Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion

An invaluable resource for background etc. As the gun factors are largely based on Mr Manley’s Dahlgren and Colombiad rules expect to see these ‘hexed’ in due course!

Two more valuable resources. This will be used for planning the models that I shall be building in my usual simple style. I will not be many be many models for this, simply because the number of ships involved was quite modest.

Now that the temperature has dropped to a more civilised level, work can resume in earnest on The Portable Ironclads Wargame: Definitive Edition. This means models, and lots of them!

Aside from the ships of the Royal Navy and of the Ottoman Turks, I will also need to design the components for the ships from the War of the Pacific. This will be my next task as I will definitely need to order some bespoke pieces from Warbases for some of the ships. 

Whilst going through the rules I noticed that there are a couple things that I left out which I will need to include. Ships under sail is something I took the conscious decision to leave out on the basis that most ships in action would steam power whilst saving the sails for longer journeys. It was fine up to a point but the Union navy used pure sailing ships on blockade duty so, in the interest of completeness I will need to formulate a sailing system. The other thing I need to include are fire rafts and this leads me in a roundabout way to the effects of tide and current. 

During testing I used some rules for the effects of current and it certainly made for some entertaining effects. Given the low speeds of most ironclads used on the rivers, steaming against the current could really slow you down to the point that some of the more underpowered types could barely steam against it. Once again though, this would be easy enough to factor into the rules and so will be (re)included.

I think the point I am trying to emphasise here is that while the rules will remain the same, there will be a few extra bits and pieces included.

As for the battles themselves well, one of them will be a historical refight (probably from the War in the Pacific) whilst the other two will be fictional. What will be real treat for me will be fleshing out the back story for the Anglo Turkish War. For reasons that I will not divulge at present, there will be something special with this.

I will say no more....

A Different Kind of Naval Gaming

The box art….

….and the contents on the back.

I own a variety of naval boardgames, most of which of the ship to ship nature and take place on a gridded playing area - usually hexes but occasionally squares. I also own a couple of strategic level naval games where one is deploying squadrons and fleets etc but with a tactical option when things get up close and personal. These all work perfectly well and I am content to play them when the opportunity permits - which means that most have not seen the light of day for years! At least I still have them though, and that is the main thing, despite being sorely tempted to dispose of some of them on the odd occasion.

Anyways, things have moved along in recent years with the growth of games designed to be played solo and focussing on the decisions that an individual ship’s commander needs to make. And so I acquired a copy of the Compass Games Schnell Boots: Scourge of the English Channel. In this, one takes command of two to four S Boats and conducts a series of operations in the English Channel during 1943/44 in the hope of successfully sinking enemy ships and gaining promotion but in reality hoping to survive a full year. All the missions are at night and encounters can range from single vessels (pretty unlikely) up to convoys with varying levels of escort or even enemy torpedo and gun boats. Aircraft also feature to really add some additional fun, at least if you are the Allies that is. It looks a lot of fun and so I am hoping it will encourage me to finally get my coastal collection painted and on the table. Of particular interest though, was the choice of vessel you get to command. It is either an S100 type S boat or the rather impressively named Projekt B Tragflugelboot - a turbojet powered hydrofoil!

I had never seen nor heard of this piece of bonkers naval engineering so naturally I have asked Mr Manley if he could create a 1:600th 3D printed version!

Believe it or not, there was also a submersible version of this planned. The idea was that it submerged and sit on the surface until an approaching enemy convoy was detected. It would then surface, launch its attack and could then shoot off at speeds in excess of fifty knots! It was nothing if not inventive but this variant never made it off the drawing board.

The second naval game - the Kaiser’s Pirates - is based on commerce raiding during the Great War and uses no map. The game is card based and although designed for two or more players does have a full solo version. The great thing about this type of game is that the table footprint is very compact.

The basic premise of this game is all about sinking merchant ships and avoiding being sunk by enemy AMCs or warships. Fuel is always an issue and so the raiders have to be mindful of this as well attempting to stay as anonymous as possible. Action cards dictate the ebb and flow of the action and points are awarded for the ships sunk - either raiders or merchantmen. I am a huge fan of the subject matter and commerce raiding, in whatever form it takes, has given me many great games over the years. I shall look forward to this one with relish!

A Naval Wargaming Odyssey

From the two titles at the top of the picture to the two at the bottom - my indebtedness to both Bob Cordery and David Manley is immense!

Work on what will be the final iteration of The Portable Ironclads Wargame is well underway. As a reminder this volume will contain the tidied up rules, greatly expanded ship specifications, an updated bibliography, three new battle report and a few surprises. In truth it is probably the book I wanted to write initially but we are where we are.

