Smoke on the Water at Advance the Color 2014

After a seven year hiatus, I returned to American Civil War naval gaming at Advance the Colors 2014. On the first evening of the show, I provided a small game pittiing Union and Confederate ships against each other on the Red River. We had a good turn out with three Union players and two Confederate players. The Union Squadron consisted of the following

USS Chillicothe
USS Lafayette
USS  Choctaw
USS Marmora
USS  Argosy

The Union squadron had been the mission of raiding the Upper Red River and destroying at least one Confederate vessel or battery.  Facing them were the Confederates consisting of the remains of the River Defense fleet.

CSS Missouri
CSS Arkansas
CSS Indianola (captured earlier in the war)
CSS Sumter

Battery Savory...two guns - a medium rifle and a super heavy coastal Columbiad

Assisting their efforts were are minefield of torpedoes and some rocky obstructions about midway across the area of play.

The Confederates were tasked with defending the Upper Red River. All they had to do was not lose all their ships.

Designer's note: Okay, I looked at this and thought, "yeah, this is doable. Both sides have easy missions."

Union players - Darryl, Lawson and Craig, not pictured Shawn

The battle opens with a long range duel between the rifles of the Choctaw and Lafayette and Battery Savory. The Union immediately suffered a setback when one of the rifles on the Choctaw exploded. Parrott guns were known for their weakness and this guns proved no exception. 

The Union chose to advance in line. USS Marmora displayed a little too much enthusiasm and charged forward ahead of the fleet.

Marmora leads the way!

 
Battery Savory first engaged  the USS Choctaw, but then switched fire to the Marmora once it passed through the mines. In additon, the guns of the Indianola and Arkansas fired as well.

Marmora suffers multiple hits and catches fire.

The pummelling fire forced a morale check for the crew of Marmora. Lawson threw the dice and FAILURE! The crew has had enough and abandons ship. Worst, this allows the fire to grow unchecked.


Undeterred the Union continues to advance. Layfayette and Choctaw on the right, with Chillicothe and the Argosy on the left. The abandoned Marmosa slows to a halt...and the fire burns itself out. This leaves the uncrewed Marmora floating in the middle of the battle.

CSS Missouri approaches slowly screened by Sumter. Chillicothe and Argosy in upper right corner. Missouri and Chillicothe by Thoroughbred Miniatures. Sumter, Argosy and Marmora by Bay Area Yards.

Lafayette and Choctaw maneuver through the minefield untouched. Choctaw by Thoroughbred Miniatures. Lafayette by Peter Pig.

Battery Savory scored a lucky hit on Choctaw's magaine resulting in a spectacular explosion that rained damage on Lafayette.

Next came the 'ramming portion' of the show. Chillicothe collides with Indianola. Arkansas rams the Argosy. Missouri plows into the side of Arkansas. It's a wreck. Ships start to blaze away at point blank range. Argosy suffers heavy damage (from ramming and 11" shells) and fails it's morale check...the crew abandons ship.

Inidianola rams the Chillicothe. Models by Thoroughbred Figures.

The train wreck of ramming....CSS Arkansas model in center and tinclads by Bay Area Yards. Others by Thoroughbred Figures.

USS Argosy (Bay Area Yards model) busrts into flame following heavy fire from Indianola, Arkansas and Missouri.

On the Union left, Chillicothe collides with Inidanola and attempts to board...and fails. Both models from Thoroughbred Figures.

With Chillicothe's wheels shot away, her captain orders the ship scuttled and the crew over the side. His plan - to blow the magazine and take Inidianola out in the blast. This would fulfill the mission requirements....at steep cost.

The Chillicothe bursts into a roaring fire. The countdown begins...can Inidianola get free in time.

(Ray: This is where I start quoting Khan from Star Trek II. "No, you won't get away this time....From hell's heart I stab at thee....")

Backing away from the blazing wrecks. Confederate victory is near...

I feel compelled to add that the Sumter, in turning around managed to sideswipe the riverbank and ground the stern of the ship. By the end of the game, the ship was still aground under the guns of battery Savory. Sumter fired a total of two shots the entire game.


In the end, the the Lafayette survives...barely. She's been shot to pieces and more drifts downriver than steams away. The Union have lost two ironclads and two tinclads and the Confederates have not lost a single ship. The result of the game - a resounding Confederate victory. There will be hard questions asked in Washington as to what transpired in the murky depths of Louisiana and why the navy ascended the river in the first place.

Adventures on the West Coast...

My job sent me to San Francisco for the week. While the days were long and the work was engaging, I was fortunate to be able to break away one evening and spend some time with Stephen Taylor owner/operator of Bay Area Yards and all round nice guy.

The National Maritime Museum has a great collection of sailing and steam vessels.

After meeting me for dinner, Stephen graciously invited me back to his place to hang out and shoot the breeze. This was easily the most fun I had the whole trip. The time flew by as we talked gaming, books, movies and reviewed miniatures from the collections of Stephen and his friends. Before I knew it, the evening was over and I had to return to my hotel across town.

