The Doomed Convoy

Had a solo game of Snorkers! (Good Oh!) last night. Another attempt at a convoy scenario. This time a British convoy being ambushed by Italian light forces.

The Regia Marina had 6x Soldati destroyers in two flotillas, and 6x Spica torpedo boat/escort destroyers in two flotillas. Each flotilla diced for random arrival around the end of the table.

The Royal Navy had 2x K class and 1x G class destroyers as convoy escorts.  There was also a cruiser squadron as a Covering Force consisting of 2x Town class and 1x Dido class CLs. 

Each fleet came in at 240 points and 20 Force Morale (before the deduction to Force Morale for the merchant ships).

Spicas making a high speed approach. Soldatis coming in from corner. Cruisers wheeling to cover convoy 

 

Lead torpedo boat pinned by a searchlight and smashed by gunfire 

Remaining Spicas dodge around the flaming wreck and launch torpedoes but miss

The convoy has changed course, hoping to get some cover from a fog bank and avoid oncoming Italians. A flotilla of Soldati rushes in for a torpedo attack sinking 3 merchant ships!

HMS Sheffield and Glasgow move in and sink all three destroyers with a combination of guns and torpedoes. HMS Cleopatra is hanging back to engage the Spicas.

The second flotilla of Spicas, hiding until now in a fog bank, dash forward to launch a daring torpedo attack! 1 merchant explodes. The other 2 torpedo spreads miss.

The Convoy Escort destroyers have pounced on the daring torpedo boats, sinking one, crippling another. But the Second destroyer flotilla, which had been hanging back, changes course to port and weaves between the remains of the First Torpedo Boat flotilla to intercept and torpedo the remaining merchant ships. By the time the British can turn around and enage them they will have disappeared into the night.

And so ended my fourteenth game of the year, with a stunning Italian victory. The British escorts took very little damage, but lost the entire convoy. The Italians lost 3x of their destroyers and 5x of their torpedo boats (3x sunk, 2x crippled). Although the one survivor may not escape from the middle of the British force!

After my last game with Brett and Dan I asked the designer Philip for some clarification on the torpedo rules and it turns out I had been too generous with the "best torpedo arc" template positioning, resulting in a lot of undesrved +1 DRMs. Consequently, there were more torpedo misses this game. A heavy swell and rolling an appalling number of 1s and 2s didn't help either. Fortunately for the attacker, the merchant ships are +2 to hit and +3 on the Critical Hit table.

I may in the next game move the convoy off table, and the attacker will need to get a certain number of ships off the defender's edge with a certain number of torpedoes still onboard. My reasoning being that expending all of your torpedoes to defeat the screen and then have nothing left to sink the convoy doesn't do you any good.

I also note in the rules that Italian and British torpedo bombers can be used at night, which will add a fun dimension once I get some Italian CANT Z.506 or SM 79 torpedo bombers printed.