blinds?

[bignormww]

Ahoy mateys!
I’ve just bought the rules and as I wait for a friend to return from salute with my ww2 ships a couple of things occur to me. One of which is the use of blinds, does anyone do this? You’d have blinds in 3 sizes - light cruiser/destroyer, heavy cruiser/battleship, merchantman/carrier (Rodney?). The smallest would be, say, 2cm x 4cm. All would be numbered and you’d have a sheet showing the player whats what. Blinds would be replaced by the actual ships when within gun range. Forcing players to reveal blinds is another job for observation planes.
This would give situations where you have the Graf Spee and you can see 3 blinds approaching. Destroyers or cruisers? You think they are destroyers so steam forward…

 

[DM]

...not that Langsdorff thought he was facing destroyers, of course

Its a good idea. I've used it extensively in campaign games over the years. It sure takes the wind out of your sails during a Guadalcanal game if thr target you assume is the Kirishima turns out to be the Nagato!

 

[juggler69uk]

May work well for sub detection and hidden movement too

 

[Ben2]

I like this idea. Have you thought of writing it up and submitting it to S&P or Matt?

 

[DM]

I have a "fog of war" article that I wrote a few years back that I could dust off and revise with an MGP slant I guess. Would anyone be interested?

 

[juggler69uk]

I have a "fog of war" article that I wrote a few years back that I could dust off and revise with an MGP slant I guess. Would anyone be interested?

Yes, especially if subs are included

 

[DM]

I do have an advanced submarine variant that covers this sort of thing as well.

 

[juggler69uk]

I do have an advanced submarine variant that covers this sort of thing as well.

Really is it on your site ?

 

[Leadman]

DM,

I defintely would like to see something along these lines included as part of the supplement or at least an S&P article.

Dannie

 

[DM]

Really is it on your site ?

No, it appeared in the SFSFW journal "Ragnarok" a few years back.

 

[juggler69uk]

Really is it on your site ?

No, it appeared in the SFSFW journal "Ragnarok" a few years back.

Then if you still have it could you post it ?

 

[DM]

It was a fairly generic piece. I'll spruce it up and "VAS" it then post it somewhere soon.

DM

 

[juggler69uk]

It was a fairly generic piece. I'll spruce it up and "VAS" it then post it somewhere soon.

DM

Cheers

 

[Ben2]

Definitely do it.

You've now got me thinking about Guadacanal on a big table with people not knowing what they are up against.

I would involve changng the movement/shooting from inches to cm but it is doable on a big table in such a way that you could have seperate task groups.

Thats got me thinking now.

 

[Arleigh_Burke]

I ran a campaign night battle in the Slot that was very similar to Guadalcanal III OOB.

Since the US had SG radar, I painted up generic ships in glow-in-the-dark green and the Japanese maneuvered these replacement miniatures until they were lit-up by searchlights, star-shells, or aerial dropped flares.

For searchlights, I had pre-cut lengths of white ribbon reflecting illumination range. The game ran very well, with generic radar contacts moving down the table toward the USN. The US players did not have to place any ships on the table until the IJN closed to night-visual range. It was a very entertaining game, and USN FC radar won the day.

This was several years ago using another game system, but would work in VaS just as well.

--A.Burke

 

[squiffy]

DM that would be excellent! It would be perfect for my VaS Campaign.

Have you been playing IABSM then bignormww?

 

[bignormww]

yes indeed! but other games use blinds as well. anything that adds uncertainity is good in a game (and keeps the umpire amused as well!)

 

[Alexb83]

Blinds would be brilliant - one of the annoying things about playing bad weather games/night-time is that well... you can see everything on the table, and hence metagame.

Oh look up the Surigao Strait, Admiral Nishimura - best not sail up that one :S

Blinds could be allocated to friendly ships that move out of certain ranges of each other, too. At Guadalcanal, the Washington had to refrain from firing on a large radar target (the Kirishima) because it could not distinguish her from South Dakota, until the Dakota was sihlouetted by burning destroyer wrecks.
Arguably this only transpired because the South Dakota had been lost in a radar blindspot and Dakota's radio (and everything else) were out.

So maybe it's not such a good idea...

 

[Evil Trev]

This can be taken further, in that a Task Force marker (title nicked from SPI's Dreadnought boardgame, can be used, until the force can actually be identified. A large blip on radar at night could not easily be identified, and even radios were not that good at this time. The large blip could be half a dozen destroyers, 2 cruisers or 1 capital ship. This also relates back to a query I had on when you can shoot at a target for the first time when you have radar. Radar lets you know something is there, but even the rules have a line in them that infers you still cant shoot at them until you have at least seen them. However you can continue to shoot at them when they move back out of sight, as now you know who they are.

Blinds, Task Force or Sduadron markers, does it matter what they are called? They would make the game more "historical", and after all we all want to play a game based on history! Dont we?

Trev