Developing the Portable Ironclads Wargame….Part 2

Confederate gunboats on patrol under the guns of a fort and with an ironclad in support.

This was not quite the weekend I envisaged for a number of reasons but it has been relatively productive in at least one direction. I have now completed the work on the expanded ship lists for the American Civil War and have also started work on the advanced and optional rules. This has been relatively straightforward thus far and this has surprised me somewhat in that I expected there to be rather more head scratching involved.

I have described these as being advanced and optional but to be honest I am thinking that expanded might be more appropriate. They are designed to be dropped in to the original set as required to add some additional feel and complexity if desired.

The rules I am looking at and am currently working on cover the following:

1. Ships moving alternately depending on initiative.

2. Allowing for varying manoeuvrability of ship types.

3. Allowing for a change in the calculation of damage points.

4. Rolling for hit location.

5. Using a square grid

6. Using a single grid area rather than two

7.  Infantry used as sharpshooters and crew

Of the above the one that is very much a personal crusade is the whole square grid thing (number 5) as I really want to make that work and also using a single grid area (number 6) is something I want to explore. Obviously the big thing with these two options is the whole firing arc situation which will need some work but I believe that if successful it will offer a useful alternative if required.

The important point to emphasise is that I am certainly not looking to the reinvent the wheel as the original rules are, in my humble opinion, absolutely fine as they are. What I am doing though, is to demonstrate the toolkit like nature of the rules and sharing some of my additional ideas.

I have also put the man cave on a shipbuilding footing after having cleared away the remnants of Operation Market Garden, details of which will appear in a later post.

Suffice it say that A Bridge FUBAR is probably a fair description of events!