It's always fun when how you imagine something to be runs into the reality of what it actually is. We often talk about many miniature wargaming manufacturers being 'cottage' industries. Stephen showed how true this was in the case of Bay Area Yards when he opened a case and said "This is Bay Area Yards" all the molds and some of the masters for casting all the models that BAY offers.

Bay Area Yards - this is where the magic happens.

Assorted 1/600 models ready to go! 

I used to think the Dunderburg was a large model! British casemate ironclads.

HMS Warrior...come out and play! The scale is in inches!

Stephen has a wonderful sense of humor and he carries this into many of his gaming projects. One example I'd wish I'd taken a picture of was his Kelly's Heroes Tiger tank....modeled after the Tiger tank in the movie. Sooo...it's got the suspension of a T-34 and the turret of a Tiger, but mounted on the forward turret ring of the T-34 chassis. It's a great match to the prop from the movie.

Speaking of movies...this made me laugh! This was one of the more colorful command stands in Steve's collection. As it's not labeled, all we can say is that this is "the brigadier with no name."

You all remember the Rat Patrol, right? Willy's jeeps versus the wily Afrika Korps in the desert. Stephen's ready to game these actions with his custom figure conversions.

Pardon the blur, but this photo is supposed to show the Rat Patrol -with correctly modeled crews. The red kepi of the driver is obscured by the gun barrel.

And the classic "Germans" driving American kit conversions.

All in all - it was a great night meeting new people and having a great time bonding over miniature gaming. It was over all too quickly.

If  you find yourself in San Francisco - drop Stephen a line. He's a great guy happy to share information about his town and his hobby.

Smoke on the Water at Advance the Colors September 19th, 2014

I'll be providing an ACW naval game at HMGS-Great Lakes 'flagship' convention Advance the Colors. The game is 7:00pm on September 19th. Given the short slot available for the game, I'm forced to keep it relatively small. For simplicity, I'm going to use mostly tinclads and gunboats, maybe an ironclad or two per side. Possibly a battery of guns and the ubiquitous torpedoes and obstacles like "snags".

I'm going to loosely model this on the Red River campaign with some of the 'what if' elements that the Anaconda campaign game allowed to happen. What I'm thinking is...

Union Squadron with;

USS Chiilicothe
USS Lafayette
USS Choctaw
USS Argosy
USS Forest Rose

Confederate Squadron with;

CSS Missouri............casemate ironclad
CSS William H.Webb.......paddlewheel ram
CSS Indianola (Captured earlier in the war)
CSS General Sumter....gunboat ram

Battery Van Foose
2 Medium Smoothbore guns

 The problem with convention games is that you never know how many players you will get or what their skill and experience levels will be.

So...this is a relatively low end game. Mostly light and medium guns with some heavies opposing heavily armored counterparts.

The alternative is to do Hampton Roads with Congress, Cumberland and Minnesota against Virginia. This has the benefit of being a short game with lots of opportunity to fire guns. 

Too much? Too little? Too weird?

Even more ACW naval models!

I keep sorting through stuff, so here's a few more pictures.

One day, I ought to build and index of all the models. But not today!

 First up some tinclads and timberclads.

Assorted tinclads and timberclads from  Peter Pig, Bay Area Yards and Thoroughbred.

USS Blackhawk was a large, lightly armed tinclad that has the distinction of serving as flagship of the Union Mississippi River Squadron. The model is from Peter Pig. As far as I know, it's only available from Peter Pig.
I added the forward mast, midships masts and stern mast. The paint scheme is based of an image from Silverstone's Warships of the Civil War. The vessel is large enough that she had a stable for Admiral Porter's horse.

USS Blackhawk

Next up USS Lexington (I think). This is a Thoroughbred model of a Timberclad. They saw heavy service early in the war especially at Forts Henry and Donnellson and the Battle of Shiloh.

Lexington

Bay Area Yards does a nice set of Confederated River Defense Fleet rams, one of which is Earl Van Dorn. This is a small model - the photo does not do it justice. Even though it's small, there is great detail present.

Earl Van Dorn - a work in progress

Van Dorn on the quarter showing off her casemate.

Another small model - Bay Area Yards did the CSS Fanny. This is a small, steam powered fishing vessel that was converted into a light gunboat for the defense of coastal North Carolina. She mounts two light guns. Fanny fought in a handful of coastal actions before being scuttled to prevent capture (and to deny the Union use of the Dismal Swamp canal),

CSS Fanny from Bay Area Yards

Yet another Confederate  from Bay Area Yards, this one is a little larger - the commerce raider CSS Florida. Florida is a cruiser with moderated armament and decent endurance.

CSS Florida from Bay Area Yards. The model sports a set of Bay Area Yards masts.

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Close up of CSS Florida. This will look good when I finally finish the model.

Switching back to the Union for a bit, I started pulling out tinclads. I found a set of four that share a common parentage. All four were sculpted by Patrick Hreachmack. Two are resin that Patrick cast himself, 2 are models he did for Bay Area Yards - Argosy and Forest Rose.

