Club Night 25th November

Steve K and I dusted off his copy of Victory at Sea for some WW2 Naval combat. We decided for a change to pick fleets using the points system and play a standard scenario and see how it went. I continued my love affair with the Italians and took a battleship, a trio of cruisers and a destroyer squadron. Steve took the British and decided to try out a carrier, with some cruisers and destroyers in support.

Our game quickly focused on just one flank of the table, I think mainly as we were sitting nearer that end and wanted to keep our forces concentrated. I sent my destroyers steaming out ahead and tried to close to torpedo range. The first shots were exchanged to little effect. Meanwhile overhead my spotter plans were easily despatched by the massed British fighters and these then moved on to escort the torpedo bombers in.

By now my destroyers were in among it and the cruisers of both sides began to exchange fire, with the Italians having the better of it. The my Battleship came into action. In one massive salvo (with more 6's in one dice roll than I have see from my for quite a while), I changed the landscape of London, by sinking HMS Belfast. It then began to deteriorate for the British.

They lost another cruiser to combined gunfire and torpedo attack, and most of their destroyers were lost as well. I managed to weather the aircraft strike. This HMS Illustrious and a surviving destroyer against the majority of my battle fleet so they turned and fled, while I hunted down and sunk the last British cruiser.

A decisive victory for the Italians, with my Battleships opening salvo being almost as noticeable as yet another set of shocking dice rolls from Steve.