How should a wargame designer show the vast span of the water across which modern naval combat takes place? The default in wargaming is usually to use hexes or areas. I recently downloaded a free set of miniatures rules that take a different—if not novel for naval wargaming—approach by using…bands.
While browsing the Winter Offensive Sale at WargameVault in very late 2023 I took a look at the Free items section. Being an End-of-the-Cold War Warrior, a small set of rules called Red Fleet at Dawn: Cold War Combat in the North Atlantic v1.0 by Andy Watkins of Dawn Games drew my attention. Given the price point (free!) I took the risk and downloaded the product.
“Waffle….”
Watkins starts out the small 13-page rulebook for Red Fleet at Dawn with a section called “Waffle….” The designer warns players that, “This game is intended to be fast and fun, to achieve this in a very technical environment, considerable liberties have been taken with the details of the ships, aircraft, missiles, and submarines…If you find something that seems wrong please let me know, if it is just a small simplification it has probably been done on purpose to speed play and keep the learning curve to a minimum” (Watkins, 3). To the designer I say: This is not a waffle but a very welcome statement of design intent that invites me to explore your game further, not shy away from it. That’s a good starting point to me.
Bring out the band
In the first section of the rules for Red Fleet at Dawn it is very obvious that this is not your usual naval wargame. In Red Fleet at Dawn the board is not hexes or areas or even open ocean on a board but instead a series of bands that “avoids the issues of trying to compress a battlefield hundreds of miles long onto a 6×4 table” (Watkins, 3).
The game board consists primarily of 10 surface bands…they can be approximately the same size but this is not important as the distance each band represents can vary between about 5 to 50 nautical miles.
Red Fleet at Dawn, 3
In addition to surface bands for ships and submarines, the board also consists of air boxes for aircraft where their status is tracked.
Scoot and shoot
The use of bands in Red Fleet at Dawn immediately creates a different sense of maneuver in the game. Range in Red Fleet at Dawn is shown in a relative—not absolute—sense. Ship (and submarine) details such as ship speed or turn radius or even cruising range are replaced instead with decisions as to where in the formation they should be placed (escorts) or how they should approach (submarines) in order to maximize their combat effectiveness. Movement between bands can occur but doesn’t have to; both sides may like the relative range and decide to fight it out from where they are. In some of the scenarios one or both sides must move; an illustrative way of showing the march of the fleet across the seas into the teeth of the enemy.
The decision in Red Fleet at Dawn as to where to place or move ships is informed by weapons performance which is also stated in part by the range—in bands—the weapon can reach. That in turn leads to the rules for combat which, in keeping with the spirit of the game design, are again heavily abstracted. Once again the bands become important as weapons are fired in or travel thru bands to reach their target. This in turn gives defensive weapons a chance to engage. Combat in Red Fleet at Dawn calls for many different colored d10 die to help distinguish combat types. Die roll modifiers are few and simple. Combat itself can be deadly and are part of the reason the games run quickly.
Band of Vampires
In the novel Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy, the chapter “Dance of the Vampires” features a Soviet air raid on a NATO task force including the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and the French carrier Foch. In the book, Nimitz is badly damaged while Foch is sunk. The chapter was famously gamed out using the miniatures wargame Harpoon which is described in a downloadable pdf from the Admiralty Trilogy Group. In Red Fleet at Dawn a similar battle can be played out.
The core rule book for Red Fleet at Dawn includes the scenario “Backfires for Breakfast.” This is an easy to learn and run scenario that shows the full extent of the Red Fleet at Dawn rules. The U.S. fleet, led by the carrier Nimitz, is escorting several merchant vessels that must advance across the bands while facing a determined Soviet defense of submarines and Backfire bombers. Victory is easy; if Nimitz is sunk the Soviets win. Alternatively, if all three merchant ships are sunk the Soviets win. Draw conditions are also offered. The game will not take more than four turns to play out.
Using a Chessex dry erase game mat, note cards and a few homemade counters I played out “Backfires for Breakfast.” There is one hiccup in the setup for the scenario where the Soviets are called upon to use Oscar submarines but no Oscars are in the game materials. Instead I used Foxtrots (as directed) and substituted Tangos (the other Soviet submarine provided).
Though this scenario for Red Fleet at Dawn is four turns long, the battle is really two phases: a submarine hunt and the Backfire strike. In my game the Soviets spent the first three turns trying to wear down the U.S. escorts and get to the high value units. The last turn was the Backfire strike.
As this was my first game of Red Fleet at Dawn there was more rules referencing than a normal game likely would take. While I had some of the various weapon data readily available, having a player aid with all the charts and tables handy would certainly speed things up. Even so the game took only about an hour to resolve. Oh yeah, I lost the Nimitz.
What did I learn? In the Cold War the U.S. Navy was worried about the concept of “rollback” in defending ships against anti-surface cruise missiles. The “Backfires for Breakfast” scenario for Red Fleet at Dawn leans hard into showing that concept. The U.S. side must try to keep the Soviet submarines away by both not letting one through to strike the high-value asset but also preventing the Soviet subs to “scrub away” the defending escorts before the mass wave of air-launched anti-ship cruise missiles arrive. The U.S. combat air patrol (CAP) fighters are good, but will need the surface-to-air missiles of the escorts help to swat away the many inbound Soviet missiles. Red Fleet at Dawn shows this careful balancing game of move-thrust-parry that doesn’t need finite detail to experience.
Strike up the Naval Command Harpoon Captain band
In 2023, I declared Naval Command: Modern Naval Combat Rules (Rory Crabb, 2021) as one of my Wargames of the Year. I previously described Naval Command as “essential Harpoon;” a much simplified version of that game. Red Fleet at Dawn distills Harpoon even further, and in many ways could be a near-clone to Harpoon: Captain’s Edition if it used hexes. The abstraction of Red Fleet at Dawn is not a waffle but an interesting design choice that focuses on the relative arrangement of forces in naval combat. The use of bands presents a different view of the battlespace that challenges your thinking as to how a naval battle in the Cold War could of happened. Given that this challenge is offered to you for free, it is well worth the effort to “strike up the band” and get Red Fleet at Dawn to a gaming table.
Feature image “A Soviet Tu-22M Backfire-B bomber aircraft is escorted by an F-14A Tomcat aircraft” public domain
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Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 
Fantastic review of the game.
Cheers,
Pete.
Thanks. Enjoyed playing this one!