Naval Gaming

[AndyHall]

For our time period I much prefer the simpler sets of rules.

The challenge with our period is that it was a period of very rapid technological change, with rifled guns, spar torpedoes, explosive shells, steam propulsion, armor, and on and on and on. By comparison, Age of Sail games are much simpler in that the technologies being represented are relatively fixed across the nations, with many fewer elements to factor in.

There is a BASIC game assist program for Ironclads, downloadable as a text file at Grognards-dot-com. I don't have a BASIC emulator, so I don't know how well it works, but it would certainly be helpful in a large scenario.

 

[Yankeedave]

My friends and i solved the problem of long term board games and leaving it set up.
Take one square of sheet metal and attach to wall. Stick a magnet to the back side of game piece. Everything sticks to wall.
On the fun side we accumulated about 2,000 of these.

Enough to do burnsides ninth vs jackson three div corps. In the garage four sheets of plywood sat on saw horses. Green army blankets covered that complete with roads houses trees etc. Games lasted for months.

 

[AndyHall]

My friends and i solved the problem of long term board games and leaving it set up.
Take one square of sheet metal and attach to wall. Stick a magnet to the back side of game piece. Everything sticks to wall.
On the fun side we accumulated about 2,000 of these.
View attachment 121326
Enough to do burnsides ninth vs jackson three div corps. In the garage four sheets of plywood sat on saw horses. Green army blankets covered that complete with roads houses trees etc. Games lasted for months.

Decades ago I read a modeling magazine article about a diorama of Gettysburg created with those Airfix figures. It came out to be many thousands of figures, IIRC covering all three days of the fighting there. I think it was commissioned for either the NPS or another museum/exhibit space there -- not a private venture. The soft plastic Airfix figures were really the only way to tackle that project, given its scope.

Since then, there have been many more figures available, of finer quality and substantially higher pricetag.

 

[Yankeedave]

There were other makers. We mixed them. Modelers putty contributed to many a gruesome solider. Some figures were crawling on the ground. We cut the weapon out and they made dandy little dead guys.

 

[Waterloo50]

As mentioned before there is Iron Clads2 and another game called Iron Clads war in the Pacific. I play two Naval war games, Napoleon Total War, epic battles and Empire Total War, In Empire total war you can mix and match the ships that you want to do battle with, I have seen HMS
Victory take on the USS Constitution. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjKVuyR0W_A

All of the above games are available on steam, if you play Napoleon Total war then its worth adding the Darth Mod, it gives more realistic reloading times, slower ship movements and fog of war, after a few broadsides its impossible to see anything for the smoke.

 

[AndyHall]

I have both Empire and Napoleon TW, although I've never much focused on the naval side of those sims.

For Empire I run (alternately) either DarthMod or American Revolution mods, and NTW III for Napoleon.

 

[Waterloo50]

I have both Empire and Napoleon TW, although I've never much focused on the naval side of those sims.

For Empire I run (alternately) either DarthMod or American Revolution mods, and NTW III for Napoleon.

I have a separate install for Napoleon Total War just so that I can play the Blue and Grey ACW mod, the naval battles in NTW are very good but it can be quite frustrating if you play large naval engagements, I prefer to build my own custom battles with just a handful of ships. I also have Atlantic fleet in my steam library. From what I can see Naval Action looks great but its a tad expensive especially considering that there is no single player option, I guess it must be like world of tanks but with ships.

 

[Waterloo50]

I just spotted another Civil War game on Steam which has a naval component, Civil War: 1862

 

[AndyHall]

Didn't realize Naval Action wouldn't have a single player option. Take that one off the list.

I do like Atlantic Fleet. It's gorgeous, but the combination of high resolution animation with a turn based game has a really odd feel to it. World of Warships is fast and beautiful to look at, but it's an arcade game.

