Clash at North Cape - A Striking Effectively First scenario

“I hope that if any of you are ever called upon to lead a ship into action against an opponent many times superior, you will command your ship as gallantly as Scharnhorst was commanded today.”

– Admiral Bruce Fraser

This is a scenario for my ruleset There's The Effing Scheer, and its expansion Striking Effectively First, which allows you to wargame early- to mid-war WW2 naval combat. 

My Grandma often told me the story, as I sat at hers reading naval warfare books, about how she remembered a trip to the cinema as a young girl in late 1943. The film she cannot remember, but the sudden announcement that the Royal Navy had just sunk the German battleship Scharnhorst and the audience cheering always stayed in her memory. In a cinema in London, it must have been hard to imagine the steel behemoth slipping under the black water in an arctic snowstorm, having played cat and mouse for hours with convoy escorts until it finally met its match.

This scenario, similar to my one for Bismarck's Breakout, is very much lopsided. The challenge of the Kriegsmarine player is the same as before: outnumbered, outgunned and trying to slip past some powerful convoy escorts to get at the brittle but crucial merchants. The Royal Navy have a disadvantage this time, while they know Scharnhorst is surrounded and caught between them, what if the battleship makes contact with the convoy before they can run it down? 

As always, I have added some optional set-up rules and a what-if depending on the results of the earlier Operation Source, giving the Kriegsmarine player the possibility of fielding Bismarck's dangerous sister Tirpitz... or the pocket battleship Lutzow.

This scenario allows you to play as Fraser, tightening the net around the dangerous enemy battleship while hurrying a convoy to safety. Or maybe you will play as Bey, hoping that your stumbling in the arctic twilight will lead you straight into a flock of defenceless merchants and that you can slip away after. Confusion will reign and odds are no one will make it out unscathed.

Happy gaming.