Whilst sorting through the bits and pieces needed for the new book I was reminded of just how I got to where I got to. I readily admit to ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ in that much of the Portable Ironclads Wargame had its origins in the works of both Messrs Cordery and Manley. All I did was take the best parts of each and shoehorn the result into something resembling a set of ironclad era rules. Are they perfect? Of course not - no set of rules is - but I cannot help but be proud of the effort!

There are things I would do differently if I was embarking on a similar exercise and indeed, the paused book for Pen and Sword represents an evolution of sorts of the Portable Ironclads Wargame. It is half the fun though, embarking on a journey and seeing where it takes you.

The Portable Ironclads Wargame: Definitive Edition polishes the rules and rounds out the period of 1860 to 1880 or so. As mentioned previously, the ACW will feature, the War of the Pacific and a personal indulgence in the shape of the Anglo Turkish War of 1883. I am really looking forward to completing this book and I hope that Portable Ironclad Wargamers will enjoy as much as I will.

Silent Death And Voidfighter

One side of the sprue….

….and the other. All the models have holes to secure a flying base to although they do not come with them. I have a fair selection of flying bases in stock so may not need to acquire more. I shall take a look later and see what the state of my supply looks like!

Much of what I am about to write in this post is uncertain and so should any readers know otherwise then please let me know!

Back in the 1980s I used to play a boardgame called Silent Death, produced by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE). The game was a ship to ship star fighter combat game using game specific models. As I recall, the original edition came with twelve metal models of the fighters used in the game - one of each type - which were also available separately. An ‘unleaded’ version was produced, presumably to save costs, which included counters rather than the models. Eventually, a set of plastic versions of the original twelve fighters was produced and, to cut a long story short, these were eventually acquired by EM4 Miniatures, who continue to produce them to this day.

Silent Death spawned a plethora of expansions introducing new ships and alien races, along with campaign settings etc. I played the initial release quite a few times ‘back in the day’ but in my opinion, rather like the original Star Fleet Battles, it became too unwieldy for my taste and with a perceived need that one had to acquire everything produced to stay up to speed with it. Eventually I gave up on it which in retrospect was a shame as it was a cracking game and provided many exciting deep space tussles.

I was recently introduced to Voidfighter - the Osprey game of star fighter combat - and enjoyed this so much that decided that raising a couple of forces to use with it would be fun. I did not want to spend a fortune on models and sadly do not have the time to scratch build any - which I have done in the past - due to other commitments.

With what can only be described as a stunning example of synchronicity, I came across an EM4 advert in which they were having a bit of a sale. Sure enough, the plastic Silent Death models were still available and on offer - five sprues, each of twelve models for £22. A couple of clicks later and they were duly ordered! 

They arrived this morning and I am really pleased with them. Considering the age of the moulds they are still pretty crisp and sufficiently detailed for a nice paint job although a couple of the models have the odd ‘sink hole’ - nothing that a small spot of filler could not put right though. Having five of each type means that there is a degree of redundancy in the set as I routinely use flights of two or four. Perhaps some kitbashing may be in order to make some unique models.

In respect of representing larger ships - the rules allow for ships up to corvette size - I have a fair amount of starships from the Command and Colours game Red Alert that have been lurking in a box for sometime. These are of a larger scale - fleet level battles - but could telescope down readily enough. In the Red Alert range there is a nice logistics pack of transports that could serve as targets so there is plenty of potential.

As cheeky little side projects go, this one is definitely doable with minimal effort.

Even for me…. ;-)

“It Never Snows in September”

At long last! Been after this for an age and I expect it to be really handy when I revisit the campaign again - it will certainly help to correctly identify some of the units used in the Memoir 44 scenario pack for Operation Market Garden.

At long last I have managed to acquire a copy of Robert J. Kershaw’s outstanding book on Operation Market Garden from the German perspective: It Never Snows in September. I have owned a copy of this that was in pretty poor shape and so was keen to replace it with a decent hardback version. Needless to say, copies of this vintage seemed to be getting progressively more expensive so I was fortunate to land this for a little over a tenner.

There is a heap of really useful information in this book, particularly around orders of battle given the somewhat understandably chaotic nature of German organisation at the time. 

Years ago, clutching a copy of Victory Games ‘Hells Highway’ and Frank Chadwick’s Command Decision, the late Mick Vince, Steve Letch and myself fought through the early stages of the campaign and Kershaw’s book was invaluable for the German side. On that particular campaign the Allies were successful! 

It would be good to revisit it as the last time I fought it was in 2013!

