.

That shouldn't be a surprise seeing as during WWI Japan was an ally of the US and UK. There was a falling out which made them enemies in WWII.

Just remember the 1904 battle the Japanese navy had with the Russians, and the Russians fared badly.

Technically he has a point: he *shouldn't* have lost with WWII era ships against WWI era. However he also misplayed his strengths, misunderstood his weaknesses, and brought a small attack force against numerical superiority.

tl;dr two forces that had no business winning the engagement throw down, and the one that's not led by a moron wins.

Russia sailed around the world to fight the Japanese, the ships were basically wrecked from the voyage, the Japanese just delivered the mercy shot.

The Kongo and Fuso are barely WW2 ships. They had some modernization done to them, but they weren't really WW2 capable. They were uparmored but still vulnerable to WW1 gun sizes, and the extra weight made the freeboard so low they probably would have sunk in anything other then the calm waters of the pacific.

>I park them in an area where he can't see them
How does ship detection work in this game? I'm trying to figure out if you can launch a spread of torpedoes into a bay without the other player counter-launching before you round the corner

I'd argue that no commander would waste torpedoes on a blind shot, especially if he doesn't know that any ships are located there. Torpedoes are inaccurate enough when you are firing at close range against a know target.

The Baltic fleet only set sail because the Pacific fleet, which didn't have to sail around the world, hadn't fared all that much better than the Baltic fleet would.

That thing looks like it has Bismark turrets on it?

What game is it?

Wait, Veeky Forums likes Naval Games?

Not exactly a naval story, but it's the closest one I've got.

So I like to play this really cool hex and chit wargame called World in Flames, this mega sized WW2 slugfest.


And one of the more important rules are the countermix.You only get so many infantry, armor, land bomber, etc. units that you can build, and you can't get them all at once. The Germans can't build Me-262s in 1939, but have to wait for the counters to enter the force pool, which usually happens in 1942.

Now, there are a few things you can do to accelerate individual chits entering the force pool (It gets complicated), if you're willing to shell out more money for it; it is theoretically possible to get say, jets earlier. And as a corollary to this, there are units in everyone's force pool, often very strong units, that enter in "naturally" after the game ends.

People, however, naturally wanted to play with these uber-tough late game units, and the company, ADG, eventually made some expansions, a couple of "Patton in Flames" scenarios (post 1945 WW3 of democracies vs Comunists) and they made this admittedly very silly scenario called America in Flames, which posits a long string of ever more improbable Axis victories, culminating in an attempt to invade America before the Americans develop the H-Bomb.

Historically, it's ridiculous, but it's actually quite well made, and a lot of fun to play.

Cont.

Anyway, a while back, my group wanted to try out AIF, and I wound up playing the Americans. You're strong, but long term you're outbuilt by the Axis, (not by as much as you might think though) so your long term prospects are bleak unless you can get the H-Bomb and win. You're also at the outset outnumbered in pretty much every field except atomics. The scenario we were playing, the U.S. has the Bomb, and the Axis don't.

Which ins't to say that the Americans are helpless. Transcontinental invasions are tough to pull off, and I was doing my damn best to play hit and run games with what was left of my fleet, and when he based his own too close to my shores, I would raid them in port with my land based planes. Often with nuclear weapons.

This had some deleterious political effects, since vaguely pro-axis Caribbean and south American nations take a dim view to me lobbing atomic weapons on their shores, which would drive them further into the Axis camp, but in the words of someone here on Veeky Forums when I was talking about the game in more general, it is a problem that can be solved with more nukes.

Anyway, the Germans based a BIG fleet up in Havana, with a brand spanking new aircraft carrier, the Sigfried. ( fantasy vessel). Almost as good as one of my Midway class carriers. I decided it needed a big bomb inauguration, and dispatched some B-29s to do the strike. Owing to the rather heavy fighter cover in the area, I sent the mission at night, which halved my effectiveness, but it's not like nukes lack for power.

