In a few days I’ll run my first playtest of the Force Z game I’ve planned for Enfilade. It’s one of three games I’ll run at the convention, but because I’ve written the rules and more or less designed the game myself, it’s the one I’m most proud of, concerned about, most involved with. So I’m going to lay things out for you, dear reader, we’ll see how it goes, and I’ll follow up with a review.

For those not in the know, Force Z was the naval task force the British sent to support their forces in Singapore. The task force included the relatively new battleship Prince of Wales, the WWI era battlecruiser Repulse, plus several destroyers: Express, Electra, and the WWI Australian vessel Vampire. While cruising the Malayan coast, hoping to intercept Japanese invasion forces, the ships were set upon by long range Japanese naval bombers and destroyed. Happening a few days after the Pearl Harbor attack, the raids on the Philippines, and host of other Japanese raids, Asia was on the edge of falling to the Japanese, and the Age of the Battleship seemed to have sunk in the muck of Hawaii and the bottom of the Gulf of Siam.

The game was suggested to me by a friend. He was a fanatic about doing this game. Though I did the work on the game, it wouldn’t have happened without James’ suggestion. Dave Schueler and I did similar games combining air and naval elements. In those games the ships were simply targets, pieces of terrain. Dave built the ships, I painted most of the planes, and Dave designed the scenario. Often there was air combat over the ships. In this game air combat is unlikely and will take place off-board.

In this game, I’ve envisioned the battleships as a large unmoving target much like marshaling yards in Normandy, the ball bearing plants of Schweinfurt, or the oil production centers of Ploesti.

This is a co-op game and all four players will fly the Japanese bombers. The planes will arrive in squadrons and be armed as historically, either with bombs or torpedoes. It’s not quite enough to just say, okay go sink the ships, because generally that would be pretty easy. I mean, it was easy. So, I’ve added some circumstances to spice things up a bit. At the beginning of the game the Japanese commander will make a die roll that will A) cause the squadrons to be even more split up, B) two squadrons are intercepted by alerted Buffalo fighters and suffer damage, or C) the conditions are rough and it is harder to hit with torpedoes. Another variable, is whether any British destroyers are present and give a tish more AA support during the game. Again, a die roll

Each wave of Japanese bombers arrive in a specific order. There are five waves of planes, some are bomb armed, some armed with torpedoes. Some waves are a single squadron of 7-9 planes, some are two squadrons each with 7-9. The planes are subject to AA fire and can be damaged or destroyed. Each ship puts out a certain level of fire that is measured in D10’s. Each turn the squadron remains within the radius of that fire they’ll have to roll. Level bombers can only be hit by long range fire. The torpedo bombers will have to brave long range fire and short range fire.

The game will be won or lost by the torpedo bombers. Their torpedoes can be launched at long range (20″) or short range (10″). If they have a broadside shot, that’s better, but maneuvering to get to a better position will keep them under fire longer.

The challenge will be to keep the mechanics simple, and the game challenging. Ideally the Japanese players should have to work through all five waves of planes with the ships sunk or near sunk at the end. If they are sunk after the second wave, there’s a problem.

I’d like to give credit for the inspiration for the game. I would like to imagine it sprang into my head one day, and I exclaimed “What a great idea!” but I’m just not that smart. First and foremost James McAbee suggested it to me last summer and I wasn’t sure. We agreed to talk more and we did. I agreed to do the planes, because they’re planes, I love planes and that wasn’t hard. The challenge was to create a workable game engine. I considered a six player game with two British players who would also run a British air interception featuring everybody’s favorite Buffalo fighters. But a conversation with Chris Craft in December really changed my thinking and encouraged me to look at this as a cooperative game instead. Initially I was thinking six players, but felt there might not be enough for six players to do, and so I cut it to four.

I read the Osprey Air Campaign book on Force Z, which is handy and has useful information. However, to really get to know the action I highly recommend Battleship by Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney. The book is focused on the formation and destruction of Force Z. Lots of useful details on the differences between ships, the Japanese search process and the actual action itself, the nature of the British commanders. I can’t recommend it highly enough and it’s a great read.

The basic air mechanics are largely based on David Manley’s fun and very playable Airwar 1940 rules. Dave Schueler and I used the rules for most of our “and bomb stuff” games. For this game, because it needed to move quickly through the attacker waves, I eliminated the phase 2 for each turn, but the mechanics for those turns were the same.

I do take credit for the anti-aircraft fire tables. I had a lot of trepidation over the bombing and torpedo tables. I consulted Manley, looked at Command at Sea, GQ 3 and an old set of rules called Clear For Action. But I needed something simple for To Hit. It wasn’t going to be a game that involved running out torpedoes aligned against ship movement because the models weren’t going to be moving on the table. So I cobbled together a few simple modifiers and put together a hit table I hope will work. I was really concerned about calculating damage–again something that was quick and dirty–and really labored those and drew the most inspiration from Clear For Action and did my best to offer something that was simple, and possibly dramatic.

Finally, I’d be failing if I didn’t give credit to my missing bestie Daveshoe. I think this game contains the best of the work we did together, including the simplicity and common-sense abstraction that offers an interesting but easy-to-play convention game. He is much missed.

I’m hoping for three playtests before the convention and I am anxious to give it all a try.