New Rules and Decals

The rulebook and play sheet

The back cover. Apologies for the reflective glare but in my defence the cover is really glossy!

It is always a pleasure having things dropping through the letterbox that are not bills or other officialdom! So it was this morning that I had two items arrive - a copy of  Des Darkin’s new ACW rules and a sheet of decals for my planned repaint of the four Wildcat fighters into Fleet Air Arm Martlets. 

The rules are not what I would usually look at - there is more detail than I tend to look at these days - but I was rather intrigued by some of the mechanics used, along with the focus on command decisions and the inherent friction therein. I have only had a cursory look through and so cannot go into much detail - I will do in a later post - but first impressions are very positive. Plenty of full colour inspirational eye candy is present - largely wasted on me it must be said - but I have an alternative cunning plan as to how I would use the rules. I shall be looking to use my block armies rather than figures. Heresy I know but hey ho, what the hell and all that!

The rules can be purchased from www.shedowargames.co.uk  and they are well supported with videos etc as well as dedicated Facebook group. As mentioned, I shall post a more detailed review in due course.

Enough for four aircraft so I will need to be careful applying these! Luckily these are pretty straightforward looking (famous last words?).

The decals were produced by Sieben Schwaben Spiele in deepest Bavaria. Again, there is also a Facebook group where it is possible to see other examples of the range of decals they produce. The sheet you see was originally sized at 1:200th but a quick request via messenger secured a rescaled version at 1:100th, for use with my Axis and Allies Angels 20 collection, specifically the aforementioned Wildcats/Martlets. The sheet cost eight euros with two euros for shipping which I thought was pretty reasonable.

Although they are designed for 888 squadron Fleet Air Arm, the style of numerals is suitable for other squadrons as well. I shall have a look and see what I can come up with. Repainting the Wildcat into a Fleet Air Arm scheme should be easy enough, even for me, so I shall look forward to tackling this in due course.

All in all then, a pretty good start to the week and I also have a few other bits and pieces en route.

To Infinity and Beyond….

Starfighters R Us! Registers very highly on the fun factor and with bags of potential!

Yesterday evening at the club saw your truly taking command of a Z95 Headhunter - a single seat ‘snub’ fighter - along with one other and taking on a pair of TIE Fighters in an asteroid field (naturally). The rules in use were Voidfighter published by Osprey and the models, including the asteroids and the star field gaming cloth were from the collection of the esteemed Mr Fox. I should mention that he has a substantial collection of models from the Star Wars based X Wing game and so these provided the mounts we used.

Sadly I did not get any pictures but the game ended with both TIE fighters being vaporised, in part due to some truly outrageous dice rolling by myself rather than any apparent tactical nous. For the record the Z95s scored a TIE each. Despite being a small fight - as much to introduce new players (myself and Mr Huband) as for the scenario itself - it was a lot of fun and I can easily see this becoming a club staple. As an aside I have actually owned the rules for a while now but this was my first run out with them. It will most definitely not be the last though!

Aside from the obvious Star Wars angle the potential for other Sci Fi backgrounds is obvious. Battlestar Galactica being one as well as a whole host of other fictional universes. For my own part I rather like the idea of something pulp based - Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers being prime contenders - or even something VSF related. 

The rules themselves are designed for fighters only with a corvette sized vessel being the largest that could be deployed. It is a very theatrical set, as befits the genre, and play fairly rattles along. I shall enjoy playing around with this so there is yet another distraction when I should be looking at ironclads!

Despite being rocket powered and called Komet the Me163 never made it into space - this was the star field cloth over which the Star Wars game was fought.

The talented Mr Huband brought along the latest addition to his Axis and Allies Angels 20 collection - a resin and metal 15mm scale Me163 Komet. Before anyone asks yes, we have stats for one of these and again, yes - it is pretty fast! Mr Huband did a lovely paint job on this and I will look forward to seeing it in action, assuming the pilot hasn’t melted due to fuel leak….

A Small Piece of the Crusades

A selection of rules for varying levels of medieval mayhem

As far as the ‘middle ages’ are concerned my only interest has ever been the Crusades - and for far longer than I care to remember! Seriously though, aside from a detour via the ‘period’ of Robin Hood my interest in Western Europe during the period has been non-existent. Spain in the period of El CID and the later campaigns of the Reconquista are definitely on the radar, perhaps with the rise of the Ottoman Turks, but for now it is firmly Crusades based. 

