ACW Naval Gazing

 

(because posts about ships have to use the Naval Gazing pun at some point...)

We all have those untouched projects that lurk at the back our minds or get half-started but never finished.  Let's face it... we wouldn't be wargamers if we didn't.  One of mine is ACW naval.  I actually have kind of ticked this off in the past as I acquired a load of Navwar 1:1200 ironclads and have played quite a few games with them.

But of course we all have that butterfly instinct that leads us into murkier waters (and they don't come much murkier than the Mississippi!).  A few years ago (edit: I've checked and this was 2014!!) I'd eyed up the Peter Pig 1:600 ships because of course bigger is better. I quite liked the look of these and thought that a bigger scale would look much more impressive on the table. I placed an order with PP and duly collected it at Salute but when I went to examine the ships a couple of days later they were nowhere to be found!  I hunted everywhere but had no luck and sadly concluded I'd left them somewhere at the Show or perhaps on the train.  I managed to pick up some painted ships from eBay but these languished in the loft.  

A year or so later I was tidying up in the dining room and, under a coat, I came across my original Salute order, which tells you something about the tidiness of my dining room!!

I've found this a hard project to get going for some reason and the ships remained in the loft for several years, always in my to-do list but never actually seeing the light of day... until now...

Look at the state of my cutting mat... I may need to invest in a new one!

I've dug out the ships.and discovered I now have quite a lot.  The eBay ships weren't painted too badly but have needed a bit of a touch up or, in some cases,  a fresh paint job as the colours were all wrong. They're now pretty much done.  There's still a bit of dressing to add.  Although riverine ships tended to ship their masts before combat, some had single masts and I've added these to some of the ships.  I need to add some simple rigging and flags but otherwise they are ready for a planned game in the next few weeks.

A lot more ships than I realised!

You  might have spotted that some of the ships are based and some aren't.  The eBay ships have a card base with some texturing and a name label.  The ones I've done from scratch are currently unbased.  I'm currently mulling over whether to go with similar bases to the others, to leave them all unbased, or to go with clear acrylic bases (which is what I did with my Napoleonic ships).

For guidance on the ships I have been referring to this excellent book by Tony Gibbons which I can highly recommend if you have an interest in this genre.

Rules-wise I'll probably go with Peter Pig's Hammerin' Iron which are quite light but ideal for an evenings game.  My alternate rules which I haven't played in many years are Smoke on the Water.

There are a few more bits and pieces coming in the post from Peter Pig including some buildings and markers but I've also been tempted by their 1:600 (3mm) ACW land troops.  Riverine ships often supported troops engaged on land so I thought it might be worth having a look at them... it's a whole new scale and much smaller than anything I've tried before so it'll be interesting to see what they're like... more on these when they arrive.