Outdoor Guadalcanal Wargame 

Sounds like a fun event.

I would just be worried about stepping on my models

leviathan I wasn’t there so I’m not sure how there handled that. My guess is that the GM would illuminate the friendly fleet since those positions were known.

What rule set?

Did the Torpedos end up sinking the Island?

They used my tank to form a corral reef; just dropped it in the water. I feel his pain.

...and quite true! It's an active farm. Not exactly the tropical paradise we all would have preferred.

@@LittleWarsTV in all honesty, alot of jungle islands in the south pacific smell nasty due to the decaying foliage on the ground, kind of like a stagnant frog pond

Hah, our players here like to think they are very smart and skilled, James. Turns out...not so much.

Turns out! War is hard. I love this aspect of the battle reports.

@@torymiddlebrooks I think it turns out wargames designed to replicate the dynamics of the real war as told by the events may bias toward results that favour what the generals and admirals of the day produced. You can only model what happened usually, not as easily can you model what may have happened. Its especially the case I think when you're dealing with WW2 where there were actually a relatively paucity of real large engagements for surface fleets meaning the data on that is relatively low. By contrast I think the data for the battle of the atlantic is much better, but for some reason people don't seem as interested in wargaming that.

@@BollocksUtwat Most likely since it's famous for submarine warfare, something people probably don't find that interesting to wargame

@Kelly Arthur I mean in a larger-scale a Battle of the Atlantic Wargame could be very fun, but you'd have to essentially make your own systems if you want to properly Wargame the Battle of the Atlantic as a whole

You could also have a range of possible opponents...which your ‘objective’ changing depending on the force match. Still, the goal here was to re-fight an historic battle, and they did change things up with the double blind plotting of movement to contact.

There are ways to overcome this, but the more complex it gets ,the harder it is to actually set up and play. A classic military-style way is to have the players in their own room with a small board. They send out orders and receive reports from a referee. The players plot their own board based on information received. While in the main room, the referee have the actual board set up.

We are very interested in this kind of feedback...do you mean more time focusing on the wargame generally? Or do you mean a specific focus on close ups of the models, with a mention of the painting, manufacturer, etc?

Little Wars TV Yes, it would be great if you could talk about the models in regards to the painting, manufacturers etc. However, I don't feel much change is needed to the wargaming as it nice to be able to follow the battles without any understanding of the rule set in use.

@@WeLoveGlennMurray Well said, the minutia of the game rules isn't as impressive as a review of the models beforehand.

I like the part in the trebia wargame were you highlight the unit that saves hannibal's ass.

I have to agree with Kjk1989 too. If I'm curious about the rules, I'll watch your relevant rules review video. I was especially impressed with the beautiful naval miniatures used for this Guadalcanal game. Absolutely loved the torpedo markers, sinking ships and the missed shell splashes. Great visual touches.

That's a pretty cool place to work. We had a great day walking around the campus and barely scratched the surface of all the history. We have a bonus video coming next week showing some of our favorite historical stops around the academy. No doubt, you'll know them all!

Little Wars TV Excellent. I can’t wait. The Fire Department says hello!

Hey...that explains the RU-vid user name!

Thanks, Jim! Plenty more videos on the way.

William Hastings, the splash markers were made by a club-member, while the models were all GHQ 1/2400.

Oh yeah I meant to write I’d love to see some of the action between the US Marines and the Japanese infantry someday. Banzai!

Yes. I have a nephew who is half Japanese and when he was visiting last I thought - "Now's my chance!" and asked him how to pronounce Hiei - and he confirmed that I was correct in pronouncing it Hee-ay as said. .

pbeccas, we’re actually in the middle of a very elaborate, months long, double-blind Coral Sea operation right now. It involves strategic movement using mostly Avalon Hill Flat Top rules executed via Vassal online, and then actual fights are gamed out on the tabletop. Steve is refereeing the operation and all 9 different force commanders operate independently with the only knowledge of what even their allied forces are doing is gained via “radio” messages passed through Steve. The “fog of war” created by self-imposed radio silence is thick and agonizing for the players. This game doesn’t really lend itself to our usual episode format, but I’m sure we’ll do an explanation and recap video when it’s over. That may be a while, however, as we generally only get through, on average, 1 hour of “battle time” per week!

That's an awesome idea, it would really capture the hectic nature of four navies working in tandem like they did under ABDA.

Thank you--we paid a lot of money for that natural lighting VFX!

spi published that game along with dreadnought.

Steve made the torpedo markers for the game and will likely do a tutorial on them at some point. As for references, there are a number of good options. A classic is Morison’s “Two Ocean War.” It covers Atlantic and Pacific operations but most of it is Pacific related and is a fine single volume account. If you are willing to go with multiple volumes, Ian Toll’s Pacific War Trilogy is an excellent choice. Finally, if you want to focus on the Solomon’s campaign specifically, Hornfischer’s “Neptune’s Inferno” would be a hard choice to beat. Thanks for watching and hope this helps!

I'm curious about this myself.

The US spent 1935 to 1943 believing that the Japanese were incapable of making indigenous innovative tech. Even though there were reports about the Zero and other very good Japanese planes in the later 30's, the reports, even when technically accurate, would end with... "This is obviously a copy of a German/Italian/American design" A pure oxygen torpedo like the Long Lance had been in development for years by both the US and the Royal Navy and neither could make it work. Enter 1942 and you have an American admiralty which doesn't want to admit that the existing US torpedoes are bad. The bureau of ordinance wasn't willing to admit that the Japanese had solved a technical issue the US couldn't. The very possibility would have seemed absurd as the Japanese were "known" not to be innovators.

