Nimitz Kriegsmarine v Royal Navy

Another one-off game of Nimitz with my Kriegsmarine taking on Andy's Royal Navy, this time with some limitations on what we could choose after our last game (basically no just picking Battleships for me!).

The Gneisenau, Blucher and an escorting destroyer:

The Tirpitz, Graf Spee and another destroyer make up the rest of the German force:

The RN have two main groups, one of a number of Cruisers and Destroyers and the other of two old slow battleships:

Tirpitz and Graf Spee move quickly to engage the British Cruisers before their supporting Battleships arrive:

Guns blaze away at close quarters:

Gneisenau and Blucher exchange long range fire with the British Battleships:

German gunnery is abysmal while the RN manage to cripple the Graf Spee which turns away from the action:

The Gneisenau joins the fight but German gunnery does not improve and little damage is caused to the British:

The Graf Spee is sunk:

Meanwhile the Blucher has also taken a pounding and is crippled:

The Blucher is finished off:

With the Gniesenau badly damaged and the RN having only lost a single Cruiser the Germans conceded the action and would attempt to escape together with the largely undamaged Tirpitz.

This was pretty much a complete reversal of the last game we played where, if I remember rightly, the big German ships sank the RN Battleships quickly and then were largely immune to the remaining RN Cruisers and Destroyers!

The much more vulnerable Graf Spee and Blucher didn't last long and the fire from the Germans was largely ineffective. 

Andy also played a smart tactical game, his old and slow (but well armed and armoured) Battleships led to me attempting to close to short range with his Cruiser group where their more numerous and lighter guns were more effective before Andy could bring his big ships into action. 

On reflection I should probably have stuck to the plan from last time which was to deal with the big ships first then, once they were out of action, take on the rest of the enemy fleet.

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