Beyond Trent's Reach

With another good weather weekend, I offered up my yard for some outdoor gaming (with proper mask-wearing and social distancing). This time we decided to play Ironclads and Kevin came up with an alternate Battle of Trent's Reach scenario called "Beyond Trent's Reach." The scenario assumed the Confederate James River Squadron was able to make it past the Union obstacles and fortification (with the chance of some damage) to fight the Union James River Flotilla. The Confederates victory conditions were to exit their ironclads off the edge of the board without taking too much damage, while the Union tried to stop them.

Kevin also had some show and tell with the latest ironclad ships he had finished. None of which were involved in the battle, but it is always fun to have a little show & tell.

From the bottom to top USS Tuscarora, USS Dunderberg, and USS Mississippi with the Hunchback and Miami in the background

I set up my naval mats with some river banks and a little bend. We also threw out some shallows near the banks, but I didn't have them out when the picture was taken.

The James River (although the water is a little choppy for a river)

The Confederates started with the ironclads Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Virginia II, along with the gunboats Hampton and Nansemond. They set up first and rolled for damage from running the obstructions and forts. Overall damage was light, but the Fredericksburg did take some speed damage, slowing her down.

Gunboats near the bottom, Virginia II in the middle, then Richmond and Fredericksburg

The Union side started with the converted ferry Hunchback and sidewheeler Miami on the board with reinforcements coming on turns 3 and 6.

Union ships making a tactical withdrawl

Out-numbered and out-gunned, the Union ships started making their way down river hoping to meet with their reinforcements. But the initial Confederate shots struck home. On turn 1, Hunchback was set on fire.

Hunchback on fire

Then on the next turn a critical hit exploded Hunchback's boiler putting it out of action and sinking. Meanwhile, Miami was also taking some hits and got a rudder jam that forced it to turn back toward the Confederates.

Hunchback explodes while Miami's rudder is stuck in a starboard turn

Miami did get some good hits on the gunboat Nansemond, which failed a morale check and was forced to turn away from the battle. Nansemond would later recover morale, but played only a minor part in the rest of the battle. The other gunboat, Hampton, continued to battle away with Miami. The two boats had a minor collision and gunfire from Hampton set Miami on fire.

Hampton and Miami at close quarters

The ironclads also fired at Miami causing even more damage. The sidewheeler was soon put out of action and would eventually sink.

But things weren't all bad for the Union. On turn 3 the reinforcement roll gave them the twin-turret monitor Onondaga and the 90-day gunboat Itasca. Itasca moved up to engage Virginia II, while Onondaga went up the center.

The mighty Onondaga arrives

The problem for the Union was too many targets and not enough guns. Onondaga fired on Richmond, which was trying to slip down river along one bank, and also block Fredericksburg, which had fallen behind the other ironclads.

Onondaga in the center, Richmond at the top, and Virginia II at the bottom. Fredericksburg is just out of the picture to the left

Turn 6 brought more Union reinforcements with the arrival of the captured and re-flagged ironclad Atlanta and double-ended gunboat Massasoit. Atlanta entered near Onondaga (and the Confederate Richmond), while Massasoit rushed to help Itasca.

Massasoit (bottom) and Atlanta arrive to bolster the Union line.

Atlanta turned to fire at Richmond as Onondaga moved to engage Fredericksburg. Itasca and Massasoit were firing their large guns at Virginia II and taking some pot shots at the gunboat Hampton. But a critical hit on Itasca temporarily knocked out her boilers and forced her out of action.

Itasca and Massasoit take on Hampton and Virginia II (with Atlanta in the background)

But the way was clear for Richmond and Virginia II to make a run for the board edge for the victory points.

That left Fredericksburg alone to face Onondaga and Atalanta (yes, the gunboats were still there, but they didn't have much firepower to take on the Union ironclads).

Onondaga blast away at Fredericksburg, while barely noticing the little gunboat

Atlanta (on the right) also gets into the action

By this time Fredericksburg was close to the point of having to turn back due to damage. The ironclad had been heavily hit by the 15" Dahlgren guns and Brooke rifles and, due to its slow speed, probably would not have gotten away. At this point we decided to end the game.

