Saturday 25 July 2009

Thunder Along The Mississippi........


I know, I know - chopping and changing your mind about a project is the easiest way NOT to get anything done but the sight of the 1/2400th Tumbling Dice ACW fleets laid out on the table in front of me (with the added advantage of all having been acquired previously) was frankly more than mortal flesh could bear and so I shall push on with them instead of the Sci Fi stuff - of which I am still waiting for some of the constituent parts (thin excuse I know!). The Sci Fi OGRE project will be quite a quick 'blitz' job in any event.

There are 36 ships in total, of which a half are ironclads of one sort or another and they are really nice castings although some of the ships are a little odd looking when compared to their historical originals. Some of them, especially the CSS Virginia and the Cairo type river gunboat are almost 'cartoonish' in their profile. Very nice though, all the same. All the models have a cast 'seascape' type base which is separate for most of the models although not for the smaller sloops and gunboats. I shall still but these on card bases so as I can apply names and flags and I will apologise in advance for the fact hat the Confederate flag I shall be using is not the naval version - I only discovered that after I had ordered the normal one!

Tumbling Dice will be adding to the range in due course but there is sufficient to be going with. I am undecided about the rules etc I shall use although I have a number of sets in mind.
Thunder Along The Mississippi refers to the book of the same name by Jack Coombe that describes the riverine battles during the ACW and is a great read. The author also wrote a companion volume called Gunfire Around The Gulf culminating in the battle at Mobile Bay.

2 comments:

Paul O'G said...

Love a good ironclad or monitor; its a fascinating era of naval history with many great small scale scraps to enjoy!

David Crook said...

My thoughts entirely although I appear to be bucking the trend somewhat by using 1/2400th rather than 1/1200th or even 1/600th! I have something special planned for the land side as well - all in the name of credit crunch wargaming you understand, so the expenditure will be minimal.