Sunday 17 December 2023

Turret and Battery

HMS Edinburgh 
 





David Manley has kindly sent me a draft copy of his latest rules for ironclad fast play wargaming, based very much on Dahlgren and Columbiad but aimed at European sea going warships rather than coastal or riverine actions in the American Civil War. I've used Broadside and Ram for large fleet actions and also for smaller games, but a specific set of fast play rules for later ironclads has been a bit of a holy grail.

Broadside and Ram 

I've been looking for a set of rules that covers the later ironclad period c1880 to 1890, prior to the development of the pre-dreadnought, so this is just the sort of thing. Not only will it allow me to deploy my existing French, British and American early ironclad fleets, it will also cover the later ironclads that I've assembled but haven't painted, for want of a set of appropriate rules.

HMS Ajax and HMS Agamemnon 

These are 1/2400th scale models from Tumbling Dice and include turrets ships, ships with barbettes and one off dead ends like torpedo rams and low freeboard coastal ironclads, not to mention the early torpedo boats of the Jeune Ecole. The rules as they stand enable all of these to be represented, with new turret arcs, gun tables and specific rule additions, on the solid foundation of the Dahlgren and Columbiad system.

I'm very much looking forward to trying them out!

2 comments:

  1. Sounds interesting. I used 1/1200 scratch-built ships with Paul Hague's rules back in the day, but they required a lot of research which wasn't available to me to get the record cards right.

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  2. There's such a variety of ships and configurations of armament, layout, armour and design that it's a bit of a minefield!

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