Action along the Winnebago River

The Prologue….And it came to pass….

Yesterday evening saw the Portable Ironclads Wargame getting a run out at the club. The main purpose of the action was to try out the square grid but more importantly, to prepare Messrs Fox and Huband for more challenging games ahead. 

The scenario was deliberately simple and with but two ships a side. For the Union, under the command of  Mr Huband, the river monitor USS Ozark and the double ended gunboat the USS Agawam whilst that ‘Will ‘O the Wisp of the bounding main’, Mr Fox took command of the ironclad the CSS Missouri and the CSS Gaines. The action was short and sharp as the pictures will show.

Opening moves - the Union opted to head in two directions whilst the Confederates maintained a line ahead with the CSS Gaines leading the CSS Missouri

The two Rebel ships caught between the USS Ozark (bottom left) and the USS Agawam (top centre). The CSS Gaines was able to deliver a hefty blow against the Union river monitor.

Retribution was swift though, as the CSS Gaines was subjected to a withering fire from the Union ship

In fairly short order, the gallant Confederate ship was subjected to a withering fire, battering her into a sinking wreck

With the Rebel fleet down to the ironclad the CSS Missouri - now with the two Union vessels across her line of retreat - the action came to an end. 

The game was brief but enjoyable although a couple of areas of confusion arose. To begin with the use of squares and positioning of ships within got a little scrambled. When moving orthogonally a ship sits squarely across the two squares - on the centreline if you prefer. When operating diagonally a ship would sit on the central spot formed by the two squares touching at a single corner.  In the heat of the action this got a little muddled but to be honest it made little difference to the overall outcome. 

Squares and dots aside the general consensus was that the rules would benefit immeasurably from a quick reference sheet. Guilty as charged with that omission - it is something that I always intended doing but never quite got around to doing so. I have started work on one and it will be uploaded on the Gridded Naval Wargame facebook group file section.

All in all though, I was pleased at how it went and it was a good work out to exorcise any gremlins before we move up to more challenging and complex actions.

Once again my sincere thanks to Messrs Fox and Huband for their time and carefully considered input.

Cheers chaps!

 

Reaching for the Sky….and Beyond!

WW1, the Battle of Britain and ‘Over the Reich’ - perfect for my ‘cardboard aircraft’ aerial adventures

As part of my ongoing aerial project I wanted to get copies of the rules available from Tumbling Dice as part of their Wings at War range. Normally these include a selection of 1:600th scale aircraft but I only wanted the rules. A quick email to Paul at Tumbling Dice and I am now the proud owner of the trio of rule sets you see above. The incentive to crack on with the flying bases and counters has never been higher!

“Space Battles” was always going to get my attention…..

Another set of rules I have just acquired are set of starship combat rules penned by Rick Priestley. These are designed to be usable with whatever models you like although he does provide his own background for those that would prefer this. A couple of things that caught my eye with these rules is that they are grid based - a square grid no less although a hexed version would be perfectly usable - and use packs of normal playing cards for damage etc - no dice are involved.

I have only just skimmed through these rules but there are some interesting ideas therein - along with enough starship technobabble to appeal to most Sci Fi gamers. Needless to say I am thinking about using the painted Red Alert fleets to give them a spin.

In the meantime though, I need to get organised for the Portable Ironclads Wargame taking place at the club this evening.

Lots to do then!

Flying Bases and Cardboard Aircraft

The base has been been painted using Humbrol Satin 131 Green and Matt 89 for the counter edging and the pole. The base the counter is on has a hole on the underside and is not fixed in place

There is enough room to have two dice frames along the rear edge if required - these are the 7mm versions from Warbases

The view from the rear. The dice frame will be used to indicate the altitude.

Whilst waiting for some paintwork to dry with the ironclads I took the opportunity to revisit the idea I had for flying bases for cardboard counters. The pictures above are very much in the experimental stage but I really think that there is a lot of mileage with this idea!

The next step will be to stick all the Dawn Patrol counters to the 1” square bases I have with the central hole. The counters are very slightly larger than the Warbases 1” counters so a degree of careful trimming is needed to make sure that the sides are flush.

I am undecided about the final finish for the base as the plain green looks, well, plain and green - perhaps some light texturing may help. All the paint needs a further coat and varnishing but his far I am pretty happy with the concept. As mentioned previously I need to get a ‘sea’ set of flying bases and am now also thinking about a ‘desert’ set.

Dead chuffed with these and they are dead simple to make!

Back in the Ironclad Painting Groove

Turkish ironclads

I managed to get a good couple of hours in the man cave this afternoon, resuming work on the ironclads for the Royal Navy and the Turks, with the emphasis on the latter. As you can see, the white-lined top/upper decks have been fixed to the hulls so the next step will be to tackle the main deck features - essentially everything apart from the masts. 

Of the models you see above the three that feature in the top row on the left will all have barbette deck guns whilst the two in the bottom row on the left have twin turrets.

Size matters - at least relatively speaking! For the record my model of HMS Superb is the same size as the completed ironclads you see above. The new versions of the Turkish ships are the size you see above

Four of the Turkish ships are smaller versions of models I had built previously and that featured in a couple of battles. The original ships measure around 5” long - the same size as my model of HMS Superb. In reality, the Turkish ships should have been around an inch and a half shorter. With the ACW collection I was never really that fussed about relative sizes - some are, most aren’t - but I have made more of an effort with this one and so the Turkish ships will look rather more accurate in respect of size.

The next step will be the deck features and of course, getting the Royal Navy up to a similar stage!

It is good to be back painting and building these again!

 

Thoughts on The Russo Japanese War

Part of the Avalanche Press “Great War at Sea” stable - 1904 - 1905 means of course the Russo Japanese War. 