Looking at the results, the Union lost two small wooden vessels and probably would have destroyed Fredericksburg. But the other two Confederate ironclads had escaped downriver in pretty good shape, which gave the Confederates the victory.

Overall an enjoyable game and fun to see the ironclads on the table again.

4th of July Gaming

With the weather finally turning better and with various COVID restrictions, I decided to plan for an outdoor game. I ordered a pop-up shelter and found a good spot on the front lawn to set it up. I put out the invite to a small group for July 4th. Several people already had plans (not surprising), but I had three takers for the game.

pop-up shelter and gaming tables ready to go

Since I was hosting, I wanted to get my recently acquired French 1/1250 ships into some action. After going over ship lists from the participants, I came up with a scenario. Basically, the American's are enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, while Europeans (in this situation, France and Germany) are looking out for their own interests in the Caribbean. This battle had scouting forces from a combined Franco-German squadron meeting up with the Americans off Haiti. We were using the Fire When Ready rules, with a couple modifications to the damage values to beef up the cruisers staying-power. With masks on and maintaining distance as best as possible, we were ready for some gaming.

French cruisers preparing for action

The French part of combined squadron was made up of the cruisers Dupuy de Lome and Amiral Charner. The Germans contributed the cruisers Kaiserine Augusta and Arcona.

German cruisers Kaiserine Augusta (right) and Arcona (left)

The American force consisted of the cruisers New York, Olympia, Detroit, and Tacoma.

American cruisers heading into action

The game started with both sides closing in. The French got in the first hits on the lead American cruisers. Then Franco-German force then split up to go around the island in the center of the board.

Germans split off to get into the action

The Americans concentrated fire on the French, doing some heavy damage to both cruisers and knocking out the helmsman on the Amiral Charner (the second cruiser in line). The French returned the favor, doing heavy damage to both New York and Olympia.

As the Germans cleared the island, they concentrated their fire on New York, while the French fired at Olympia and the trailing cruiser Tacoma.

Americans caught in the cross-fire

The Germans fire wrecked New York, causing the American to have to dodge the sinking ship.

New York wrecked and sinking as the Americans move around it

The French fire then wrecked Tacoma and jammed the rudder on Olympia. Olympia was able to clear the jam later, just before running into the land in the upper  left of the image below.

Tacoma wrecked

American return fire wrecked Arcona. But with heavy damage and out-numbered 3-2, the Americans decided to break off the action.

Arcona (lower center) also sinking

With the battle done, we did a little show & tell and talked over various rules and other things. We even raised a properly socially-distanced pint to our friends in the UK to celebrate the re-opening of pubs there (okay, not really, but we did enjoy some beer because naval wargaming is thirsty work).

As it says on the can "We like beer"

Overall the outdoor gaming worked fine. There wasn't much wind and the pop-up shelter kept us out of the sun. With the current restrictions on stores and large gatherings, I expect to plan a few more lawn games over the rest of the summer (weather permitting).

Finishing my French Fleet

To round out my French pre-dreanought fleet (started in my last post), I ordered some cruisers from the War Times Journal store. As with the previous ships, these are 1/1250 scale DLP 3D printed ships.

I was looking to pick up some smaller ships to round out my fleet. So, this order included Dupuy de Lome armored cruiser, 2 Amiral Charner armored cruisers, and 2 Friant protected cruisers. My order arrived at the beginning of June and began cleaning up the ships for painting.

French cruisers out of the box

Like the previous ships, these only had a few mechanical supports left from the printing process to clean up. Although, due to the smaller size, they were a little harder for me to get right.

Next I added the masts and spars to finish the look. I also added some extra top platforms to the Amiral Charner ships, since most of the period photos I've seen showed the extra platforms. After that is was time to paint them up. I used the same buff and black paint scheme as my previous ships and here is the end results.

The new cruisers

Dupuy de Lome armored cruiser

Amiral Charner class armored cruisers

Friant class protected cruisers

I looked around for some other smaller size French ships in this scale, but there isn't really much available. I will be keeping my eye out for ships, but I think the fleet is mostly complete. I have a pretty good mix of large and medium size ships from the era and that should be enough for now.

