Action on the Mississippi...Hammerin' Iron

Its always great when you get to see a project through the painting stage and actually onto the table so this week my ACW ironclads that I've been working on (see previous post) got an outing in a game of Hammerin' Iron.

These rules from Peter Pig are fairly light but it means you don't get bogged down in the minutiae of armour thickness and gun calibre.  As usual in PP games, there is a pre-game sequence which determines who is attacking and defending, and how many ships turn up and when.  The defenders (me in this game, playing the Confederates) only start with 1 ship versus 3...the argument being that the attackers wouldn't launch an attack unless they have an advantage. Reinforcements do eventually arrive but more quickly for the attackers. The defenders do get the benefit of a Fort however although it played no part in our game.

The attackers get points for sinking ships but the real objective is to destroy the enemy supply depot and ships.

Actions are determined by a hand of 5 cards per ship but you have to commit to cards from either a deck focusing more on movement or firing for a few turns at a time which forces some tactical choices.

The lone Confederate ship CSS Arkansas faces off against the advancing Union ships

The Fort guards the supply depot

Fleets are selected to a points value... both sides have to pay for a Fort in advance but only the defender gets to actually use it

The 2 starting fleets

My initial sole ship quickly found itself the target of lots of fire from the Northern ships

Arkansas turns and tries to escape from the advancing Union ships...

...but, too late...a lucky shot from USS Miami causes a fire in the magazine and the ship explodes!

The Union ship Switzerland raced ahead to try and sink the supply ships but also came under fire.. there's a lesson there for both sides to not get too far ahead of the rest of the fleet.

USS Switzerland steams towards the supply ships but is repeatedly set on fire by the Southern ships.

As my ships began to slowly arrive I realised I was still outgunned and tried to sink the USS Miami by ramming it with Albemarle but csme under such heavy fire as the ship steamed in that the ram attempt wasn't very decisive.  In fact Albemarle was so beat up by the closing fire that she sank shortly afterwards!

Miami is rammed by CSS Albemarle

It only causes minor damage (but does start a fire) but Albemarle is sunk by gunfire in the process.

Because of the combined damage from the ram and further gunfire and fires, the crew of Miami decided enough is enough and abandoned the ship, heading for the safety of the shore.

The game has a variable time limit and as the clock ticked down the North had lost 2 ships and the Confederates 3 but more crucially, Andrew had managed to sink 3 of the 4 supply ships giving the North a major victory.

It's been several years since I've played these but we picked them up pretty quickly.  They're not overly technical and the hex system can lead to some oddities with firing arcs, but I think this is a good trade off for a game that is fast moving and gets a result in an evening.

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.

 

Loot from Salute!

Yes, I know I'm a week and a bit too early!

I was tidying up the dining room last week and in the dark recesses of the corner came across this lot...

To be precise they are 8 Peter Pig 1:600 Ironclads that I bought at Salute last year and immediately lost!  I've been hunting for them on and off since last April and had been resigned to the fact that they were either somewhere in the depths of our loft or had been accidentally thrown out.  Somehow they'd fallen off the dining room table which doubles as my modelling/painting workstation  much to my wife's disapproval, and had been buried under some old coats in the corner.  Now all I need to do is get round to painting them!!!

Hammerin' Iron

This week saw a rare outing for my ACW Ironclads and the Peter Pig Hammerin' Iron rules.

My ships are 1:1200 models that I picked up from Ebay years ago... Peter Pig do a lovely range of ships in 1:600 and I did buy a few of these last year, thinking to upscale my collection.  I've put them somewhere safe... unfortunately I've no idea where!  One day I'll stumble across them and it'll be a pleasant surprise I'm sure...

As with most PP games there is a pre-game sequence which determines who is attacks and who defends.  The attacker gets all his ships they arrive in a staggered manner over several turns.  The defender has even fewer out of his starting 6 ships and they are even later in arriving, but does get a fort.

The attacker's objectives are to defeat the enemy ships [obviously] but also to attack some transport ships and some riverside warehouses.

