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.