 

[Blessmag]

And I thought this was about belly buttons

 

[Waterloo50]

And I thought this was about belly buttons

Please see post 919 under Original Quotes by CivilWarTalk Board Members.
That will teach you to not make me laugh when I'm drinking my tea, I could have choked.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Being something of an old grognard... I don't have as many games as I used to, and I have even less time to fiddle with them, alas, but I have a certain fascination for the rules systems if nothing else. In terms of ACW naval games:

• Ironclads and Ironclads Expansion Set (both Excalibre and Yaquinto editions)
• Shot and Shell (3W), a sort of Ironclads-related game-- not quite an expansion, but fairly compatible
• Ironclads and Aether Flyers (from the Space: 1889 roleplaying game)
• Blockade Runner
• Iron & Oak
• Rebel Raiders on the High Seas
• Smoke on the Water rules
• Iron & Steam rules
• "Victory on the Rivers," a Victory at Sea rules variant for ACW
• and from a slightly older era, the good old classic Wooden Ships & Iron Men

and I *think* I have Hammerin' Iron around here somewhere, though I can't put a finger on it at the moment.

On the computer, I have Ironclads: American Civil War, which I really don't care much for, and Ironclads: High Seas, which is a little better but still not all that engrossing to me.

One of these days when I have loads of time again...

 

[AndyHall]

And it is clear that the stats you have for the danish ships are not historical.
The danes did have rifled guns... but most was still smoothbores.
( Jylland had 32x 30 pdr as the main battery. And 8x 18 pdr. rifled and 4x 12 pdr. rifled cannon)
Niels Juel had 30x 30 pdr. and 12x 18 pdr. rifled cannon;
And Heimdal had 14x 30 pdr.)

Yep. Before writing my post, I checked the data card in my copy of the Ironclads Expansion Kit, that shows Jylland (below) as having its entire armament composed of rifled guns. I didn't see the card closely when we were playing Sunday; we were playing with the original Yaquinto Expansion Kit, while my copy is the later Excalibur Games edition, which may be different but really shouldn't be.

I also checked Conway's, that gives Jylland's armament as forty-four 30-pounder smoothbores, with a later armament of two 8-inch rifled muzzleloaders and twenty-four 6-inch rifled muzzleloaders, which appears to be what the game designers based their data on. Maybe this was the ship's armament at the time of Lissa two years later, but Conway's does not give a date for the change.

As always, the devil is in the details!

 

[galveston bay]

There are some classics that have stood the test of time. I've played or watched several games where the strategic/search phase is carried out using AH's Jutland or Bismarck, and then the players switch to a completely different rule set to fight out the resulting tactical encounters.

The current, most hard-core board game for the Age of Sail, Close Action, was developed by Mark Campbell as a successor to AH's Wooden Ships & Iron Men, and is very similar in basic form and mechanics to that pioneering game. Close Action has been described as "WS&IM done right," which is as much homage to the original game as it is critique.

I used "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" plus some rules from a "General" article once to recreate the "Alabama" vs "Kearsarge" fight

it wasn't pretty but it was before even "Ironclad" was out

I loved "Wooden Ships and Iron Men", I played it often enough to go through all the orders sheets eventually (back in the days when copiers where rare)

 

[Waterloo50]

Decades ago I read a modeling magazine article about a diorama of Gettysburg created with those Airfix figures. It came out to be many thousands of figures,

It could have been built by these guys, they have uploaded some pictures of their old Gettysburg diorama.
http://historyin172.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/more-from-our-gettysburg-diorama.html

 

[bekosh]

A good friend of mine, Bob Walker and I spent months researching and writing "The Devil at the Helm" set of rules. It was so complicated I think it only went through on print run. Allied to a demanding full time job and heavy involvement in a heritage railway it put me of playing completely. I think the only surviving bit is the set of gun tables which I put up on here some time ago, and which I try to update periodically.
For our time period I much prefer the simpler sets of rules.

I have a copy of Devil at the Helm on the shelf somewhere. It's not bad for small actions, Huascar vs HMS Shaw works pretty well, but anything bigger would be a problem.