Attack of the tinclads

Needs more tinclad. Forest Rose and Argosy on the right side.

Forest Rose from Bay Area Yards

Mortar Schooners. Thoroughbred's on the left/front. Peter Pig in the right/rear.

USS George Page. Another is a series of small warships from Bay Area Yards.

Rekindling the fire for 1/600 ACW Naval games

Ten years ago I was obsessed with naval actions of the American Civil War. I'd written rules for campaign games (Anaconda) and tabletop games (Iron Thunder) and collected a ridorkulously large collection of 1/600 scale ship models. But for the past eight years, ACW naval got pushed to the back burner while other interests took priority.

But in the past few weeks, I've rediscovered my interest in ACW naval. I've had some great conversations with people like Stephen Taylor at Bay Area Yards and the boys in my local gaming group. So, I pulled out some boxes and started dusting off the ships. I mean literally dusting off the ships. They had like 8 years of dust accumulated on them.

One of the big changes since I'd put there away is the ease of sharing stuff on the web...like through this blog!  So as I'm pulling them out, I thought it would be fun to post pictures of some of the models so you get a feel for my skill level (or lack thereof) in modeling and painting 1/600 scales ships. And without further delay...on to some of the ships!

USS Galena. This was the first or second attempt I made at scratchbuilding a ship model.

USS Galena  was a steamship converted into an ironclad. Not a stunning success, but the ship appears in a handful of important naval engagements and at the time, you could not find a model anywhere in 1/600. Forunately, this is a relatively easy ship to model. Which is good as I managed to produce a decent gaming piece that no one will mistake for a contest quality model. I captured the important features that identify the ship. In hindsight, I wish I'd worked on the stern a bit more.

The ship has a balsa wood core which is covered is sheets of Evergreen styrene. The bowsprit is styrene as are the railings, stack, mast and the flying bridge. The standing rigging is fine steel wire. The base is my standard - styrene with Woodland Scenics flexpaste applied and painted in layers of brown tan and light green. 

Pulled back to show the whole model

And a view of the port side.

USS Rhode Island. This is a Bay Area Yards model.

Another shot of Rhode Island. She was the towing ship when USS Monitor sank.

Another Bay Area Yards model - USS Ossipee. This uses one of thet mast kits from BAY.

USS Ossipee is a great kit of one of the smaller blue water steamers in the Union Navy. 

I rigged the kit using thin steel wire. This actually serves as functional standing rigging and provides additional strength and rigidity to all the masts.The masts don't have a stiff core and need the rigging to keep them straight.

Another BAY kit. USS Minnesota. An early effort of mine. I recycled the masts from a very old TCS blockade runner kit and added a minimal amount of rigging. She's srtipped down for combat with the upper masts and sails struck below.

Here's a Peter Pig USS Monitor next to the Minnesota for comparison.

What's the Monitor without USS Congress?

USS Congress again. I scratchbuilt all the masts on this and USS Cumberland out of styrene. Even the standing rigging is styrene. The ratlines are from a window screen material.  They are not perfect, but for a gaming model they get the point across.

Monitor, Minnesota, Congress (on the left) and Cumberland (rear)

A side by side shot. The Peter Pig monitor is a nice easy kit and true to its prototype.

Another Peter Pig model - the mortar schooner. 

Again, the ratlines are from window screen material. If I remember correctly I scratch built the masts and the shaft of the bowsprit. The base is styrene with Flexpaste applied and painted in suitable 'riverine' colors. 

A Thoroughbred armed ferryboat steams past a mortar schooner.

I'll print the name on paper that matches the table top and tape the name to the ship. 

Blog Consolidation Time

I've come to the conclusion that hosting these multiple niche gaming blogs may be a great way to segregate the contect, but it's a real pain to manage these sites. To that end, I'm consolidating my gaming blogs under a single banner. I'll be retaining the Skill Level Zero blog as the master, but going forward it will feature not just Traveller / sci-fi related topics, but my other gaming interests as well. In the future you'll see posts related - but not limited  - to the following;

• American Civil War naval gaming
• Sikh Wars (mostly using Volley and Bayonet)
• WWI aerial gaming (mostly using Wings of War / Wings of Glory
• WWII aerial gaming (mostly using Check your 6)
• The occasional board game
• Assorted other gaming related topics

So stay tuned and thanks in advance for rolling with the changes!
     

An Awesome Power Projection AAR

If you've never heard of it, Power Projection is to Traveller Book 5 starship combat as Striker is to Book 4. An excellent set of rules for translating starship combat to the tabletop setting. There is an excellent After Action Report of a Power Projection game over on Tempest in a Teapot. I highly recommend it - both for the quality of the write up and the opportunity to check out some excellent miniatures that model ships of the Interstellar war.

http://tempestsinateapot.blogspot.com/2014/04/interstellar-wars-battle-of-ross-154.html