I played a simple two ship encounter game of Rory Crabb's Fighting Iron rules this afternoon to try out the system. This was an encounter between HMS Achilles and the Gloire, with the latter attempting to break out from the blockade of Brest in 1869, during my fictitious Anglo French War.
In Turn 1, Achilles won the scouting roll so deployed first in the NE corner, followed by Gloire in the SW corner of the table. Both ships then steamed ahead at maximum speed to close the range, the bowchaser crew on Achilles holding fire even though in long range as there was little hope of a hit, let alone any armour penetration.
In Turn 2, Achilles won the initiative again and continued straight ahead at full speed, while Gloire executed a 5'' forward move then a two point turn to port. Achilles now let fly with her port 7" bowchaser but, after some convoluted calculations, failed to cause any damage despite a successful hit.
The Gloire responded with a full broadside of eighteen 164mm rifles, achieving nine hits on the deck, casemate and belt. However, none of these penetrated the armour despite causing some non-penetrating damage, setting the rigging ablaze and inflicting some command casualties. These were swiftly dealt with in the following damage repair phase.
In Turn 3, the French won the initiative and the Gloire slowed down and moved ahead, turning one point to starboard at the end of the move. Achilles steamed forward again to bring her starboard battery into action in the gunnery phase.
This led onto more buckets of dice being rolled, hits assessed, penetration calculated and damage resolved, with the end result being one penetrating hit on the hull, two fires, two crew and one command damage impact, all represented by a spread of tokens. The hull damage could not be repaired but the Gloire did extinguish the fires by the end of the turn.
In Turn 4, the French won the initiative again and the Gloire made a dash for the edge of the table at full steam ahead. To stop her escape, the Achilles turned two points to starboard and moved 4" forward, while frantically reloading her starboard battery. This brought the Gloire into close range and she lost no time in bringing her starboard battery into action, firing a full broadside at the Achilles.
Again, after some more buckets of dice being rolled and re-rolled to calculate hits, penetration and damage, the result was a penetrating hit on the gun deck and four non- penetrating hits, inflicting a command casualty token, a crew casualty token and two fire tokens, most of which being sorted out by damage control at the end of the turn.
In Turn 5, the Gloire managed to escape into the Western Approaches while the Achilles turned to follow in pursuit. The end of the game gave the Royal Navy a very marginal victory, as the Achilles was only lightly damaged, while the Gloire had a damaged hull. The Gloire did make a successful escape, however, so I decided it was a draw. The whole game playing solo took about an hour, which isn't bad considering that I was working it out as I went along.
Overall, I enjoyed the game and found the rules easy to grasp, despite quite a few typos and mistakes in the text. It worked well and gave a reasonably realistic result, although the gunnery sequence was quite long winded and took some time to resolve. I liked the manoeuvre system, the simple gunnery arc diagram and damage tables, but I'm not so keen on the buckets of dice systems for gunnery, bearing in mind I was using broadside ironclads with loads of guns, or the tokens on the table which I find a bit intrusive.
I'm not sure if the rules would work smoothly with more than a handful of ships a side, despite being presented as fleet level rules, but they're fine for smaller actions or for games involving turret ships, smaller ironclads or riverine craft. I will definitely be using them for another game or two, perhaps with my Peruvian and Chilean naval forces, and I think they will also work for my later Victorian ironclads...
... just need to sort out those typos!
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