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mj12games.com/forum → Grand Fleets → House Rules - Differing experience
A good way to reflect differing crew qualities.
Where one side has very green/raw/ poor crews, they only hold two cards.
Elite/ Very experienced crews hold 4 cards.
When one side has run out of cards, the other side continues to play cards until they have all gone.
For example, at Coronel, the Germans would have 4 cards, and the British only 3 (or possibly only 2 as they were predominantly raw recently commissioned crews on the AC).
Where one side has very green/raw/ poor crews, they only hold two cards.
Elite/ Very experienced crews hold 4 cards.
I like this idea very much. Someone should try it out... 
We have been experimenting with some house rules of our own for GA to introduce a very simple approach to critical hits. These add a little to complexity but add a dimension of fun as well.
What we do is this:
1. Divide the gun factors of ships that are AC or larger by the number of turrets and round to the nearest whole number. This gives you a ratio of attack dice to turrets.
2. When a penetrating hit is scored on a ship during a salvo, roll 1d10.
3. If a 10 is rolled, this means a critical hit was scored on the target vessel. For each extra penetrating hit scored on a ship from one salvo, we add a +1 drm to the CH roll.
4. If the ship is a BB or German BC, 1 turret is destroyed and the gun dice are reduced by the appropriate number
5. If the ship is a British BC or ship of a lesser type, another 1d10 isrolled. If the result is a 10, the ship blows up. If not, a turret is destroyed as above.
6. When a ship is crippled, halve the remaining turrets to reflect the new damage state.
These rules allow us to simulate the fragility of battlecruisers in WWI, while also giving a more random reduction of fire power by knocking out turrets. While we have not tried this for a large battle, it has proved a fun addition to the rules for battles of about 8 ships a side. We roll the d10 when we roll for the penetrating hits. 1d10 if the target is a BB, and 2 different coloured d10 if target is AC or BC. The first indicates the CH (or not) and the second if it is a magazine or turret hit. This speeds play. Please try them and let me know what you think!
Andrew.
Is losing a turret the only critical hit consequence? (Not a criticism -- just making sure I understand.)
Is losing a turret the only critical hit consequence? (Not a criticism -- just making sure I understand.)
Hi,
As described in the post above, losing a main turret and the associated number of gun dice is the only CH consequence for BB and German BC.
All other ship types roll 1D10 again if a critical hit is scored; on a roll of 10, the ship suffers a magazine explosion and blows up; otherwise the CH is the reduction of a target.
This is kept deliberately simple in the sprit of the GA system, but lets us simulate the design flaws of British BC up until the battle of Jutland, and also allows for turrets being knocked out and so on for some "flavour". We played with other CH options but it just slowed the game down too much with lots of ships... so we settled on turret destroyed or ship blows up as our only options so far.
We are experimenting with 2 ways of showing this on the tabletop. The first is a top-down deck diagram of each ship with hull boxes underneath and the gun tables for each ship. The gun dice value of each turret is recorded on the turret in the picture. As a turret is destroyed it is crossed out and the recorded gun dice are lost.
Our second method is to place the damage next to our ship models on the table-top. As hull points are destroyed, a counter with that number showing is placed next to the damaged ship. When the ship is crippled a smoke and fire stand is placed next to the ship to reflect this damaged state. As a turret is destroyed, a counter is placed showing this as well. This is placed on the model's stand so it moves with the ships. We have been using old damage counters from Avalon Hill naval games - the X counter is used for turret hits and the damaged counters are used for hull hits.
All in all, a good bit of fun
... lets us simulate the design flaws of British BC up until the battle of Jutland ...
As I understand it, the British BC didn't so much have design flaws as poor ammunition handling procedures. After all, true design flaws couldn't really be rectified after the battle of Jutland (i.e., after the ships were already built), but poor procedures could certainly be changed.
In one-off games, I suppose the distinction doesn't matter much. If I were playing a campaign, though, I'd only penalize the British BC through the first game in which one was lost due to a magazine explosion. After that, I'd assume the British had learned their lesson (as they did at Jutland), and treat them no differently than any other ship with their particular armor ratings.
(And as long as I'm at it, the British BC were never intended to be used as they were at Jutland. The one time they were used as they were designed (as AC-killers, at the Falklands), they performed very well.)
Whiteylegs wrote:... lets us simulate the design flaws of British BC up until the battle of Jutland ...
As I understand it, the British BC didn't so much have design flaws as poor ammunition handling procedures. After all, true design flaws couldn't really be rectified after the battle of Jutland (i.e., after the ships were already built), but poor procedures could certainly be changed.
In one-off games, I suppose the distinction doesn't matter much. If I were playing a campaign, though, I'd only penalize the British BC through the first game in which one was lost due to a magazine explosion. After that, I'd assume the British had learned their lesson (as they did at Jutland), and treat them no differently than any other ship with their particular armor ratings.
(And as long as I'm at it, the British BC were never intended to be used as they were at Jutland. The one time they were used as they were designed (as AC-killers, at the Falklands), they performed very well.)
Agreed on all counts - it was indeed an ammunition handling and flash protection arrnagement issue! In our campaign game that is exactly how we are using this rule for British BC. We still apply the magazine hit rule to all other classes though. Makes for an interesting game and, combined with possible turret CH, means the ships with the most hull points and gun factors are not always the winners.
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