Planning for DANG 2012

With the Museum of Flight game out of the way and things slowing a bit at work, I can finally start preparing for my yearly naval game: DANG (Dave's Annual Naval Game). This year's voting ended in a tie (that is the second year that the voting ended in a tie) and the winner was decided with a coin toss. This year's game will be "Lord of the Lakes: The War of 1812 on Lake Ontario."

British ships on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812 (Enemy in Sight by Peter Rindlisbacher

There is a lot you can do with the naval war on Lake Ontario, but our mini-campaign will cover the critical months of July to September 1813. This is after most of the ship building for the year was complete and when both sides had opportunities to bring the enemy to battle and secure a decisive victory on the lake. However, both sides also must realize that they could lose the war by losing their fleet and that not losing might be more important than winning. Historically, there were four encounters/battles during this time period and I'm hoping that my game will generate about the same number. 

USS General Pike and Wolfe face off (Burlington Races by Peter Rindlisbacher)

I've started writing out the basic rules for the running the campaign. The game will play out with operational turns (each lasting two weeks) where each side will assign ships to required and optional missions for the two weeks. The missions include patrolling, interception, supporting land forces, escorting convoys, along with ship repairs/refits. The ships assigned to missions will have the chance of meeting and generating tactical actions. We will use Mark Wadington's beautiful, scratch-built 1/600 scale ships and the modified Sail and Steam Navies rules for the tactical actions.

USS General Pike opens fire, from an earlier game

Mark built all the needed ships for the time period the game will cover, but I'm planning on building a few gunboats and cutters that will be the supply ships for the convoys. This will also give me gunboats and small ships for future games on the Great Lakes or in the Chesapeake Bay area. I'll post information about building the smaller ships later.

The game should be a lot of fun and it looks like I will have a packed house for it. This is DANG’s eleventh year and here are links to recaps of games from before 2010, the Lepanto game from 2010, and last year's American Civil War river game.