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Has anyone done WWII Naval in 1/700 scale?

I recently came into a TON of WWII 1/700 Waterline ships, and was looking at an older copy of the WWII Naval rules: General Quarters.

Adjusting the scale to 1"=100yds would make this scale pretty impressive (although needing either a giant table, or a floor on which to play).

I have almost enough ships to fight the major battles of Guadalcanal (needing only an appropriate USS Pensacola/Salt Lake City, USS Boise/Honolulu/Brooklyn, and USS Pensacola*).

The temptation, though, is to spend $1,000s on Photo-etched detailing for the ships at this scale. I have such Photo-etched details for a few of the ships (USS San Francisco, Minneapolis, Juneau, and several destroyers), as well as brass gun barrels, and I am fighting hard the urge to spend about $500 getting Photo-etch frets for the rest of my US ships (it would cost me about $1,700 for the Japanese, given the number of ships on their side).

MB
* So if anyone has any of these ships in 1/700th that they would be willing to sell. . . I would be willing to pay handsomely

Congratulations on getting such a good haul of swag!

I've got a load of 1/700 scale WW2 ships I bought off eBay, that mostly are not built up, plus 1/600 scale aircraft to use for the air component.

My plan is to build up modest Japanese and Allied forces, and aim to organise games in halls, involving task forces rather than fleets. I intend to use General Quarters for the rules, I have first edition and the latest edition. The first edition is perfectly adequate IMO, though the latest edition is of course useful for playing with other people who have it.

You are most likely in the same situation that I am, where I am the main Naval enthusiast and need to provide the ships for a game. Obviously you can play General Quarters at different scale adjustments to suit the space available. The main thing is to avoid the situation where the ship bases are touching each other half the time, the scale given in the rules is already a bit condensed.

I would not bother with photo-etched detailing, though the brass gun barrels are a bit more reasonable and I did get some packs of them. It's a lot of extra expense and effort in building the models. A 1/700 scale model is fairly impressive in itself. During the game people need opera glasses to observe them close up.

I have large 1/3000 scale fleets of WW1 and WW2 and have played big scenarios (e.g. Battle of Jutland) using the floor of a community hall over a bank holiday weekend. The idea with 1/700 was to do smaller actions involving mainly destroyers, cruisers and a couple of capital ships.

To be fair, Jutland involves nearly 60 capital ships and needs a large area even in condensed 1/3000 scale, with battleships opening fire at about eight to 10 miles range. WW2 ranges are even longer, especially when aircraft are considered.

WW2 naval demands map movement even more than WW1 due to the better air assets available. Umpires are very helpful for conducting a hidden movement game.

I need ONE MORE FREAKING SHIP to have all of the ships for the Battle of Cape Esperance (5 IJN: 3 Cruisers, 2 Destroyers; 9 USN: 2 CAs, 2 CLs, 5 Destroyers), and the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (17 IJN: 2 BBs, 1 CL, 14 DDs; 12 USN: 2 CAs, 2 CLs, 8 DDs).

And almost all of them (save for a few IJN ships), are the named ships (if it is the IJN DD Murukumo, I have the Murukamo, and not a generic Fubuki-class model; if it is the IJN Asagumo, then I have the Asagumo, and not a generic Asashio-class).

The ONE SHIP I need is a USS Salt Lake City (although, to be fair, I have a USS Portland (CA), but it is a 1945 version, and not the 1942 version for the October - November 1942 Guadalcanal campaign).

I have also been thinking about getting some blueprints for WWI and Pre-Dreadnoughts, to make some models in CAD to fill out the WWI period in 1/700 scale, since it is pretty sparse (you can't even assemble the ships to do a proper battle). Especially since I have hit a snag in getting my Goblins finished (I simply need more RAM to sculpt the chainmail, and I do not yet have the money to either buy a new computer, or to have them printed out to do the chainmail by hand). Straight-line/Hard-edge work tends to be less RAM hungry, and much simpler to model (not to mention faster).

I have found a few places that sell Blueprints.

WWI would be easier to do in 1/700 scale, too, since you could easily do it at 1"=100yds, or maybe even 1"=50yds (since the ranges of the weapons, even though some were quite long, were wholly ineffective past a few thousand yards - or around 8ft with 1"=50yds).


But in the meantime, I have a ton of WWII ships to build.

I have also been thinking of automating General Quarters, so that the players would just state their orders for their ships, and then I could use an iPad to do the results of fire, and movement. Doing this would allow for the taking into account continuous movement and gunfire, rather than using discrete turns to segment everything (movement of the models would still be discrete, but only for an abstraction).

But GQ can be pretty complex using all of the rules.

MB

What you need most for a good naval game is map movement and umpires until the fleets get into spotting range.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What you need most for a good naval game is map movement and umpires until the fleets get into spotting range.

I tend to be of the opinion that almost ALL games need Umpires/Refs/GMs.

And for WWII, since the Pacific War tended to have the Japanese engaging in night battles, for the most part (to avoid Allied Air Power). Even after they are within spotting range, a Ref/Umpire is still needed to deal with limited visibility.

Even on nights with a moon, spotting can be difficult due to the inability to accurately identify ships. The Allies had IFF Transponders (the first time such devices were used in Naval Conflict), but even those could fail in battles where the ships could become confused.

MB