DANG 2016 - Planning

With November half over, I’m finally getting around to preparing for my yearly naval game: DANG (Dave's Annual Naval Game). We had our DANG voting earlier this year and for this year's game the voters selected The Big Stick – The 1903 Venezuela Crisis.

Roosevelt's Big Stick in the Caribbean

The game will cover a hypothetical war between the United States and Germany over the Venezuela debt crisis in 1903. In the game the Germans have refused to accept arbitration to resolve the issue. They are continuing their blockade of major Venezuelan ports and have attacked several Venezuelan forts. President Roosevelt, adding his own corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, has dispatched a naval force to remove the blockade and prevent the Germans from occupying any Venezuelan ports. While the primary forces are cruisers, there will be an opportunity for both sides to get some battleships into the game. The Italians might make an appearance too.

While this was a cartoon from an earlier crisis, it seems appropriate here

I’m going to use 1/2400 ships from Panzerschiffe for the game, with a few substitutions for the German and Italian ships. Most of the ships will be close enough to the real thing, but some will require some minor alterations.

We will either use David Manley’s Fire When Ready rules or the recently released Admiralty Trilogy Dawn of the Battleship rules. I have played Fire When Ready, so I have a good idea of how things run there and I would like to try out Down of the Battleship before making a decision.

 

This is DANG’s fifteenth year (yes it is DANG XV, I think it is time to start numbering them like Super Bowls). Here are links to recaps of DANG from before 2010, the 2010 Lepanto game, the 2011 American Civil War river game , the 2012 War of 1812 Lake Ontario game, the Operation Landcrab game from 2013, the 2014 Cogs of War game, and last year’s The Shores of Tripoli game.

2016 NHMGS Game Day at the Museum of Flight

NHMGS held our annual game day at the Museum of Flight on November 6. We were back in the museum’s main gallery under the Blackbird (not a standard SR-71, but the last surviving M-21 version) with our information table and four gaming tables.

An overview of the gaming area

The information table

As usual, we had two gaming sessions. The morning session had a Wings of Glory World War 1 game, a Cuban Missile Crisis game with the AirWar: C21 rules, a Star War Armada, and an All Quiet on the Martian Front game. In the afternoon there was a Korean War scenario using Check You 6 Jets rules, a Galactic Knights game, an Aztecs vs. Conquistadors game using the Quetzalcoatl Rampant rules (a variation of Lion Rampant), and an Old School Naval Action game.

The museum had a nice placard talking about us

And we got to game near a recently restored P-26 Peashooter

This year I was helping run the AirWar: C21 game and played in the Quetzalcoatl Rampant game, so I didn’t get as many photos as usual. But here are a few to give you an idea of how things went.

Wings of Glory WWI bomber

All Quiet on the Martian Front getting ready to go

Star Wars Armada

AirWar: C21 MiG-19s flying defending a SAM site

The American strike approaches the target

A MiG-19 lines up a shot on a Navy Demon

SAMs targeting the Skyhawk bombers

MiGs, Missiles, and Skyhawks

Old School naval getting set up

Quetzalcoatl Rampant Conquistadors moving to contact

The Spanish native allies move to attack the Aztecs

Gamer turnout was good, but I think the sunny weather (after a week of mostly gloomy rain) limited museum attendance. We did get a chance to talk with several people about our hobby and even the ones that didn’t stop to talk seemed interested in the painted figures.

The game day is always a good opportunity to show off the hobby to the general public and the museum is a really great forum for it.