Prepping for DANG 2018 - Planning and New Ships

In an earlier post I mentioned that the 2018 version of Dave's Annual Naval Game (DANG) will revisit the American Civil War. This year’s game is entitled Cradle of the Rebellion - The Siege of Charleston. The game will cover potential battles the Charleston, South Carolina area between July and September 1863. Historically during this time, the Union Army and Navy were cooperating to reduce Confederate forts on Morris Island. The Union attacks on the Fort Wagner failed to dislodge the Confederates (see the First and Second Battles of Fort Wagner), but it did convince them to evacuate the island in September. There were only a couple very minor naval skirmishes during this time, as the Union Navy tried to stop resupply and reinforcement attempts to the island. But the Confederate General P.T. Beauregard had requested that the Confederate ironclads attack the Union forces to break the attack on the forts, setting the stage for a nice hypothetical action.

Confederate ironclad Chicora attacking blocking ships in Charleston Harbor

For the game, the Union forces will be tasked with using their ironclads to reduce the Confederate forts and batteries around the harbor, allowing the Army to storm them, and maintaining a tight blockade on the city. The Confederates need to support their forts and the blockade runners, while trying to break the blockade. As usual with DANG, both sides will have some options to start the game and missions they must complete.

I’m borrowing most of the ships for the game from others. But I always like to put together some ships for each of the games. This year I picked up four new ships (a Yankee Gunboat, Confederate Gunboat, and two ‘Purchased’ Screw Steamers) from Thoroughbred Miniatures 1/600 Ironclads line. The kits are mostly generic that can be used for any number of ships from the era. I’m painting up the kits now, but wanted to post a few photos of the ships before and during construction.

The Yankee Gunboat is a sidewheel steamer that can be configured to represent a number of different purchased sidewheelers. It comes with six guns that allow you to vary the armament.

Unassembled Yankee Gunboat

The Purchased Screw Steamer is truly a kit-bashers type kit. It comes with parts to make a wide variety of screw steamers. It comes with three masts, a raised forecastle, two wheelhouses, a long cabin, and six guns. You can easily add your own cabin (using wood or plastic) to change the configuration and create different ships.

Unassembled screw steamer

For my ships, I used the included cabin for one to create a ship similar to the USS Aries and the other I left the cabin off to make something similar to the Confederate gunboats Macon and Peedee.

Assembled screw steamers (bottom and left) and Confederate Gunboat (right)

The Confederate Gunboat is a cottonclad sidewheel steamer, meant to represent the Jackson, Governor Moore, and General Quitman. But it too can be a somewhat generic ship.

A side view of the assembled ships

I’ll get a few photos of the painted ships up before the game.

This my seventeenth-year running DANG and is the second time we’ve played an ACW battle. 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 2013 Operation Landcrab game, the 2014 Cogs of War game, 2015 The Shores of Tripoli game, 2016 The Big Stick game, and last year’s Seastrike game.