I send the bombers.
He scrambles some fighters
The bombers clear through the fighters
They get shot at by flack
They release the bomb and run like frightened girls.
And then he pays the surprise points he had earned (complicated rules) to force the pick of the first target, who gets the brunt of the nuke.
Crap, I forgot he can do that.
We go through great risk and travail and the nukes themselves ain't cheap, to blow up the Tirpitz.

GOD DAMN IT.

Our GM built the game from a few other ones, including Victory at Sea, Naval Thunder, and Command at Sea.

It looks like the Bismark gun, but the Baden's guns were not the same. A lot of the turret was the same on the Bismark class, but the guns were a new design, not the least they were longer, and had a higher muzzle velocity.

Actually I have one more story. This was again me playing as the Americans, although this was a classic WiF game.

Anyway, America starts the game neutral. They're on the Allies side, so no counterfactuals where they join Germany, but they start off doing very little and gradually ratchet up how much they can help before officially entering the war.

Anyway, I was intervening in the pacific, but I was having trouble to get Congress to officially declare war. Japan was avoiding a Pearl Harborish situation, waiting for me to start the conflict. This forfeits a big surprise turn, but it means that I enter the war a bit later.

In the meantime, I had just passed an entry option that allowed for "Unrestricted naval warfare". I'm not really at war, I'm not going at a wartime production or anything, but on the water, I can attack and be attacked by any of the Axis navies.

Anyway, I send 3 cruisers, I think 2 New Orleans class and a Northhampton class (but it's been a while) to patrol around the South China sea, hoping to catch some Japanese shipping. He didn't have any actual warships with the convoys, but he did have the Kaga and an escorting cruiser out just doing search and patrol.


What I was really hoping for, and the odds were pretty good, was to catch the convoys before the Kaga caught my cruisers, sink a bunch of his shipping, and run home laughing. Instead, I got a VERY lucky set of search rolls, and wound up with a big pile of surprise points to spend, enough that I could target and kill the Kaga in a naval combat.

Bear in mind, this is the first ever combat between the USN and the IJN in this game. I always liked to think of it as the captain of the Kaga thinking.

>Oh hey, there are some U.S. vessels off over there.
>I"m sure they're just dick-waving, they wouldn't actually shoot at us.
>HOLY SHIT THEY'RE SHOOTING AT US.

Never actually did get those convoys, but I think the carrier was a better catch anyway.

>takes battlecruisers up against battleships and is surprised when he gets btfo
>angry weeaboo noises

ahahahahahahahahaha wow

>Helgolands appear from behind an island

...

From OP's description, you'd think the Fuso was his Waifu or something.

You did it, you preemptively saved America.

>Oh hey, there are some U.S. vessels off over there.
>I"m sure they're just dick-waving, they wouldn't actually shoot at us.
>HOLY SHIT THEY'RE SHOOTING AT US.

So basically like the French Fleet when facing off against the British at Mars El Kabir.

>waifu battleships

I thought this wouldn't turn up anything on GIS. I was wrong.

>Forgetting Rule 34

You fool!

Frankly I couldn't care less for the That Guy side of the story, but holy shit do I want to play that campaign. I feel grateful in that I have a solid historicals club and have participated in some good campaigns myself, but holy shit that sounds fun.

Could you share the rules please?

How do you anons get to know all this cool warship stuff? I'm lost.

Also, since this is a ship thread, do you anons think advancement in railgun technology and reactor miniaturization technology could being back battlecruisers, in the form of aegis battlecruisers? I don't even expect fully fledged battleships unless mentions of real life energy shields come in, but I'm just hoping.

This.
(These?)

>How do you anons get to know all this cool warship stuff? I'm lost.
I can't think of any of the manufcturers off the top of my head, try asking in the Historical Wargames General, /hwg/

No. I see similar ships to what we have now. Hell, the current ships ARE going to benefit greatly from railgun technology, even if they don't have a railgun. When they made the railgun's projectile, they found out something neat. With a few modifications, they could make versions for standard tube artillery. Thus, they're making a version of the HVP which can be fired out of every single 5" gun in the fleet. And then another that can be fired from any 155 mm gun in the military, including the Army's. While they don't have the range of the railgun, the range is a significant increase. On me Mk 45 mod 2, it's a 20 nmi range. For the Mod 4, which has a slightly larger barrel and I believe is more numerous, has a 40 nmi range.