We thought about doing a terrain tutorial on this as a joke...it's a sheet of blue cloth from a craft store. Easiest terrain ever and it would be a 10 second tutorial!

The only way to simulate this would be a three table game. One table has the judges and all the ships, and the players responsible for moving the ships strictly according to the orders provided. The other two tables have the respective admirals, the ships they can see, and blips where they think their own ships are. They are provided with a maybe 50 word (English is not as precise as ATPs are, so more than actual time would allow is required) description of what their other ships see provided by the player at the table. They then issue a maybe 50 word set of commands to the player at the table, who MUST follow the commands to the best of his ability.

LuckyEscort YT all ship models in this episode are 1/2400 scale ships from GHQ. ghqmodels.com.

@@LittleWarsTV thank you ,can you do Midway next? I need to see how carrier work.

Thank you

If you're not having fun playing with toy soldiers, what's the point! Luckily our guys here have the right attitude about this.

Oh snap!

Dave Franklin , if you play GQ3 as written you’re correct that DDs can’t score a bridge/CT critical hit, but that’s one rule that never made sense to us, so we don’t adhere to it. In fact, during the historical battle both Admiral Abe and the Hiei’s captain were wounded by US destroyer fire that hit the battleship’s bridge, and Abe’s chief of staff was killed.

It was not my intention to be snarky, if that's what you mean.

Ah. I have a few GQ3 "house rules" too, but not WRT that aspect.

@@davefranklin7305 It's ok, I just thought it was funny.

It may have been a joke...

The rules are General Quarters 3. We have a review and links to the publisher.

@@LittleWarsTV Thank you.

It's a bigger hobby than you think!

@@LittleWarsTV I guess so. I started war gaming in the '60's with Avalon Hill games I played with my brother and my Jr. ROTC buddies from High School. Me and my buddies went in the military but when we got out we started playing again. One of them ended up owning a military hobbies store. We'd all gather there just before closing on Friday nights - then go a couple of doors down in this strip mall to a bar where we'd drink beer until 0200 the next morning and solve all the worlds problems. Then we'd go to Denny's and have breakfast while we solved any that might remain. We'd sleep all day - and then Saturday evening we'd gather and one of the guys places and play games all Saturday night. Women did that group in ... one by one they fell by the wayside of matrimony and after a while their wives wouldn't let them go play with the boys any more ... A couple of the guys had developed gaming systems and we might play those. We'd set up a hex map on a table and play out some game for months on Saturday nights. We also had ancients campaigns we played with miniatures. We had one of those on the Fall of Rome and another on Alexander's Successors. Then we had one off games with Napoleonic's or Modern miniatures. We also had compass and protractor Naval games - which would sometimes be fought out like in this video once a battle happened. Three maps - judge and two sides. Each side drew their moves on velum then handed it to the judge who transferred the moves to the Master Map and reported what was seen. We tried to fight the Falklands War while it was happening with some modern rules but it was to big for us. I spent 12 hours doing the search plots for the Argentinian Air Force ... so we gave up on that but we fought a lot of smaller engagements out. We had a round robin using the one guys naval system of the Worlds WWII Navies with the winner going on. French vs. Italians. Italians vs. British. British vs. Germans. Germans vs. Americans. Americans vs. Japanese. Our decorations weren't as elaborate as yours. We used styrofoam peanuts for smoke screens and the ships were just half inch pieces of card board with the ships name on them. All the hits info was keep on paper. Just as we had with Jutland we played on the floor of that hobby shop a lot after it closed for the day but also on a table at one of the guys houses. One guy had a France 1940 game he developed. Played on a hex map. Infantry Corp and Armored Division counters. That was another marathon game played over months. We played out different scenarios and the only way the Allies won was if the Belgians allowed the British and French to come in and set up. With a line of French Infantry Corps going through the Ardennes and tying into the Maginot Line - the Germans ground themselves up against that. Oh - and the RAF had to make a full commitment of it's aircraft to the Battle on the Continent instead of keeping them all in reserve. Anyway ... yeah ... brings back memories of my younger days. .

I don't think they were present at this battle.

The the brits, aussies and the orange were there all right, look up battle of the java sea...

Chris hyde jhyde Wrong battle, mate. The battle fought in this wargame was the Second Battle of Savo Island (aka Battle of Cape Esperance). In the First Battle of Savo Island, allied forces were led by a UK admiral and did include commonwealth forces. Guadalcanal was a long campaign with many battles. It might help your case if you pointed out exactly the battles to which you refer (especially any battles that contained Dutch warships-this could be educational for us).

Yeah, but there is no way to replicate the surprise the US had

Outdoors = hard!

Hahah indeed. Our History Channel credentials would improve dramatically if this naval game resulted in a search for lost Nazi gold, ancient aliens, or perhaps the discovery of "swamp people."

Season 2 is going to include a bit less history and a bit more gaming. But we do still want to offer at least some "historical content" component to the main episodes.

@@LittleWarsTV Well to be honest I watched more videos after this comment, and I think you have about the right amount of history.:) Perhaps just a but more targeted, leaving out the broad strokes of a war and stick to the more direct history that had an impact on the actual battle. For instance the Marengo series was great, but you started it by talking about when Napoleon took command of France. I wish it had been more focused about the Italian campaign in Northern Italy with perhaps an equal emphasis on what the Austrians were doing. (more people know the Napoleon history than the Austrian side) As an Iowan I get tired of hearing about the Sullivan brothers. They are at /every/ museum it seems. Saw them in Texas even! Lastly, yes please talk more about the formations the miniatures represent.