Naval Gaming

[Sonar]

Hi.

I've got a high interest in naval warfare currently and I might be able to give a few ideas.

Firstly, for Civil War gaming in general there is Tabletop Simulator.

You can get this on Steam, there are official and unofficial game translations including:

Battle-cry!: A Civil War Game

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=715845955

Kurt and Allison American Civil War Miniatures
(These are 2d sprites, not models, but will let you play Civil War Miniatures online with your friends.)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=670527062

Battleground Antietam

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=494123476

Blue and Gray

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=636596534

Battle-Cry 150th addition

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=417264204

For The People II

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=781549264

The best game I've played with Ironclads is Shogun: Total War II, which has real time Ironclad combat, way better than Ironclads and Ironclads II.

Expired Image Removed

However the reason I found these forums is that I've been working on my own Civil War naval modification.

There's a game called From the Depths, it allows you too make ships and have them fight. I've been making a Civil War set of ships to use.

There are a lot of limitations, the smallest you can go is 1 meter blocks, so there is no such thing as fine detail, but with some creativity you can get reasonable facsimiles of historic ships and have them fight it out.

I can't thank these forums enough for the wealth of information for ships from the War.

CSS Louisiana

CSS Alabama

USS New Ironsides (Refit)

USS Roanoke

If anyone is interested in getting into this let me know, I'll guide you through it.

So far I've got about 20 CS and 16 US, including ships that never saw action in the war, such as the Stonewall and Wilmington.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I have to say that I think Atlanta was a pretty useless vessel, much as I admire the ship she was loosely based on.

Hm. There's a potential thread topic right there...

 

[Story]

Posted as inspiration for our 1:72nd scale shipbuilder(s), these 28mm ships from the previous war mounted on movable stands for wargaming.





http://adam-clark.com/game/kiss-me-hardy-at-kublacon/

http://adam-clark.com/game/adamcon-2016/

http://jayswargamingmadness.blogspot.com/2016_05_01_archive.html

 

[rebelatsea]

Hm. There's a potential thread topic right there...

Good Idea Mark.
I will stay watching if others are happy to give their opinions ,theories and reasons, joining in when I see something I can add.

 

[Sonar]

Oh, btb, if anyone has an interest, I do take requests for ships to model. My goal is to have enough that you could do a campaign without reusing a ship.

S.

 

[AndyHall]

Here's a ruleset from the (UK) Naval Wargames Society, co-authored by our friend @rebelatsea several years ago. He cautions that they're outdated, but you can have fun with them. Folks who've been around the CWT Naval War forum for a while will immediately notice that the gunnery and armor tables have rebelatsea's fingerprints all over them.



http://www.navalwargamessociety.org/NWS_Ironclad_Rules.pdf

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Folks who've been around the CWT Naval War forum for a while will immediately notice that the gunnery and armor tables have rebelatsea's fingerprints all over them.

We've tried to get him to wash his hands before touching them, but it's just no use.

 

[rebelatsea]

We've tried to get him to wash his hands before touching them, but it's just no use.

Thanks a lot !.

 

[rebelatsea]

This is the set of rules I started with, published in Donald Featherstone's Naval War Games.

Two page later mods by me:

Apologies: I will put those two up again the right way round.

 

[rebelatsea]

Second try:

Sorry, I don't know why it's doing this, the image is the right way up in the file. At least this time the pages are complete.

 

[Story]

PS - found this source of 1/600th scale ships.
http://bayareayards.virtualscratchbuilder.com/

 

[James N.]

I personally like the old school Avalon Hill board games.

I agree, but NOT Jutland though! My "speed" is definitely original (NOT the unplayable "upgraded" version) Bismarck. Or even worse, U-Boat!

 

[JohnW.]

I agree, but NOT Jutland though! My "speed" is definitely original (NOT the unplayable "upgraded" version) Bismarck. Or even worse, U-Boat!