>How do you anons get to know all this cool warship stuff? I'm lost.
Just a lot of reading.

Know, whoops, completely misread you.

Still, there's a heap of Ospreys in the /hwg/ OP, which are generally solid entry level guides mostly aimed at wargamers and military modellers.

Yes, we even had a forum game going once...it feel apart because of many reasons, including an entire fleet getting sunk at Skappa Flow because they didn't think to sweep for mines and netting... The retard players even ran to Veeky Forums and bitched that the GM was an unfair meanie poopoo head.

Thanks-

Again, it amazes me how people know all these stuff. I never read about these things in articles and such.
Regardless this was a great input.

Any recommendations?

youtube.com/watch?v=dcL5bJuFw4A

If you want to go the Battlecruiser Route, there's only one class you need to take - and that's the battlecruiser that just wouldn't die at Jutland:

S E Y D L I T Z

E

Y

D

L

I

T

Z

To be fair, even a modern ship would have been wrecked if it attempted that maneuver; range is the best form of protection.

>tl;dr two forces that had no business winning the engagement throw down, and the one that's not led by a moron wins.

exactly like in real life.

also gg OP

>Any recommendations?
Depends on what exactly you want. I've found the book "Rules of the Game" about the Battle of Jutland to be extremely fascinating.

One can not go wrong with the 15 volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War 2. Since that's a bit excessive, you could watch the series of documentaries known as Victory at Sea. It's a bit focused on just the USN in WW2, but it gives you a pretty good idea anyways.

If you want to learn anything about Japanese carriers, the book Shattered Sword is a must read. It is essentially a look at the Battle of Midway from the Japanese perspective, and is quite fascinating. Read it anyways.

There's all sorts of other books you could read as well. I'm just naming those because they're the ones I can see on my bookshelf from halfway across the room. Go down to your local library and start browsing.

>Again, it amazes me how people know all these stuff. I never read about these things in articles and such.
You just have to read the right articles. I started browsing /k/ about 5 years ago. By shifting through the bullshit (and there's certainly a lot of it to wade through) you can actually manage to pick up the basics. After that, there's a few places I watch. Part of my daily routine is going through a list of defense news websites, where I can pick additional information up. Then, read certain blogs written by those who know what they're talking about, and you get a pretty good background. Then, take your knowledge of history and apply it. Use your head to see how things have worked in the past and apply that to the way things are now. Then take that and apply it to find how things might work in the future. However, don't be afraid to admit you're wrong, and to listen to those who know more than you. That's a part of the learning process.

Well, like I said, the game itself is pretty abstract: I got enough surprise to force a naval combat instead of a naval-air, and to pick the Kaga as a target, hitting it hard enough to sink it without launching planes.

The they didn't expect us to actually shoot at them is a pat-hoc invention to come up with a narrative for an abstract combat result.

That game is actually still running, with some new fleets and some old ones.

There any RPGs that let the PCs all be on the same battleship and meaningfully contribute to a naval battle?

No reason in particular, just asking.

>about as Japanese as tea
>what is the tea ceremony
Silly user.

Space 1889 comes to mind if you like the old steampunk sci-fi.
But I only know sci-fi game with that RPG to ship elements. Star Frontier's starship game Knight Hawks characters can have skills if they're a part of the ship's crew, from gunners, pilots to the damage control and engineers.

Railguns are going to take a while but laser CIWS are where it's at.

>don't be afraid to admit you're wrong, and to listen to those who know more than you. That's a part of the learning process.
This is my normal attitude actually. You know, things like 'nothing's perfect, don't be afraid and keep fixin' forever'

What's wrong with nuking the Tirpitz? She was a damn fine vessel.