The French fleet trying to not ram each other

The last thing I'll do is put the ships on the bases. I'll be using clear bases from Litko. I liked how they turned out for my last DANG project, especially with the game mats I'm using now.

No Enfilade - But a New Naval Project

Normally in April and May my blog would have had posts about preparations and playtests of the games I would be running at the annual Enfilade convention. And this weekend I would have been going around the convention space taking photos of all the games. But Enfilade 2020 was cancelled in April, which stopped the scenario work and the various stay at home orders stopped any in-person gaming.

With the game-playing part of the hobby on hold, I should have focused on painting up the many unpainted figures I have. But that didn't really happen. Then my friend Kevin announced that he was using some of the money he would have spent on Enfilade to buy 1/1250 scale pre-Dreadnought era ships. Our little group started talking about ships, rules, and scenarios. Then all the sudden it seemed like this had kicked off a naval arms race. I decided to join in the fun (it really isn't a race unless there are a bunch of people involved) and focus my efforts on the French.

Instead of going with the pre-painted metal ships most others were buying, I decided to go with some 3D printed ships from the War Times Journal store. After looking through what was available in 1/1250 scale and checking my copy of Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1860-1905, I came up with a list of ships to buy and sent in my order. I chose to go with the DLP plastic ships based on the comparisons shown on the WTJ site. The DLP ships have mechanical supports at various places that have to be cut away, but I thought the ships looked better than the print model. 

My order included the battleships Charlemagne, Jena, Suffren, and the armored cruiser Dupleix. A few weeks after my order, the ships arrived in my mailbox. Here are some out of the box photos.

The armored cruiser (front) and battleships

Most of the ships we pretty clean, with few mechanical supports, but Jena really had a lot and needed some extra work to smooth out.

Jena (front) showing the supports and Charlemagne behind

The supports were fairly easy to remove with a sharp hobby knife. But there were a few (usually near gun barrels) that took a little more finesse to clean away. Once the clean-up was done, I added some masts and yards to complete the modelling work. I think the masts add a lot to the models (especially for Dupleix), but you could leave them off and still have good ship models. Then it was off to the shipyard for final painting. 

The fleet assembled for review

Battleship Charlemagne

Battleship Jena

Battleship Suffren

Armored cruiser Dupleix

As the naval arms race discussion continued, it turned out that most people were looking at smaller ships (protected cruisers, gunboats, etc.) as their main focus. Which makes my force is a little over-powered. So, I was back to the WTJ store to order some French cruisers. This time I picked up a Dupuy de Lome, 2 Amiral Charner cruisers, and 2 Friant cruisers. They are probably still a couple weeks away from arriving in my mailbox, but the first batch gives me confidence that this new batch will go together pretty quickly.

Hopefully this project will get me back to more miniatures work and lead to more posts on the blog.

Catching Up

March turned out to be a very strange month. We had just finished up with Drumbeat (my last post) and I was doing my preparations for Enfilade 2020. Then the COVID-19 stuff popped up and turned things upside down.

The world upside down image lifted from another website (hey, don't judge me)

My work started out by asking everyone to work from home, if they could, for a couple weeks. That shifted to a mandatory order the following week and we've been told to just keep working from home for the foreseeable future. The Washington state Governor has extended the Stay at Home order until May 4. I'm expecting that to get extended into June. So, it will be quite a while before I expect things to start to return to normal. Working from home isn't too bad, more of an inconvenience and something I have to adjust to. I do feel lucky that I am able to work from home and keep my job (and paycheck), when so many others have been furloughed or laid off.

What else have I been up to for the last month? It took me a little while to set up a home office, get into a working routine, and adjust to being home all the time. These changes also disrupted hobby time for me and, for whatever reason, it has taken me a while to get back to my projects.

So what am I working on? I started work on the 1/700 scale sailing ships from Warlord Games Black Seas starter set. The starter includes 3 frigates and 6 brigs. The plastic kits were easy to put together and the frigates have some variant pieces so they don't all have the same figurehead and stern. I expect I will get some more of these ships, so I decided to do 2 frigates as Royal Navy and other as French. For the brigs, I'm making 2 each of Royal Navy, American, and French.