Now I use Iron & Fire version 2 by David Manley and 1/2500 minis from Tumbling Dice.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

A follow-on thought... military history, military strategy, and wargaming have always been strongly intertwined in my mind, to the point where separating them gets difficult. On my strategy shelf:

Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age
Clausewitz, On War
Corbett, Principles of Maritime Strategy
FM 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Symbols
FM 3-0, Operations
Gray & Barrett, Seapower and Strategy
Halleck, Elements of Military Art and Science
Jessup & Croakley, A Guide the the Study & Use of Military History
Joint Pub 1, Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces
Jomini, The Art of War
Keegan, A History of Warfare
Keegan, The Price of Admiralty
Liddell Hart, Strategy
Lindberg & Todd, Brown, Green, and Blue Water Fleets
Mahan, Mahan on Naval Warfare
Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History
Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power
Naval Doctrine Pub 1, Naval Warfare
Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy
Parker, The Cambridge History of Warfare
Reynolds, Command of the Sea
Sumida, Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Talbert, Strategy and Tactics
USMC, Warfighting
Van Crevald, The Art of War
Weigley, The American Way of War​

and nearby

Dunnigan, The Complete Wargames Handbook
Freeman, The Complete Book of Wargames
McHugh, US Navy Fundamentals of War Gaming
Perla, The Art of Wargaming
Sabin, Simulating War
Thomas, Ancient and Medieval Wargaming​

 

[Yankeedave]

A follow-on thought... military history, military strategy, and wargaming have always been strongly intertwined in my mind, to the point where separating them gets difficult. On my strategy shelf:

Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age
Clausewitz, On War
Corbett, Principles of Maritime Strategy
FM 101-5-1, Operational Terms and Symbols
FM 3-0, Operations
Gray & Barrett, Seapower and Strategy
Halleck, Elements of Military Art and Science
Jessup & Croakley, A Guide the the Study & Use of Military History
Joint Pub 1, Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces
Jomini, The Art of War
Keegan, A History of Warfare
Keegan, The Price of Admiralty
Liddell Hart, Strategy
Lindberg & Todd, Brown, Green, and Blue Water Fleets
Mahan, Mahan on Naval Warfare
Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History
Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power
Naval Doctrine Pub 1, Naval Warfare
Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy
Parker, The Cambridge History of Warfare
Reynolds, Command of the Sea
Sumida, Inventing Grant Strategy and Teaching Command
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Talbert, Strategy and Tactics
USMC, Warfighting
Van Crevald, The Art of War
Weigley, The American Way of War​

and nearby

Dunnigan, The Complete Wargames Handbook
Freeman, The Complete Book of Wargames
McHugh, US Navy Fundamentals of War Gaming
Perla, The Art of Wargaming
Sabin, Simulating War
Thomas, Ancient and Medieval Wargaming​

Awesome Collection!

 

[Waterloo50]

A great site that provides rules for Naval Wargames, the various rules are in pdf and they cover most periods of naval history. http://www.navalwargamessociety.org/rulesonline.html

 

[thomas aagaard]

I also checked Conway's, that gives Jylland's armament as forty-four 30-pounder smoothbores, with a later armament of two 8-inch rifled muzzleloaders and twenty-four 6-inch rifled muzzleloaders, which appears to be what the game designers based their data on. Maybe this was the ship's armament at the time of Lissa two years later, but Conway's does not give a date for the change.

As always, the devil is in the details!

Jylland was not part of the battle of Lissa ;-) (that was Austria vs Italy)

The online source I took the arms from can be found here:
http://milhist.dk/vabnet/1922/ (it is in english)

It give us:
Niels Juel:
42-30 pdr., reduced by 1864 to 30-30 pdr. and 12-18 pdr. rifled cannon;
later rearmed with 2-8″, 24-6″
Jylland
"44-30 pdr., reduced by 1864 to 32-30 pdr., 8-18 pdr. rifled and 4-12 pdr. rifled cannon;
later rearmed with 20-6″ and 6-5″ cannon."
Heimdal:
14- 30 pdrs.

The book "Bismarks First war" (modern book)
Niels Juel: 30x 30 pounder, 12x Rifled 18 pounders
Jylland: 32x 30 pounder, 8x Rifled 18 pounders, and 8 rifled 12 pounders
Heimdal: 14x 30 pounders and 2 rifled 18 pounders

The book "Vor sidste kamp for Sønderjylland" (from sometimes in the 1920ties)
Niels Juel: 30x 30 pounder, 12x Rifled 18 pounders
Jylland: 32x 30 pounder, 8x Rifled 18 pounders, and 4 rifled 12 pounders
Heimdal: 14x 30 pounders and 2 rifled 18 pounders

So they don't entirely agree. But they all agree that Jylland had 32x 30 pounders.
(and "Bismarks first war" got a typo. Since Jylland is clearly a 44 gun frigate.)