Aside from a nuke being a rather useless anti ship weapon.

Yes, but the Russian navy has always been a joke.

we have naval wargame generals here for a long time. Ended up playing Harpoon in roll20. Some of the most intense wargaming of my life.

Now most of us just lurk /hwg/

>. Ended up playing Harpoon in roll20. Some of the most intense wargaming of my life.
DOUBLE BLIND SUB BATTLE WITH NO OBJECTIVE OTHER THAN KILLING EACH OTHER. LIFE IS PAIN.

That was fucking amazing. I was one of the referees. Still some of the most intense and rewarding gaming experiences of my life. All to the Hell March from Red Alert on repeat

>Be about 5 years old.
>My Dad and one of his friends used to play this game called Scratch One Flat Top.
>I think it's a game about the Battle of Coral Sea.
>Double blind, a lot of searching, they had a big screen between two identical boards where they deployed their assets and searched for each other.
>Watching.
>Ask a few questions about how the game worked.
>Dad explains
>'Oh, so it's basically Battleship.'
>Dad gets mad.

Ahahahaha, you weren't even wrong

...

>I was one of the referees.
Same here, bro.

I just cant laugh hard enough to express my enjoyment of this post.

Damn OP, I like your style. Shows why command/quality of troops is so important (overlooked but important). Take your disadvantages and turn them into strengths. Don't interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Loved it, can't wait for the next battle report. Hope you sink that last Kongo.

>Harpoon in Roll20

I didn't know that was possible

As one of the guys who participated, it was definitely a challenge, but it sort of worked. You needed multiple refs if you wanted to do double blind, as you needed three "boards", all being updated to the exact same state. You had the two player boards, but you also had the ref board. Thus, you generally needed one ref per player. It was worse because we were all trying to learn the rules at the same time. Having dedicated software would have made it so much easier (the old Harpoon game as well as its spiritual successor, Command Modern Air Naval Operations, or CMANO for short, are godsends for this, but multiplayer is not really doable). If I had a chance to do it all again, I'd like to try having multiple formations on a given side, operating under EMCON, essentially radio silence, meaning that two groups on the same side couldn't necessarily communicate with one another over the horizon without revealing their positions. It'd be interesting.

Lots and lots of prodigious reading and memorization. Read through various warship class pages on wikipedia for general info and browse the web generally. Also, I recommend checking out the website for Avalanche Press, they make a fuckton of wargames and a number of historical and counterfactual naval wargames, and publish a lot of articles detailing historical information and warship details on the site as well.

Mostly what they were was overworked. Taking on a modern, purpose-built 16in battleship from any range wasn't what they were designed to do: that was what the Nagato and Yamato classes were designed to do. But lord knows the IJN couldn't be consistent and sensible even if they had the money and materiel, so yeah. Let's convert these battlecruisers to keep up with carriers rather than trade punches with the USN's new designs, then throw them into surface combat while our two 16in ships faff about. Great idea there, hope it goes well for you.

Anything more outdated than the Kongos and Nagatos had no business going into combat in any role though, aside from the fact that the IJN just didn't have enough hulls NOT to use them.

DRAUF SEYDLITZ!

Still love to read the accounts from her captain and one of her artillery officers, they're riveting.
gwpda.org/naval/jut01.htm
gwpda.org/naval/foeseyd.htm

Hey guys, can we join in? It's not like DW can sustain it's on thread these days.

I'm surprised nobody has set up a nice "double blind" online system where people can play whatever games. Ideally run by 1 ref

Another DW admiral, how rare! I'm currently looking for another fleet, since I'm getting tired of my Russian fleet. You see, playing a faction whose naval ordnance begins and ends at 406mm smoothbore guns gets boring after three years.

How are the covenanters nowadays? From what I've seen, they have a bit of everything but no particular strong points.

Drones got nerfed to shit, so now they struggle against big stuff. They're average to below-average these days.