As usual, any likelihood of me painting armies for the period is slim to none but that is not to say that I will not dabble in some fashion. I rather like the scale of Lion Rampant and in truth, forces for the Crusades using these rules would be as big a commitment in terms of painting figures as I would like to undertake. However, courtesy of a supplement in an edition of Wargames Illustrated called Assassins and Templars - released around the excellent book of the same name by the eminent Crusades historian Steve Tibble - I now have the opportunity to raise even smaller forces than needed for Lion Rampant. 

Steve Tibble’s excellent study of both the Assassins and the Templars and the Lion Rampant Crusades supplement - really useful!

Assassins and Templers - a Ruckus game - uses forces of up to around a dozen figures a side which is ideal or the reluctant or disinterested figures painter. I am quite happy fighting actions at this level using 28mm figures and so have been thinking about what I would need when along came Pillage, published by Victrix.

Pillage are designed around small scale raids, primarily set during the Viking era but are readily usable beyond this and in other theatres. I am rather taken with these and despite the inevitable glossy hardback book approach the rules themselves look pretty entertaining in an old school kind of way. There is also a useful painting guide and some ideas for making one’s own scenery. I did chuckle at this as there are instructions on making a simple cottage style building using coffee stirrers….

So what does all this mean then? Well, I am not averse to painting up a couple of dozen or so figures for each side so I suspect that acquiring the appropriate figures would be an idea. It is possible to buy individual sprues of most plastic figure ranges so some careful research should point me in the right direction. At first glance I rather like the look of Fireforge - mainly as the figures do not appear to require as much in the way of assembly - but there are plenty of others from Victrix and Gripping Beast. 

We shall see but for now it is back to the ironclads….

A Tale of Books, The Battle of the River Plate and of Coffee Stirrers….

Jane’s Fighting Ships needs little introduction and this is the compilation WW2 volume. Fighting Ships of WW1 and WW2 is a hardback compilation from the old Purnell range of A4 sized 64 page paperbacks - a pocket money standby from my youth! Naval guns is essentially a picture book snapshotting various types of artillery across five centuries. There are some great pictures, accompanied by some useful, albeit brief background to the weapons depicted. Finally, a selection of accounts of the most famous Royal Navy actions, again over the centuries.

As many of you may know, there are a vast number of ‘buying and selling’ groups on Facebook. I belong to a number of specialist types - specialist as in special interest - as well as a few geographically local versions. Very occasionally, among the sofas to be disposed of or sets of golf clubs looking for a new home, something turns up that catches the eye. In this case it was a selection of naval books - 12 in all - that a lady was disposing of, all for £5! After an exchange of messages the deal was struck and so I drove over to her house after hydrotherapy yesterday to complete the transaction.

I knew in advance that a couple of titles I already owned but playing forward would be easy enough. The books you see in the picture above are the ones I am keeping, three are destined for a local charity ship whilst the others are for playing forward, so to speak. I was a little embarrassed at the low cost of the haul but the lady was adamant that £5 was sufficient. Interestingly enough, she told me that the books had belonged to a great uncle that had died a few years ago in a nearby care home. He had served during WW2 aboard HMS Ajax and saw action at the Battle of the River Plate. Apparently he had some memorabilia from the ship but when he died no one knew what happened to it - it was in his room at the care home. You never know who or what pieces of history can be found more of less on one’s doorstep!

I use a lot of these but very seldom venture anywhere that you can get them from - Starbucks, Costas, Cafe Nero or even McDonalds! Very useful for the scratch builder.

Laurel and I headed to our local boot sale this morning and once again the pickings for yours truly were pretty thin but I did manage to score a bag of 1,000 wooden coffee stirrers for the princely sum of £1. That should keep the shipyards bust for quite some time to come!

Turrets and Other Bits

The first of five boxes worth of laser cut MDF bits and pieces used in my warship models

As part of my return to scratch building ironclad warships, I decided to carry out a modest reorganisation of my supply of the laser cut MDF pieces I use for the models. This would serve two purposes. Firstly, I would be able to see if there were any pieces that needed restocking and secondly, so that I could tidy up the five boxes full of bits and pieces.

The box you see above now contains all of my turret pieces, as well as the two key components I use for assembling masts.

A selection of masted ships - you can see where the fighting tops are used to help strengthen the masts.

A selection of turreted monitors and the U.S.S. Keokuk (top left).

I have turrets available in four sizes - 1”, 20mm, 15mm and 1/2” - and I am quite sure that it must drive poor Mr Murray at Warbases to distraction as I quite happily mix metric and imperial measurements for the pieces I require!

For the turrets, the central layer with the gun embrasures is 3mm thick. For the layers above and below this I usually use 3mm but have a selection of 2mm thick pieces to use if required. As mentioned previously, using the 2mm thick ‘lid’ means that the gun embrasures appear to be higher from the deck. An illusion to be sure, but a welcome one. 

