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

Painting a Khurusasn APC and Rebel Miniatures Titan gunship

Just to prove I'm not totally slacking off the last two weeks, here are a few pictures showing the - admittedly slow - progress I'm making toward getting some new units ready for the table. I've had both the Khurusan wheeled APC and the Rebel Miniatures Titan gunship for at least a year now, but progress stalled after I'd assembled and primed the models. But no more! Progress must be made and here's the proof it's starting to happen.

The current state of the painting table.

The painting work space is a little crowded right now with CMG grav vehicles, 28mm Sikhs, armored cars (Rebel Mini's and Matchbox) and the big APC and gunship models all competing for space.

Okay, not so maybe I have a few too many irons in the fire right now. But on with the show!

The Khurusan APC. Just looking for a few good Marines to check out the colony.

 The Khurusan APC is a BIG casting. The picture does not do it justice, but it's both broad and long. It's like a cross between an IFV and an RV. Those marines could live in this thing for a while if they had to do so. I've got a base coat of Olive Grey paint down. It's a good green base for 'army' type vehicles.

The Titan Gunship

Next up the "Flying Kaytusha" that is Rebel Miniatures Titan gunship. A good sized troop compartment is paired up with four fix forward medium cannon and up to SIX rocket pods (four under the wing and two - not pictured - mounted ABOVE the wing) to deliver a devastating salvo on enemy troop concentrations. The base coat here is again Vallejo Olive Gray. (Olive Gray is a theme color for this force. It gives the various VTOL a "Vietnam/Avatar" vibe and helps visually pull the models together into a sense of team.

Matchbox - Oshkosh MATV

I've mentioned the M-ATV before. It makes a nice sci-fi scout car/light APC. This one's been repainted in it's 'national colors of Olive Gray (again!) and light gray camoflague. I used a dremel tool to open up the gun shield and mounted a spare support weapon (I thing from a CMG model) in the turret. These MATV are some of the best I've seen from Matchbox for sci-fi gaming. 

I've got another model in progress that might get a spare tank gun and become the Fire Support variant with a low-velocity gun and no passenger ability. Have to see how that fits. If I don't like it, I see a missile launcher variant in it's place.

 

"Klytus, I'm bored....

What plaything can you offer me today?"
                                  - With apologies to  Emperor Ming "The Merciless"

Over the past week, I've been struck by a sense of ennui regarding my recent choices of sci-fi rules. Mostly this stems from two decades of playing GDW's old game "Command Decision". That game left me with the desire to model more 'grand-tactical' level games. I don't want to push a squad (or even a platoon) around the table - I want that mid-level of command - something at the Battalion / Regiment.

But wait - there's MORE!

I also want a game that is (wait for it...)

• Simple - The rules need to be straightforward and uncomplicated.
• Fast Moving - Speed of play should be king. Players should get to do stuff and often!
• Easy to pick up - I want to be able to run this at conventions with people that have never played before.
• Does not require boat loads of charts - I don't want to spend a lot of time looking up unit data to result combat.
• No cardboard landfill! - It does not result a 'table clutter' from a plethora of markers
• Does not take all day - Ideally it can be finished in a 4-6 hour gaming session. Most of my compadres don't have 8+ hours they can spare for the mega-gaming sessions of our youth.

Does such a thing exist? Is this a fool's errand?

I dunno, While at Cincycon this year, I had a wacky thought about a "Road Warrior" type game that would be based on a popular Horse and Musket set. The key would be capturing the flavor of the period without bogging the game down in the details. That train of thought is leading me toward a similar concept but for the sci-fi type game. Generic basing, but tweak the movement and combat effectiveness  to reflect the following;

• smallest unit is the fire team ( I struggle with this. I think it should be at the squad level, but in many cases I think the team is the smallest element to represent, be it a fireteam, a weapons team or a command team.)
• Unit's have an effective range, but can generally shoot at anything they can see. This covers the typically gaming table experience.  (At low tech end this get's modified for infantry systems?)AT the higher end, "Effective range" is anything you can see.
• Troop quality must be reflected.  It could be some combination of 'morale rating' or even better fire dice (d8 versus, d6, etc.)
• Command Control must be reflected - and it must reflect the flexibility that high-tech networking brings to the battlefield. That high-tech unit invariably gets thinned out over a greater frontage as command control allows it. 
• Diverse units must be reflected - anything from ground pounders through ground vehciles to helo's/VSTOL through grav tanks and assault landers.

So....I don't much much, do I. The creative side of me want's to start cobbling rules together and playtest some of these ideas. The slacker in me says "why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?" Just work with something that's already on the market.

What say you? Any interest in such an idea? Should I go dig out my old prototype Command Decision: Striker modifications that I wrote in the 90's (before Striker II hit the market). Or boldly strike out and try to create something new and different?