Schnell Rules for Schnellboote Solo Scenario

I played an enjoyable solo game of Schnell Rules for Schnellboote this morning, although I forgot to take any photos. The action involved a returning rotte of two S-38 E-Boats being intercepted by three Vosper 72'6 MTB's somewhere off the Hook of Holland c1942. I used dummy markers for both sides with an extra one thrown in to add some confusion. At the start of the game the Kriegsmarine were advancing at slow speed in line abreast from the West, while the Royal Navy were crossing the Germans T in line astern at the Eastern end of the table.

In Turn One and Two both sides approached to just outside spotting range, so nothing much happened. In Turn Three the Germans spotted the dummy MTB, which was removed from play, followed by a real MTB which was successfully 'de-cloaked'. The British then spotted all of the S Boats due to their larger size. Both sides then opened up but the range, speed and target sizes made hitting anything other than a barn door a waste of time.

In Turn Four the range closed to medium and the two forces ended up in a turning fight in the middle of  the table. At this point, with several multiple weapon mounts blazing away, I decided to reinterpret the firing rules to speed things up. I rolled one D20 to hit regardless of the number of barrels per mount firing, which seemed to make sense, but multiple D6 damage and fire risk dice, determined by the number of barrels in action. This made more sense to me than rolling individually per gun mount to hit.

In the firefight, the 20mm cannon of the S Boats were concentrated in a cross fire on MTB 76, which took a pounding to be 'Wrecked' with all gun mounts knocked out and speed plus manoeuvre reduced to medium. Luckily for the crew a fire was avoided but, nonetheless, the boat was a total write off and had to make best it's escape. The S Boat commander decided to let it go, choosing instead to hunt down the other MTB's, which had failed miserably to hit anything and were heading in the opposite direction by the end of Turn Five.

The Royal Navy had clearly decided to cut and run, realising that twin HMG's were no match for multiple 20mm cannon. As they raced for the Southern edge of the table at Very Fast speed they were persued by the S Boats, which attempted  cut them off at close range. Unfortunately, some bad dice rolling and the difficulty of hitting the very small MTB's with their foot down, meant that they were able to slip away into the darkness undamaged by the end of Turn Six.

This was a definite win for the Kriegsmarine and an embarrassing defeat for the Royal Navy, which lost one wrecked MTB without even scratching the paint work on the S Boats. In their defence, the British were outgunned and would probably have been better off avoiding contact in the first place. No wonder this was a job for the MGB's in 1942. It also highlighted the mutiple gun mount glitch, which I've resolved by reading the rules in a slightly different way. The game was good fun and gave a realistic result, despite having  to interpret the rules here and there, so I'll be setting up another one soon.

(Apologies for the lack of photos)