The mast ‘fighting tops’ are all 3mm thick and whilst circular it would be simple enough to get some rectangular versions cut. From what I have seen of ships over the ironclad period the fighting tops seem to be mostly circular so that is what I have gone with by default. On my models their function is to provide a ‘sleeve’ of sorts to the joins in the masts. They provide an extra surface on which to apply glue, thereby making the join really strong. The full circles with a central hole are used for ships that are running with a cut down sailing rig.

I was pleased to have sorted this particular box out as it gives me a much clearer idea of what I have and what I need going forwards. Once turret designs move away from being circular I will need to order some other shapes but the basic three layer assembly technique will still work for them - I will definitely use the 2mm ‘lid’ though!

The Look of the Thing or Size DOES Matter!

An oldie but a goodie! Taken from the climatic Battle of Static Bay as described in Developing The Portable Ironclads Wargame: The American Civil War. A floating battery, extemporised gunboats, an old navy style sloop and a selection of ironclads. Oh, and plenty of damage markers!

My collection of simple scratch built model warships for the ACW has given me much satisfaction; both from the modelling perspective and from seeing them in action. The whole process of turning a couple of pictures of a chosen ship into a physical approximation is a lot of fun and I have enjoyed it enormously. Although my construction technique has remained largely the same throughout,  I have incorporated a few subtle changes into the overall design process and it is these changes I wanted to write about in this post.

The most significant change I have adopted has been one of size. Although the models are not exact scale replicas in terms of overall dimensions, I am now ensuring that relative size differentials are noticeable. This will be readily apparent with the batch of models I am currently working on for the Royal Navy and the Ottoman Turks. There are no hard and fast rules for this as my models tend to be built ‘by eye’ rather than detailed measurements. My use of a standard hull shape - akin to that of a slab-sided barge - is probably the closest I get to any degree of regularity!

A typical turret. In this case one of the half inch version that were deemed to be too small for the current batch of models. There are three layers of 3mm thick MDF although I am looking at using a 2mm think lid which will bring the gun embrasures closer to the top of the turret.

I have also applied this technique to the construction of turrets. Fortunately, over the period that the Portable Ironclads Wargame covers, turrets tended to be circular and with guns that required muzzle loading so were run into the turret to do so. All of my turrets are built in the same way - three layers of MDF, each of (usually) 3mm thickness - with the middle layer of the ‘sandwich’ having two (usually,  although I have do have some singles available) cut out indentations to represent the gun embrasures. All of my turrets do not have any gun barrels exposed, thereby avoiding having to add them! Once I move onto the later periods I will not be able to get away with this but luckily, the technique I designed would work enough by simply seating the gun barrels in the indentations before ‘putting the lid on’, so to speak.

As part of the current build, I ordered some turrets sized at half an inch across. Whilst these are useful, it soon became obvious that they were slightly too small for the planned models. My usual size of 20mm across, of which I have a prodigious quantity, was very slightly too large so a quick rethink and a cheeky order to Martin at Warbases and I now have a number of turret pieces to the same design but measuring 15mm across. They look just right, and that is the main thing. As an aside, when I first started building the ACW collection I ordered turrets that are 1” wide - and this proved to be be too large, hence the use of 20mm as the size of choice.

In terms of the ‘Look of the Thing’ then I can happily say that in terms of anything approaching  scale etc, my ACW collection is all over the place! To be accurate, I should say that the relative size differential between types is probably far greater in the ACW collection than that of the current build as I was less concerned with this initially. Being used solely on a grid it does not really matter too much about this anyway and besides, using a model that has some physical presence on the tabletop is far more visually satisfying in my opinion then using something that is on the small size.

A case in point was the WW1 Lake Tanganyika collection, built to go with the hexed version of David Manley’s excellent Steamer Wars rules. My models of Mimi and Toutou were around 3cm long whilst the Graf Von Goetzen was about 10cm. Strictly speaking the two Royal Navy motor boats should have been smaller than this but when modelled in true scale (I am talking about 1:600th here) they are tiny. On the tabletop though, my ‘out of scale’ models looked just fine and I can live with the abstraction!

I guess the point I am trying to make is that although my models are not to scale and are designed to be very basic looking, I am mindful of the look of the thing, hence my moving towards ensuring that relative size differences are obvious. Although they are primarily gaming pieces - pretty robust ones at that - I would be less than honest if I did not say that I continue to be rather pleased with how they look when in action and also just how much I enjoy building them.

And that is the whole point of the exercise methinks!