Finally, having worked out who is attacking and defending and set up the shoreline depots, islands and sandbanks, the players spend points on 'assets'.  These range from fire rafts.torpedoes and submarines to improving a ships gunnery, causing something 'bad' to happen to an enemy ship and causing night to fall.

The central island with the markers showing a line of mines.

 

 

I was the attacking Union player with Mike's Confederate fleet defending, or at least they would have been in most of them had bothered to arrive!  For half the game he only had 2 ships actually on table with a 3rd arriving later on.

He managed to release the first of his fire rafts directly into the path of one of my ships early on and continued to hound it throughout the game with his late arriving ship finishing it off by ramming. Unfortunately the turn after his successful ram he rolled a double 6 for a critical hit and his ship exploded!  On the other riverbank 2 of the Union ships ran past the guns of the fort which proved less than effective, causing hardly any damage.

The Confederate fire rafts drift downstream...

 

 

A union ship on fire...luckily it went out quickly

 

Like many PP games there is also a 'clock' counting down to the end of the game and shortly after the exploding Ironclad incident the clock struck 8 and the game ended.  The result was 2 Confederate ships lost to 1 Union but the transports had been wiped out and the warehouses pretty battered giving a major Union victory.

The Union ships head for the defenceless transports

These have been the best Ironclad rules I've come across so far.  There are several good sets out there but they can often descend into rolling dice for hitting, penetrating armour, causing damage etc and if the ships are too well armoured it can prove hard to actually cause any damage at all...probably quite realistic but it doesn't make for an exciting game!

In Her Majesty's Name and other stuff...

Normally when  I've been to Salute or another big show I buy a few bits and pieces which then languish in a box or in the loft.  Eventually I might get round to painting them up and, who knows.... actually playing with them.

This year having bought the North Star, In Her Majesty's Name figures I was keen to actually make a start and get something painted.  I bought the Servants of Ra and the Scotland Yard set as well as the rules and decided to have a go at the Egyptian cultists.

Having looked at the box art I decided to stick largely to the red robes (it somehow seems appropriate for your traditional Cultist].  I decided the Eye of Horus on their chests looked a little too ambitious for me though and left their robes plain.

I'd been less sure about painting the group leader Akhenaton as the combination of a black suit and eye shadow seemed a bit daunting but the shading worked well on his suit and I decided to ignore the eye detail as it would have ended badly!

Eeek... a Mummy!!!

Sairah, the drug crazed Hashashin daughter of the groups magical professor [no stereotype left unturned here!!] was also a bit tricky... lots of silky clothes and a slightly flimsy foot joint which I'm still not convinced about... but worked out ok too... The robes looked kind of washed out in the photo due to the lighting but are actually a light turquoise.

Sairah...

...and her father, the improbably named Professor Abdul Abulbul Abir

I also acquired a large steam mole burrowing machine-thing from Ironclad Miniatures which doesn't quite fit with the Egyptian theme but is a really nice model....

...it'll go much better with Callum's Ironclad underground people or possibly some mad scientist types.

And finally I've made a start on my new Peter Pig ACW Ironclad ships....

CSS Virginia

The Virginia and the USS Monitor

On a different topic entirely, we've been rediscovering RPGs [there's a post on it somewhere from last year]... Call of Cthulhu has been a big success including the Cthulhu by Gaslight variant which all ties in nicely with the steampunk theme [or is it VSF...and what's the difference??]

Our latest venture is Space Opera, the old FGU game. 

Those of you who've played it are probably sniggering by now but I had good memories of this from many, many  years ago...in fact I have a soft spot for most of the FGU games from the 80's.  The game is, according to most reviews, pretty unplayable but I always felt it had a really nice flavour and is broad enough to let you play anything from the Star Wars high fantasy type game to a more gritty Traveller style campaign.  So far we've established it has a mind numbingly long character creation system but does include a 'Wind Factor' stat for characters [stop sniggering]....