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No crystal skull, but some blue-tinted oystershell is involved...

I suspect 15 October 25 is still around somewhere. I've also got a few stray contributions to LT. NFTWOAN is not a priority at this time. A little to busy creating scenarios for Seekrieg and running them at Cons and also with a weekend gaming group. Had a hell of a Surigao Lite scenario, and we also got about half-way through a Kurita versus Lee brawl off Samar. We've done two Arctic scenarios as well (different author/Game Operations Director). The first one included a strategic phase and I drove the GOD absolutely mad by messing up his preconception of how things would develop with some nasty real-world operational level work as the Germans. This second run, I had the British and again did something the GOD wasn't expecting that worked well to cut the Germans off. My bonus was putting a golden B-B from the Anson into the Tirpitz!

Samar was interesting. Inclined armor is a *%#+!, even for an 18.1 inch round. So too are those big, heavy American conning towers. Both rejected hits from Yamato on the Iowa. Of course nothing much was getting through on the Yamato despite a much higher hit-rate by the Americans. However, as I've always predicted, fires in the less protected area started to become a severe problem and by the time we stopped the scenario, Yamato was working up to a mass conflag in the superstructure. Japanese cruisers suffered badly. Kumano was laced with almost 30 6" HE rounds that rendered her hors de combat, then Tone sucked up a 6" HE round in a barbette and blew up, followed by Noshiro doing the same. Three Clevelands are murder when they're working together.

Surigao was even more fun. The set up was the Americans with about a third of the actual force against Nishimura and Shima combined. The American battleship commander got too close and started taking hits and the Japanese battleships were doing surprisingly well hitting back, but the real story was the cruiser-destroyer action. Louisville turned Mogami into a flaming wreck with a handful of 8" HE hits. Boise and Phoenix blew the Ashigara up and silenced the Nachi with 6" AP, basically shutting down the Japanese cruisers. Neither of the survivors got off torpedoes. Mogami's crew was a little concerned about having no helm or lee helm control and being aimed at Hibuson Island at 30 knots. Nachi was trying to deal with fires. Shima's destroyers on the left flank tried to torpedo the American cruisers and battleships, but missed, although they almost caught a group of American destroyers in the middle of the Strait. The American destroyers on the west side of the Strait traded fire with Shima's destroyers but pressed on against the battleships. On the east side of the Strait a section of American destroyers got into a fire-fight with Nishimura's destroyers and put fish in the water. The Japanese were holding their torpedoes for the American heavies, but the American torps hit before they could launch. Two separate salvoes from one American destroyer, totaling ten fish, scored eight hits and sank three Japanese destroyers. Amazingly the second half-salvo had missed the out-of-control Mogami despite a perfect set-up to nail the third destroyer. The American ship responsible was, however, so laced with Japanese shells it was totally immobilized and aflame from stem to stern. Right as the last fish went in the water, the first man went over the side. The American destroyers in the middle never quite got in the fight, but the three on the west side got past Shima's cans and went for Yamashiro and Fuso. Sixteen fish went in the water from two of the American cans and one hit Yamashiro but barely slowed her. Fuso, however, took two. One wasn't very effective, but the other found a sweet spot and broke her in half (I kid you not!). Once again, the tin can responsible was laced from step to stern, had its machinery completely destroyed and was burning like a torch. The men followed the fish into the water. At the point the scenario ended, the two surviving American cans on each side of the Strait and the three in the middle were all converging on the Yamashiro. Shigure was stalking the Americans and Shima's cans were preparing to run for it. Not sure what Nachi was planning.

I never liked the damage system in Seekrieg IV, so immediately upon buying it I repaired to my lair and on a dark and stormy night brought forth Frankenkreig, my own reworked system that modified the damage system. Years later I discovered I lived an hour away from the designer, obtained his email address and sent him what I'd done to his system (with apologies). He wasn't offended, he loved it, and invited me to participate in the work being done on Seekrieg V. So some of my ideas made it into Seekrieg V and those, combined with many great ideas from the Seekrieg Admiralty and the designers have made the current version vastly more realistic.

Until you posted that, I've have said the same thing.