Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame - part 1

The recently published book on the F-P game which includes full rules and instructions on how to play the game.  Link

The Sheffield Wargames Society post-Christmas games day this year provided the setting for a run through of the Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame.  I had mentioned this to everyone at the club a couple of weeks previously and Mark Hides had been kind enough to mention it on the SWS website

In the event I had 12 players and an umpire team of three - myself, Martin R and Wg Cdr Luddite.

I opened proceedings with a brief history of the Fletcher-Pratt game and mentioned that like many others, I had first encountered it in Don Featherstone's Naval War Games book - in my case sometime in the mid 1970s.

The cherished but battered copy I have owned since 1985.  An expanded reprint is now available.

I had prepared a scenario and managed to finish off the additional ship models required. The WW2 scenario I dreamt up was capable of being downsized depending on the number of players and basically saw Scharnhorst and a destroyer (Z31) setting off from a fjord in northern Norway for the open sea. The Royal Navy had been alerted to this be air recce and had dispatched a task force to prevent this.

An example ship card produced with the aid of  The History of Wargaming website

The RN task force was made up as follows:
Battlecruiser:  Glory-less (flagship) - this was my Hood-based recreation of the Glorious as originally built.
Heavy Cruisers:  Kent, Suffolk
Light Cruisers: Ajax, Leander
Destroyers: Afridi, Ashanti, Bedouin, Cossack, Eskimo

Unknown to the British, the Kriegsmarine had sent Gneisenau and destroyer Z32 north to replace Scharnhorst in the fjord.

What could possibly go wrong?

Next time - battle is joined - including photos of toy ships, golf tees and large feet!