Jutland sucks totally...my fav was Gettysburg and Panzer Blitz.

 

[rebelatsea]

Jutland sucks totally...my fav was Gettysburg and Panzer Blitz.

I disagree, Jutland is very easy to convert to miniatures, did it years ago when I played naval.

 

[AndyHall]

I disagree, Jutland is very easy to convert to miniatures, did it years ago when I played naval.

I've not played Jutland in toto, but I've played a couple of miniatures games where the Jutland strategic movement/search board was used to set up tactical situations fought with other rules. It seems to do that rather well.

While we're on the subject of WWI in the North Sea, here's an AAR for a fictional encounter between American battleships and elements of the German High Seas Fleet, set in 1918, gamed with Naval Warfare Simulations' Steam and Iron: The Great War at Sea.

Having played a number of naval different games covering different period and in different formats, one thing has proved to be consistent -- I'm terrible at it.

 

[rebelatsea]

I've not played Jutland in toto, but I've played a couple of miniatures games where the Jutland strategic movement/search board was used to set up tactical situations fought with other rules. It seems to do that rather well.

While we're on the subject of WWI in the North Sea, here's an AAR for a fictional encounter between American battleships and elements of the German High Seas Fleet, set in 1918, gamed with Naval Warfare Simulations' Steam and Iron: The Great War at Sea.

View attachment 141697

Having played a number of naval different games covering different period and in different formats, one thing has proved to be consistent -- I'm terrible at it.

Thanks Andy, I was a founder member of the Naval Wargames Society (UK), and played WWI & II, predreadnought, ironclad of course, Napoloeonic ,and Armada periods.
I still have my large collection of WWII 1/1200 , WWI 1/3000 and ironclad and ACW in both 1/1200 and 1/600 scales.
My Napoleonic and Armada models to 1/600 scale are or were dispersed round the UK on loan. I'm afraid I have lost track of them . I have space problems in my house (I've run out of it), so I have been experimenting with 1/2400 profile flats, I have the Royal, French and Italian navies so far, but not printed them off.

 

[DaveBrt]

In the late '50's and '60's, I gamed a lot with miniatures -- the naval side being mostly 1/1200 WW2. I still have the mimeographed "Rules for Minature Naval War-Games" by G. A. Lord, the Wargamer's Newsletter rules for several periods (the ACW by Donald Featherstone), Featherstone's "Naval War Games" published as a hardback book in 1965, and the ALNAVCO "Seapower" rules, printed in 1969.

I played board games from AH's first Gettysburg until about 1980, mostly those in the magazine Strategy & Tactics. I still have about 40 of them. Of course I bought Ironclad I, but have never played it. The last game I played was S&T's Alamo while spending a month on a Navy assignment in Indonesia in 1980.

With children, job changes, moves and my web site/book, I long ago stopped spending the time necessary for gaming. Maybe someday again.

 

[AndyHall]

Ironclads is daunting in its game mechanism. Lots and lots of tables that have to be cross referenced. It still has a following, I believe, because of the level of detail it provides, but it comes at a price in ease of play.

Somewhere I have a text file of a gunnery game assist program for Ironclads that is written for Basic, but I've never been able to figure out how to run it.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Having played a number of naval different games covering different period and in different formats, one thing has proved to be consistent -- I'm terrible at it.

Well, I would say there is no doubt that you are terrible at it. Because if I am viewing this correctly, you Admiral Andy are responsible for the loss of 3 U.S. battlewagons! Positively deplorable. I expect you used that old Beatty line as your excuse, that "there was something wrong with our bloody ships that day."

 

[AndyHall]

Well, I would say there is no doubt that you are terrible at it. Because if I am viewing this correctly, you Admiral Andy are responsible for the loss of 3 U.S. battlewagons! Positively deplorable.

It made me a little queasy, honestly. Apropos of nothing much, here's the aft emergency steering of U.S.S. Texas, little changed since her days with the Grand Fleet: