Bucha, Ukraine - 27 Feb 2022 - 15mm
Naval Command: Falkands Game Report!
This weekend my friend @elessar2590 and I took our first swing at a new game in a new genre: Modern naval combat. Well, virtually a new genre for me, at least, I remember playing Harpoon back in the 1980s and early 1990s but haven’t really looked at modern naval operations in wargaming since then.
But Sunday we tried “Naval Command” – specifically for a scenario in the 1982 Falklands conflict.
Sitrep followers will certainly know that we’ve been running a lot of Falklands content lately, in support of our ongoing Ops Center video series on the topic. I started looking at Naval Command as a system that could quickly and easily give us a look at the overall naval, maritime, and littoral operations involved with the British landings on the Falklands. Harpoon is probably the “gold standard” for this kind of thing, but it’s also a very detail-intense and heavy-investment game from a research, prep, and paperwork perspective.
Accordingly, Sunday’s game was sort of a “live playtest” for the system, available for viewing in its 5-hour entirety on the Sitrep Twitch Channel. But here are the highlights of the battle report.
So how did the game play out overall? The game was definitely an Argentinian win, but with some serious apologies and caveats. The Argentinians won because the British managed to make all the historical objectives (landing HMS Intrepid and Fearless at San Carlos, complete with Wessex transport birds dropping SAS on the high ground overlooking the landing zones for Royal Marines and Paras). British losses in San Carlos were a basically a frigate, which almost matches historically (in our game the British lost HMS Alacrity, historically it was her sistership HMS Ardent). The big difference was the loss of HMS Hermes, which obviously did NOT happen historically.
So here are the apologies and caveats.
One, this was totally an “alternate history” game where the Argentinian Navy mounted any kind of a stand at the Falklands. Historically, their surface fleet was withdrawn to port after the loss of ARA General Belgrano (2 May 1982). Just in putting ships like Santissima Trinidad and Hercules on the table, or really any Argentinian warships at all, is a massive break from the historical situation and a big “upgrade” to the Argentinian Navy’s performance in the war.
Two, HMS Hermes never really should have been this close to the combat zone. Carriers by definition stay hundreds of miles away from the enemy, launching aircraft. Harriers in this system have a 300” combat radius, meaning that HMS Hermes really should have been 200” further northeast, clearly off the table.
Three, even if HMS Hermes decided for whatever mad reason to come anywhere near this close to the actual Falklands, she would have had some aircraft already up, in a CAP role if nothing else. I should have stipulated that @elessar2590 could have started with some aircraft already airborne. This way, even if Hermes’ flight deck was devastated on Turn 1 as we’ve seen above, we would still have more Harriers available (at least as long as fuel allowed) to wreak devastating response on the Argentinian fleet. Although let’s be clear, with 8-10 Harriers up instead of 3, there’s just no way those Super Etendards or Pucaras land those hits.
Four, the Argentinians just got damned lucky. On camera I rolled that first “6” for the Argentinian aircraft arriving from the mainland, and then rolled 7s, 8, and 9s for damage (except that first Exocet). We mixed up the rules a couple of times and so ran the resolution several times until we got it right, the Hermes would up with two “Heavy Damage” counters every time. The old girl just could not catch a break.
So thanks very much to @elessar2590 for being a great sport, and helping out in our “guinea pig” experiment. 😀
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