In progress shipyard work

The Royal Navy is getting a yellow ochre strip, the Americans get white, and I went with a brick color for the French. I'm not sure I'm happy with the brick color, but the French used reds and yellows, and I wanted something a little different from the standard yellow and blue colors.

I'll give the rigging layout from the rule book a try, at least once, to see how that goes.

I'm also looking at another diversionary project. At the beginning of March I picked up some paint sets from a sale at Miniature Market and I also saw a box of Robotech Valkyries in the listings and decided to pick up a box for fun (they were only $5.50).

On sale goodies

I was only a semi-fan of the Robotech series, but I always liked the transforming Valkyries. The game these figures were associated with, Robotech Tactics, seems to have had a lot of issues. But since I wasn't getting them for that game, I wasn't too concerned about that. The one issue most people had with the kits was the number of small pieces needed to assemble each Valkyrie. I will say the reviews were right about that, the manufacturer made these much harder to put together than they should have.

Sprues with lots of pieces for 6 figures

Putting them together will occupy for a while, but if I get frustrated I can always just put it aside.

On the gaming side, I've been looking to online alternatives for playing. There are some good games out there. But, just like in-person gaming, the there are issues scheduling time to play. Right now I'm sticking more with play by email games using VASSAL. I have a game of Wing Leader going right now. 

American B-24s raiding Wewak airfield

I'm also getting pulled into a baseball game using Baseball Mogul. So far it is a slow go on this, since none of have run an online league before.

The league is mainly aimed at being the general manager for a team and making deals throughout the season. I normally prefer to play games as the field manager, but it is still fun and a good diversion since all the real games have been postponed.

Hopefully it won't be another month before I get up another post. Until then, I hope you're keeping busy with your own projects and staying sane. 

Drumbeat 2020

Saturday was the annual NHMGS Drumbeat game day. The morning session had nine games and another five in the afternoon. Additionally, there was a small "Bring and Buy" session.


I played in a Pike and Shot game using The Pikeman's Lament rules in the morning and then a Rebels and Patriots game in the afternoon. Both periods were well attended and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Here are a few photos from the day.

Battle of Lake Erie using the Black Seas rules

Scottish Jacobites ambush an English relief column

Battle of Shiloh using the Alter of Freedom rules

Battle of the Pelennor Fields using the Heroes of Erehwon rules

100 Years War battle using Lion Rampant

The Last of the Mohicans - Retreat from Fort William Henry using Musket and Tomahawk rules

My command unit for Pikeman's Lament

The pike and shot game had the English holding a hill in the center of the table with the Irish attacking to take the hill. English relief forces had to cross a river to reach the hill.

The English defenders (left) with the Irish getting ready to move up hill

The Irish setup

My setup with the river crossing

Unfortunately, my die rolling was not up to snuff and I had trouble getting my troops across the river and into action. I did drive off a couple Irish units, but it was too late for the troops on the hill by then.

The Irish taking the hill

In the afternoon session I played in the Race to the Dan scenario using the Rebels and Patriots rules. The scenario represented a rear-guard action where the Americans needed to delay the British and get their troops across the Dan River. My command was the British regulars with a small cannon.

My regulars at the rear with the British light troops in the lead

Americans on a wooded hill with the river to their rear

The Americans occupied a wooded hill in the center of the play area with regular troops and skirmishers.

The British cavalry was deployed on the left. They planned to move around the American flank and try to cut off the retreat while the British foot troops occupied the Americans. Unfortunately, the cavalry ran into some American sharpshooters. Then the cavalry decided to shift their advance to the center of the map.

British cavalry passing in front of the regulars

My regulars kept up the pressure and did some damage to the Americans, as did the cavalry. The Americans were in a good position to win, with many units getting across the river. But the British light troops eked out the victory for the British by pushing American losses over the threshold.

British light troops pressing the Americans

There was another Black Seas game in the afternoon, a WWII Russian front game, and an ancients battle. There was also a Battletech game going on throughout the day, but none of my photos of that turned out.

Operation Bagration using the Battlegroup rules

Book-ending this blog post with another Black Seas photo