The scenario had a few special rules - the Royal Navy didn't accurately spot the Bismark in the early stages of the engagement so Scotty would be able to swap his ships at will and manage their damage secretly unless Tank or I passed a crew quality check to spot which ship was which. We decided that we'd only do at at our ship's short range or lower and we would test every time we fired too. A successful test meant we were shooting what we thought we were, otherwise Scotty could apply damage as he saw fit. Further to that, the Prince of Wales' civilian mechanics were still on board so there was a chance that the main armaments of the battleship would fail each time they fired. The scenario also proposes that, unlike history, the cruisers HMS Norfolk and HMS Suffolk would arrive to support the Hood and Prince of Wales.
The Kriegsmarine turned and steamed towards the onrushing Royal Navy. The game almost replayed history as the Scotty's first shot against the Hood hit, penetrated and caused a critical hit. This lead to much consternation in the Royal Navy and we accelerated to the attack. The Hood turned across the German fleet while the Prince of Wales went full steam ahead to bring it's heavier armament to bear.
The two fleets closed with the Kriegsmarine bravely threading the gap between the two British battleships. They pounded the HMS Hood relentlessly, leaving the Prince of Wales to happily fire on whichever ship the crew thought was the Bismark at any given time. One by one, her new guns failed until only one of the front six was functional alongside the working rear turret!
At this point the fleets were at their closest! With it's front turrets completely out of operation, despite the best efforts of the mechanics on board, the HMS Prince of Wales crossed the Bismark's stern to bring it's fully functional rear turret to bear and in a couple of rounds of VERY accurate gunfire and some good spotting by the bridge crew, she sank the Prinz Eugen, narrowly evading being torpedoed for her trouble though!
With the Prinz Eugen gone, and the HMS Norfolk and Suffolk on the field, the Bismark was taking an absolute hammering while simultaneously trying to sink the badly damaged Hood and aim for some luck shots on the Prince of Wales' last working turret. In game terms, at this point the Bismark was miraculously still seaworthy despite carrying about 15 points (of a possible 18) of critical damage but she could mostly sail. So the Bismark's Admiral decided that discretion was the better part of valour and steamed for the southern board edge, hoping to outrun the oncoming British cruisers. The Hood made the same decision, as she was also carrying a dozen or so critical damage points. In the end, the Prince of Wales fired a devastating volley, bringing the Bismark to her knees before the Hood's last working turrets struck her amidships and sank the mighty vessel.
It's a really good scenario - we had to add to a couple of rules to make it make a bit more sense and interpret some of the instructions in a way that made sense to us but we really enjoyed it. Scotty wasn't ever supposed to win it but he came very close to sinking the Hood and would probably have been able to sail away if he had as the popguns on the Norfolk and Suffolk could barely touch the Bismark, especially as by the last turn of the game, the Prince of Wales was down to three of it's original 10 attack dice with it's main guns (and I couldn't pass a repair roll for love nor money.)
I really enjoyed my first game of Victory at Sea and will be super excited to get the Regia Marina fleet painted up and on the water soon.
Panzerschreck prep
SO CLOSE. Just so close but I honestly can't stop swearing about how enraging the Battlefront SdKfz 7/2 kit is. It's not original Katyusha bad, but aarrrrgggghhhh. So everything else is finished for the army but those last three Quads are still only half done. Oh well, I have a few days....
I need to chuck a huge thank you to blogger Pooch who sacrificed the foliage off his Panzer IVs for my Wespes and Elefants with a view to repaintings said Panzer IVs but still. As something that genuinely adds to the coherent look of the force, I am super happy. There is apparently a new package en-route from the USA when I will repair the carnage I committed on my Nashorns and Firefly to steal their foliage too and then I'll be getting on with some more LW Flames, probably focussing on getting onto my Grenadiers.
Next Time
I will take a photo of the whole finished army as there is inevitably a show and tell at Panzerschreck and let you know how badly we lost the five games in the weekend. I'll be glad to put these aside for a bit and go back to some 28mm with our 40K thing moving on in August so I probably need to get the rest of the army painted for the 1000 point round. Should be easy, except for the bits I don't own yet...
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