The Story of Midway 75 at Trinity College

The Story of Midway 75 at Trinity College - Dr. Steve Fratt, President HMGS-Midwest

As president of the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society - Midwest I have been trying to expand the presence and events of the society beyond our premiere regional miniatures convention - Little Wars. Our Board decided it would be good to have an event in the winter, without charge to the membership, to enhance the value of our memberships. I came up with the idea for a double-blind game celebrating the 75^th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway. I thought if we were successful, we might be able to offer it to the Navy in June to celebrate the battle near the actual anniversary date.

I also thought it would be good to expand the concept of our “war college” that we offered at the Little Wars convention. At the convention we have speakers discussing historical events, offering painting techniques, and other topics of interest to the membership. I thought we could capitalize on the idea of the War College by having a gaming experience unlike what would fit into the usual convention format. Having a double-blind game needing several rooms could be accomplished at a college setting but hard to pull off at Little Wars.

Presenting a Midway event made sense to me for several reasons. 2017 is the 75^th anniversary of the battle, which offered the possibility of getting the Navy involved in some way. The nature of the battle lent itself to the double-blind approach naturally. As I am chair of the History Department at Trinity College, it would be easy to get the academic building for our use. I had also partnered with Skip Peterson on several Legends events at Trinity in the past and they were all successful. Perhaps the most important thing was I had purchased all the Axis and Allies War at Sea miniatures to represent every ship and plane at a one to one scale for such a game. 

 

 

The next step was selecting the gaming system that the judges would use to resolve all movement and combats. I had used Avalon Hill’s Midway in the past at Trinity but found it to be rather cumbersome with miniatures. One of the air strikes was made on most of the Japanese fleet which, laid out in miniature, filled a good part of the room. While that was cool, the actual strikes we made only on two to five ships so we have to shove all the ships laid out to get to the middle where the combat actually took place. I trolled around in my game collection and ended up using GDW’s Midway game. What I liked about it was it had planes organized in half squadrons of 6 actual planes. My plane stands had three planes each so that seemed like an easy fit. Then, the way ships were handled was a lot easier than the Avalon Hill game. Defending task forces divided ships into a screen line and a main body. This meant laying out the ships in two lines of battle - much easier to manage, especially with lots of players in the room. So GDW it was.

Other features of combat rules were interesting as well. Air strikes had to organize into “waves” of no more than 30 actual planes. Each wave would then set out to attack a single enemy ship. Before reaching the ship, the attacking wave had to “run the gauntlet” of the enemy Combat Air Patrol [CAP] which had also been organized into “waves”. After running through the CAP, the attacking wave would select a ship in the screen to bomb, receive the AAA from the ship, then find the results of the bombing run. If a ship in the Main Body was chosen, then the defending task force would fire AAA from one screening ship against the wave before it attacked the Main Body ship [and receive its AAA as well]. All this seemed very logical and intuitive for the judges to carry out for each attack.

Strategic movement on separate maps and scouting offered many possibilities. Weather would be rolled for in the Judges Room, communicated to each Task Force, and then the scouting missions would be plotted on acetate sheets to compare against the main Judges map on which all naval forces were tracked. We took down the cell phone number of at least one player in each task force so we could call in the scouting report as if it was actually in the battle. Remember watching the movie “Midway”? That is the kind of experience we were able to provide for the players. This would also be easy to incorporate whatever “friction” we wanted to add to the experience. If an enemy Task Force was spotted, we rolled for what kind of information would be received, and then “hammed it up” with the cell phone report. This was probably the most fun for the judges, coming up with various kinds of scouting radio reports.

After receiving the scouting reports, each task force that had planes had to decide what to do with them for the turn. We judges had to figure out the balance between the “fog of war” and “player satisfaction” because a strict adherence to the FOG could result in a very frustrating game experience. We thought we could have the judges carry out all the combat, leaving all members of the task force in their room and anxiously gathered around the cell phone listening to the combat chatter. Or we could have the CAG fly along with the attack to direct it and leave the rest behind with the chatter. We also left ourselves open to having the entire task force of players come to see the air strikes happen so they would experience the actual attack. In the end, we thought it best to emphasize player satisfaction, especially with a wide and diverse player pool. It was important for everyone to get something significant out of the event instead of, in the end, having them feel like they had wasted a day with us.

We had an informal registration that I kept track of to see how many players and what sides were going to be favored in play. That went very well. We actually drew some new interest and signed up five new members to the society who wanted to play the game. The game was for HMGS-Midwest members only as a thank you for their support during the year at other conventions. On the day of the game, we divided the teams up and had a plenary session to outline the general procedures. We did not teach the rules to everyone. Then rules only came in play when the judges had to resolve the combat and actions. We kept the focus on “here are your options, what is your decision”. That approach right there elevated the experience towards a kriegspiel game. It was important to us to remind the players that they were experiencing history and not just playing a game.

We first met in our Pearl Harbor Room. This is where we would run several movies - In Harms Way, Tora Tora Tora, and Midway. We had our refreshments there and we also had a “backup game” in case players got bored while waiting for actions. We used Tora Tora Tora as the backup game. I had used it in December at Trinity and Games Plus with some success. It is primarily a paper game I downloaded from the Junior General that was developed for use at the Naval War College. I had actual ships representing battleship row so that made sense to use. After this plenary session, the players split up into their Task Force rooms and the Judges began the game process. The Japanese had three main Task Forces: the Carrier Strike Force with 4 carriers, the Invasion Force with a Light Carrier, and the Main Body with the Yamato and the Light Carrier Hosho. The Americans were divided into Task Force 16 with the Yorktown and Task Force 18 with Enterprise and Hornet. We also had a Midway room for the planes located there.

 

One last item - to spice up the role playing aspect of the game, my wife cut white headband strips for the Japanese players to use as banzai bands. We supplied red and black markers - this was a huge hit and gave the Japanese players a souvenir from the experience!

Here ends part one of Midway 75.