The familiar GWAS approach - strategic moves on the map and the battles arising are fought on the tactical map.

A while back I acquired an unpunched copy of the Great War at Sea board game covering the Russo Japanese War. The game is lovely to look at - as are the rest in the series - but as yet it has not seen any action and so has sat, somewhat forlornly, on the shelf of shame in the man cave. 

I have a lot of ‘previous’ in respect of the predreadnought era, going back to the days of the old Newham Wargames Club when my French 1:3000th fleet regularly locked horns with the Austrians and Italians of Mr Fox. We used a set of rules called “Devil at the Helm” which gave a good, albeit complicated game. Using them for actions set in 1905 really pushed the system - meaning that the game s-l-o-w-e-d down almost to a crawl. It is safe to say that they were very much of their time!

DBSA - the naval version of DBA - works well for the period and the indefatigable Mr David Manley has, unsurprisingly, produced a set of rules for the Russo Japanese War called White Bear, Red Sun (available from the Wargames Vault under Long Face Games label) that builds upon them. They also include a rather nifty campaign system. 

A really good set of rules - both for the tactical and the strategic side. The PDF also has ship counters, a larger map and area control markers. In my opinion, it is one of Mr Manley’s best!

So between the above two I have the wherewithal to fight actions from the war with the advantage of using a campaign system to generate the battles. The counters from the board game could be readily used with White Bear, Red Sun although I would not be averse to making the models required. These would be easy enough to do but for the one thing I am sadly lacking - time!

In this case I would look to use commercially available models - probably in 1:2400th from Tumbling Dice although I have seen a number of other options that could be viable.

So what happened next?

Well, I was looking through eBay for books about the Russo Japanese War when I came across a rather interesting looking board game.

Available from Nuts Publishing - quite a small box

The contents. The Map is roughly A3 sized with the area divided into zones. The game is all about controlling them

The wooden ‘meeples’ used for the Japanese land forces

A close up of the map and the (two sided) counters. Only ships of cruiser size and above are represented and the flip side of the counter represents a damaged ship.

The game last for six turns with the Baltic fleet arriving on turns 5 and 6. The victory conditions are quite simple - if the Japanese do not have a ‘meeple’ in the Mukden Box of the Manchuria track the Russians win. The other way of winning is the position of the Control Point (CP) marker. CPs are gained by controlling sea zones so at the end of turn 6 whoever has the most is the winner. The game takes around an hour to play and fits handily on a normal sized tray. There are optional rules regarding minefields, the attack on Port Arthur and some additional ships.

Another game in the same series - “This is SPARTA!”

All in all it is a quick fix but challenging and it is one I shall look forward to trying out. If the previous game in the series is anything to go by (300: Earth and Water, a game covering the Persian invasion of Greece) then it will have been a great investment. For the record it cost £23 plus shipping!

There is a cunning plan with all this - more of which in a (much) later post….

Developing the Portable Ironclads Wargame - An(other) Update

Another day at the ACW Naval ‘office’ - with the Rebels having a thin time of it!

After a period of reflection and deliberation I have decided that the format of Developing the Portable Ironclads Wargame is to be changed. Essentially, the Anglo-Turkish War is not going to be in the book but will instead feature as a standalone supplement at a later date.

The book will instead focus on the ACW element - much like the original title - with a historical refight included rather than the Anglo Turkish War of 1880. 

The reason for this change is that including a fictional war felt a little ‘out on a limb’ as far as the context of the book is concerned and would require a lot more work than I originally envisaged - the models are but a small part of the whole - or, if truth be told, have the time for.

On the plus side it does mean that DTPIW should be available on schedule as a result.

It’s not all bad news after all!

More on Red Alert

The (in)complete collection. All the models are there but some of the tokens are missing along with all but one of the terrain tiles. My other unpainted set is fully complete. The hexes are 4” across the flat sides.

The Confederation fleet - from the top we have 6 battleships, 12 cruisers, 12 destroyers, a flagship (with its 3 fighter CAP) and 12 fighters….

….the Commonwealth fleet has the same composition but the ships of each fleet are of a different design

Assorted game paraphernalia

The opposing fighters….

….flagships….

….destroyers….

….cruisers….

….and battleships.

I finally finished the repair work on the models from my painted edition of Red Alert and so wanted to show them, along with the rest of the collection, by way of a review. There is a lot of ‘kit’ in the base game as you can see. I shall be repainting these in due course, only because I want to ensure that the as yet unpainted base game models are in a similar colour scheme. I suspect that I will stick with the red and green colour scheme - only because the these colours are reflected in some of the other game components. 

I did a little digging on BoardGameGeek about the game and made some progress in finding out about the card imbalance in the base game. Essentially there are more right sector command cards than left. Originally this was thought to be a mistake but apparently it was done deliberately as a follow up expansion launching a new alien fleet that would include additional command cards that would address the left hand shortfall. Sadly this has not seen the light of day although it was demonstrated as one of the US gaming events some years ago. Whether or not this expansion will be picked up in due course remains to be seen - it also included a big battle two mat variant - but it would be a shame if it never surfaced.

So what does this all mean for me then? Well, in the short term I have the wherewithal to fight some decent sized space battles using a straightforward and familiar system - straight out of the box. Longer term this can be expanded to include the other set I have - which of course means the repaint will be needed - as well as the expansion sets available from PSC. I have a number of sets of grid and non grid based sets of space combat rules that could be readily used so there is plenty of mileage with the game for sure. 

For the time being I am content to use the painted set as is but I will look to redo it at some point but this will be to offload it. I will get the other set painted first though!