Coronel 1914
Germans (Byron & SteveJ)CA Scharnhorst
CA Gneisnau
LC Nurnburg
LC Dresden
LC Leipzig
Brits (MarkO, Dylan & Barrie)
CA Good Hope
CA Monmouth
LC Glasgow
LC Otranto
CA Defence *
* Defence wasn't actually there, but was on the way. We did the what-if scenario where the British commander acted sensibly and waited for reinforcements rather than charging the winners of the Kreigsmarine's shooting trophy in heavy seas that rendered half the guns on his obsolete & outnumbered ships unusable. The predreadnought B Canopus was also coming, but she was so slow the Germans would never have let her at them.
The Germans split their force - the CAs took on the Brit CAs while the LCs tried to go around theri rear. The Brits used more simple tactics, putting a LC in front & another in the rear of a single column. The German made the mistake of closing in so the benefit of their superior gunnery control was lessened. With an extra heavy ship & distinctly better dice the Brits soon started to hurt the Germans CAs. Steve's LCs were too far off to be hurt, but the Brit CAs copped a pounding from the Germans secondaries. The pic shows the Gniesnau & Scharnhorst taking on the whole Brit fleet while Steve's LCs are off on fancy manoeuvres.
The Germans CAs turned away making smoke as did the Brit LCs. Steve's LC went in pursuit of the wounded Brit LCs as the Brit CAs circled between trying to get shots off between all the smoke screens.
Steve managed to sink the Glasgow, but not before the Liepzig was made a mess of. But while the Gnienau, Scharnhorst & Liepzig were all badly damaged, their speed was not affected and they made made their escape.
Both sides claimed victory. The Brits lost a ship. The Germans were severely mangled and a long way from home. A draw is probably a fair assessment.
The rules were made for Battleship actions and haven't been tried for cruiser actions before. The umpire was also a bit rusty - it's been 4 years since we last used them. They worked ok, but could use a bit of fine tuning for this sort of scenario. Probably best to have a sub-set of rules for Cruiser actions, rather than try to make the rules cover everything.
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