Battle of the Denmark Straits

When I attended Arnecon 2, I played in a game run by Griffith Morgan called "Fletcher Pratt". It was a very old big gun naval game built in 1937 that allowed you to play any and all pre-1945 naval battles. The rules are artfully simple and fun, without the need for dice and complicated tables to reference. Post convention I went out and bought a copy of the amalgamated rule book by John Curry called "Fletcher Pratt's Naval Game". 

After reading through the rules, I realized that I would have to scale it down to a more manageable size, as I did not have a Gymnasium to play in. In the end I used 1.5" = 1000 yards, and used oversized ships to give the game some visual style. I used the existing scenario of the Battle of the Denmark Straits and scaled it and set it up to a historical point in time 5:52am on May 24th, 1941. 

I invited 4 friends over and they split themselves up to command the Bismarck (John), Prinz Eugen (Norm), Hood (Mike) and Prince of Wales (Alan). They proceeded to play for approximately 2 1/2 hours and in the end:

The game is completely based on guessing the range to enemy ships then determining which guns are firing at what target. So congratulations to the Hood for getting the range spot on and concentrating all its fire for two turns on the Bismarck. The Prince of Wales did an good job of bracketing fire on the Prinze Eugen and adding to the Bismarck's damage. The Prinz Eugen suffered from the small guns and being unable to do large amounts of damage to either of the British Ships, while getting pummeled by their fire. 

Thanks to everyone for being great sports and making the evening as fun as it was.