Naval Thunder ,second game

Played our 2nd game of Naval thunder last night at the club ,this time we tried the rules for Battleships .We did a fictional encounter between the Royal Navies warspite and Valiant against Vichy France's Dunkerque and Bretagne . The Fench ships displayed some fantastic long range gunnery and while the British gunfire was terrible they did manage to knock 2 secondary turrets off the Bretagne and started a fire on the Dunkerque but the French damage control teams were just as good as their gunners and put the fire out before it did any real damage . The 2 British battle wagons had to (very slowly) leave the table only just managing to stay afloat . A great game the rules are fast play but are realistic and we are looking forward to trying out the aircraft and sub rules and bigger fleets before we begin our campaign .sadly i forgot to take any pictures but the Topside minis stole the show with the club members showing a lot of interest in them .

Naval Expansion -my new Topside Minis for Naval Thunder

Just recieved some more top side Minis for my proposed navl campaign ,these are just fantastic I did a game Sheffield War-games Society a few weeks ago and another club member was hooked so we split the P&P and Import duties . Another game tomorrow of Naval Thunder will post a AAR soon.

Royal Navy 

Merchants

More French

More Italians

Axis Merchants

all sorts of Air power

Battle of Cape Spada

Did my first proper game of Naval Thunder last night at Sheffield wargames Society ,we did the battle of Cape Spada scenario ,it almost was an accurate refight ,then things started going dramatically wrong for the Brits with some really poor shooting .The game ended with a British destroyer sunk ,one failing a command test and leaving and the Sydney clinging on for dear life flooding and listing badly ,luckily the remaining British Destroyers valiantly got in the way and some great gunnery saw one of the Italian cruisers disappear in a sheet of flame and the other on fire failed its command roll and left with its tail between its legs. The rules played brillliantly after turn 2 we were only refering to the rule book when the quick play sheet instructed us to .We both enjoyed it and so did then onlookers  and my Topside minis caused quite a stir as well ,getting a order together between some of us so we can split postage and import costs. A great night lots of fun and chat between the club members we  are going from strength to strength well done to our new committee .

set up at start of game 

The Australian cruiser closes in on the unsuspecting Italians who were busy chasing the destroyers about 

oops feet getting wet 

Naval Thunder -test game

I have my first game of Naval Thunder planned for this coming Wednesday at sheffield wargames society so thought I would have a quick play test to make sure I have at least the basic rules under my belt. I printed off data sheets for a battleship and cruiser for each side ,then set about a simple game which basically involved just shooting at each other .The rules are straight forward but pretty exciting  really enjoyed it and I am looking forward to the proper game on wednesday.

The ship data cards laid out with the appropriate Topside Minis ship s

Sheffield opens fire at medium range ,rolling 6 D10's ..and scoring 1 hit 

Damage rolled on 2 D10's =a score of 12

look it up on the chart

add the damage ,really simple most stuff just reads off the data card was playing without the rule book after 20mins or so .

Topside Minis -A Review

Ive been looking at moving my charity games for the British Legion into other spheres and thought of WW2 naval having found a great set of rules for the period (naval Thunder,see my earlier review) I started looking at the ships .I wanted to do the mediterranean theatre ,so looked at the 1/3000 scale minis which did the full range but some were just a small piece of metal that could have been anything ,the fantastic GHQ stuff didnt do every ship I wanted and the price was scary ,so I followed a link to topside minis site http://topsideminis.com and was impressed with what I saw ,cheap but colourful top view stickers that depicted ships in great detail and even ships in the same class are slightly different with deck colours or turrets being in different positions. Topside offer a free sample so I applied expecting a no sorry your at the other side of the world reply but no a sample popped through my door pretty quickly and it was nice a ww1sample not my period but still sold the idea to me .Topside must do every ship ,submarine and aircraft you can think of and even do battle sets containing everything for certain battles.The ships come with wooden bases included but to save money on postage Topside offer a 50% discount if you order minus the bases which I did getting some cut to size by warbases here in the UK . Having recieved my ships (despite the best efforts of Royal Mail ) I started to stick a few down it took me 25 minutes to cut out and stick down the Cape Spada set ,the stickers are easy to peel off and re-position if your a bit useless like me so dont worry about spoiling them . Each ship is in full colour ,with the name ,class and countrys flag shown for recognition ,scale is large about 1/1800 I believe .Got a ton of ships for less than 50% of the lead price even with import duties etc and these are so much easier to store and transport plus no painting or gluing together ,will be ordering alot more of these,  cant reccomend them enough really the only thing to do now is to to see how they fight .10/10

The free sample

Some of my Navies on the sheets ,easy to cut out and stick down

The Hood is huge 

Differences between vessels of the same class is nice touch

The cape Spada set on acutting mat so you get anidea of sizes 

Naval Thunder -Review

I have been looking for a set of WW2 naval rules for a while now ,I wanted something quick play but with some realism ,I read a couple of reviews of Naval Thunder by steel dreadnought games and took the plunge buying the main rules Battleship Row  and the Bitter Rivals `Supplement .
Battleship rules contain all the rules plus fleet lists for The USA and Japan plus some scenarios for these fleets ,the Bitter Rivals introduces the fleets for Germany ,France ,the UK and Italy and again suitable scenarios plus a couple more for the US-Japan forces.The rules are only available in down load PDF's but when you buy them you get a link to a data base of printable ship cards as well . The rules are nicely laid out and seem simple to follow with movement and firing done by ship type ,battleship then cruisers then destroyers  so the smaller vessels have chance to react .Aircraft and submarines are dealt with off table to represent attacks made before the surface actions which seems realistic . All die rolls are done on aD10 .
There are lots of additional rules so you can make the game as complex as you wish including crew quality ,faulty torpedoes ,smoke screens and friendly fire. I really ike the look of these and plan to get my fleets launched as soon as possible and will then do a more in depth review .
The main rule book is 67 pages including scenarios for Komandorski Islands and 2nd Guadalcanal ,you also get sheets of counters and pre printed play sheets and rostas and aircraft attack sheets and some data cards . Bitter Rivals 43 pages including scanrios for the river plate ,North Atlantic,Denmark Straights,Sink the Bismarck Barents Sea,Operation Catapult ,Calabria,Cape Spada,Cape Spartivento,Savo Island,Cape Esperance,1ST Gaudalcanaland Empress Augusta bay ,all scenarios have force lists ,maps and special rules.Again some data cards are included .