Sadly, ‘Battlefleet The Dreadnoughts’ is no longer commercially produced. It was written by Michael Hill at ‘Shaka Software’ in the 90s  and retailed at around £30!

The software is written in MS DOS (Domestos!) and basically takes care of the paperwork in your naval encounters. The package includes the battle management software and data discs for whichever navies you wish to control. In the box you get the data for the British and German navies and I bought the disc for the Russians as well!  If you don’t have the data disc, you can’t fight battles with that navy.  

In the game itself, you make up your squadrons or fleets from the ships available on the discs (usually from around 1890 to 1922) and select which part of the world you are fighting in. The computer then controls the weather and tells you how far to move your smokescreens. You move your ships according to the game scale you have chosen to employ and combat between ships requires you to measure the range on the tabletop before the software calculates hits and damage. The outcome of combat is reported in the Reports Phase and can include dramatic events like magazines exploding and ships sinking.  Although you generally tend to stick to moving and firing, all sorts of other stuff is included, like mines, submarines, torpedoes, collisions and special rules for night actions. All in all, ‘Battlefleet’ finds a nice balance between taking the drudge out of paperwork, while retaining all those things that wargamers like to do, like moving things around and measuring how far things are away from each other!

                            The Box!
Not a very exciting image, but if you are searching the second hand stalls looking for a copy, then it might be useful to know what it looks like.

I have fought more tabletop actions involving the great battle fleets of the First World War than I have any other wargaming period. Most of my games were fought using the excellent paper based rule set ‘General Quarters’ on a huge sea grey linoleum floor in a room at the very top of my old college building in Lincoln. The room was so big that you literally couldn’t make out which ship was which from half way across the room. In those days, I usually ended up being the fictitious German commander, Von Barbendorf, admiral of the High Seas Fleet! These days, I find commanding the smaller and usually older ships much more interesting, and so I have set up an equally fictitious campaign set in the Indian Ocean during the early months of the war. If you would like to read more about the campaign, then click on the link below.