Just Started the Campaign

My gaming group just started the campaign this past weekend. We had never played with air power, campaign or tactical so the first carrier vs. carrier engagement was messed up... A LOT! We then went on to a IJN BT mission vs. a USN Supply mission with escort. My question to you all is how do you determine when the engagement is over? Is it over when the transports exit the board or when the other side looses detection/acquisition of them?Also both the success and failure criteria for the supply mission seem extreem. A single gun mount hit will abort the mission while turning and running will make it a success (assuming no hits). Do people play by the strict letter of the rules or have some sort of middle ground such as anchoring or something? In our case, as soon as the USN players detected the IJN force they had the transports turn around. The IJN players eventually acquired the USN force and the cruisers let loose a salvo of Long Lances. Unfortunately the only ship hit by those was an Japanese CL that was commanded by the other IJN player. The USN DDs screened the retreating transports with smoke screens. This led to another odd occurance. The lead USN DD was targeted by three IJN Cruisers. She got shelled for 10 hits. Over the course of the rest of the game she took 8 more hits. After all that she was still able to make 16 kts as the follow on hits kept hitting the now destroyed guns, TT and DCT. The IJN DDs fired their Long Lances and with gun fire sank/crippled 4 US DDs with only the loss two of their own (plus the fratricided CL).Our next session will have at minimum dummy markers out for ships prior to detection.More to post laterKen

ken777engr wrote:

My gaming group just started the campaign this past weekend. We had never played with air power, campaign or tactical so the first carrier vs. carrier engagement was messed up... A LOT! We then went on to a IJN BT mission vs. a USN Supply mission with escort. My question to you all is how do you determine when the engagement is over? Is it over when the transports exit the board or when the other side looses detection/acquisition of them?Also both the success and failure criteria for the supply mission seem extreem. A single gun mount hit will abort the mission while turning and running will make it a success (assuming no hits). Do people play by the strict letter of the rules or have some sort of middle ground such as anchoring or something? In our case, as soon as the USN players detected the IJN force they had the transports turn around. The IJN players eventually acquired the USN force and the cruisers let loose a salvo of Long Lances. Unfortunately the only ship hit by those was an Japanese CL that was commanded by the other IJN player. The USN DDs screened the retreating transports with smoke screens. This led to another odd occurance. The lead USN DD was targeted by three IJN Cruisers. She got shelled for 10 hits. Over the course of the rest of the game she took 8 more hits. After all that she was still able to make 16 kts as the follow on hits kept hitting the now destroyed guns, TT and DCT. The IJN DDs fired their Long Lances and with gun fire sank/crippled 4 US DDs with only the loss two of their own (plus the fratricided CL).Our next session will have at minimum dummy markers out for ships prior to detection.More to post laterKen

a supply mission that runs and does not suffer damage will likely succeed, so that is not unrealistic. Supply missions that suffered damage typically aborted their mission due to the real threat of losing valuable supplies in defenseless transports. These kind of warship losses for the USN will eventually take its toll. We had to look at the actual supply missions run during the campaign and formulate some rules that would prevent unrealistic effects like transports remaining in engagement range of enemy warships.