Fire in the North - Shipwreck Testgame 1: Picket Duty

Had a short test of the Shipwreck rules lastnight (purely on paper so no piccies I'm afraid), put a Dutch Van Speijk class on picket duty, with a Sovremmeny roughly 80 nautical miles out and closing. Weather was bad, fog and rain, so the helos stayed on deck.

First few turns were uneventfull, with the Sov closing on the Van Speijk. Van Speijk then lucked out with a spotting roll and noticed the Sov and went on active radar. She then fired 4 Harpoons at Long range which would arrive in 3 combat turns. But turning her radar on meant that the Sov had an easier time spotting her, and so she did. 2 SSN-22's left the tubes straight away. Uh oh.

With the Harpoons at Medium range the Sov spotted 2 of them and prepared her defences. The VS spotted both SNN-22's and armed her defences as well.

Missiles are now at Short range and the Sov hasn't spotted the other 2 missiles so fires 2 SA-7's at each spotted missile and deploys chaff. 1 of the spotted Harpoons is destroyed, and 1 of the unspotted Harpoons is decoyed by the chaff never to be seen again (well, maybe by a lonely fishing vessel). The VS fires 1 AA mssile at each of the incoming missiles and destroys one, her chaff not fooling the other.

The remaining Harpoons bear down on the Sov but one gets taken out by the 30mm guns. The other one.....misses! <faceplant> The VS takes out the last SSN-22 with her main gun. Great shooting!

VS then launches her remaining 4 Harpoons, and prepares to turn tail after this (out of missiles). The Sov then unloads a full container os SSN-22's, and 4 of them streak across the water towards the VS. Uh oh.

In the next few combat turns the Sov again fails to spot all of the missiles, only spotting 2, but destroying those with SA-7's. Her chaff looks pretty but does nothing, and her 30mm guns just saturate the water with hot lead. Could this be it? 1 mssile misses (....!) and the other one hits. Light damage. Scratch the torpedoes amidships. Aargh!

The VS does what she can, decoys, guns, missiles, the lot but only manages to take out 1 with 3 of them passing through the barrage unscathed. 1 misses but 2 hit. A 1 and 2 means she is destroyed without any question. With the seaconditions as they are what survives of the crew won't have much hope, but the NATO fleet is warned.

The Sov, lightly wounded and smoking, pulls back. It took 6 missiles to take out 1 FF and she has only 2 left meaning she has to turn to port to reload and repair. There will propably be more NATO ships around soon anyway.

Pretty brutal, 7 turns till the end, took less then an hour to resolve it, most of the time was spent reading and rereading if I was doing things right (propably not, but hey). NATO 0 - Soviets 1 (but with a DDG going up against a small FF, could it have gone any other way?)

For my next test I'll put a Zwaardvis submarine on the tail of the wounded Sov that is trying to reach a friendly port. Can she avenge the loss? We'll see.