Covenant can build a list to do pretty much anything if built well, but there are a few options that are auto include if you want to be competitive- Kepler-Aristotle squadron is pretty much the only non-DN threat to large models we have. Most of the carriers are terrible, as the drones got nerfed and the carriers increased in cost. They can do boarding, because everything except a few aircraft has Elite crews, but they have to be careful because their AP counts are pretty poor. That said, jumping the opposing Commodore's heavy Battleship with a squadron of Zenos often surprises.

Holy crapsticks, how the hell do I game with you OP? Naval warfare is fucking awesome, love big boats blasting each other to pieces!

This post is still going?

You are great elegan/tg/entlemen!

So our next moves are all in, and I'm pressing the attack on one of the ports controlled by the guy who's fleet got decimated.

I actually had enough victory points from the battle to get a second Bayern, and a Moltke. I am planning the assault with two Bayerns and the Moltke. The Kaiser, Helgolands and Nassau will be staying back at base to dissuade anyone from showing up. Cruisers are split up pretty evenly, but I got a few more interwar era destroyers for defense, since torpedo lines are a great detterent.

Some of the other happenings on the turn. One guy with Royal Navy ships fought his german opponent to a standstill. Another Japanese player edged out a narrow victory against the Italian focused fleet. The two American fleets shot mean glances at each other and conducted a fleet exercise, meaning they got to play a game against each other, but earned minimal victory points, but lost no ships or had repair bills. Was done mainly so they could play a game.

The other german player got three Kaisers to upgrade his fleet. The British got two Iron Dukes and two Neptune Battleships. My opponent next game got another Kongo, but that was about all he could afford since he earned so little from the loss. He didn't replace his cruisers to full strength, but there are two new Furatakas now. The other players haven't put in their purchases yet. But it looks like there is an arms war developing.

I think against two Kongos, my battleline should be ok.

Recall that the Furutakas were only designed to withstand 6in shells, and that many IJN escort and light capital ships were originally meant to make torpedo runs. If you can use your Bayerns and Moltke carefully you can probably draw his cruisers out away from the Kongos and shell the shit out of them before he even realizes what's going on.

Sounds a bit like Rule the Waves

I approve.

I also have armoured cruisers. One thing that the game I found models, is that if you have multiple ships shooting the same target, it gets progressively harder to score a hit. Apparently the shell splashes are hard to distinguish, so your gunnery teams don't know how to correct.

I think my main line will be on the battleships, but the Furutakas if they start to get close will take shots from my armored cruiser line.

>Iron Duke

25,000 tons of 'fuck you' to anything else on the seas those were.

That 13.5 inch BL was a damn fine weapon.

My favourite Royal navy story is that in 1936~38, they still wanted to put armoured prows on their warships. The KGV almost had a bow capable of ramming enemy ships.

Cool story, bro. I enjoyed reading it; not enough naval wargames and after action reports.

I fully expect OP to have a Scharnhorst after his next turn.

These are my German ships

This is literally mind boggling

i remember also reading that the kamchatka later got lost and fired a few hundred shells at civilian/merchantmen vessels of several other european countries

and somehow even just trying to leave morocco they somehow destroyed a communications cable for telegraph messages

>gwpda.org/naval/foeseyd.htm

And my Brittish fleet

How so?

On phone, maybe lengthy answer later, but a lot is the damage control descriptions and effectiveness while getting shot to pieces.

What game is this? As fun as building a 1:700 battleship set is it's not the most engaging of games.

I play either General Quarters 3 or Victory at sea.

Models are 1/3000 Navwar models (You need to order them by mail, not e-mail, mail)

Looks like 1:3000 to my untrained eye.

I'll make a suggestion, Last Square Miniatures has a huge range of 1:6000 ships, and they are really cheap. You can fight Jutland for 200 bucks. 1:6000 is really small, but there is enough detail on the models to pick out the different classes. It also has the added benefit of looking 'right' on the table. Victory at Sea is a good starter game for naval battles, Command at Sea is a higher level game but more detailed.

I love the Chinese Battleship!