An Actual In Person Miniature Game

I've been rattling on this summer catching up on my paitning production over last winter's callenge becasue paiting since summer began has bascially come to a standstill. There's just too many things to keep me buy and by the time I call it a day it's after nine pm and I don't feel like setting my stuff up. 

 

However, there has been a fair amount of gaming activity thus far in 2021, including some in person gaming at Curt's new clubhouse. Back in June I ran a 1879 War of the Pacific Ironclads game using David Manley's excellent  Dalhgren and Columbiad Rules. This was a repeat of a game first played in November 2020 just before we locked down for the pandemic again. I don't recall enough for a detailed AAR but highlights are as follows.

• The Chilean's had a blockading squadron of wooden vessels commanded by myself keeping tabs on Sylvain's Peruvian force of two ex-US Civil War monitors and two spar torpedo boats.
• Stacy took the receiving Peruvian squadron including the ironclads Huascar and Indepencia and screw sloop Union.
• Curt was coming to my rescue with the two Cochrane class ironclads.
• The Peruvians focused on my squadron aiming to take out as many wooden ships as possible. 
• I randomized the positions and headings of my blockading squadron with scatter dice, with most of them stirring north towards the oncoming Peruvian ironclads.  Scared of Sylvain's torpedo boats I made the mistake of continuing to steam North towards Stacy.
• Stacy sank all of my force, but I at least put up a decent fight.  
• Curt arrived and roughed up the monitors with his much better ironclads.  At this point the Peruvians called it a day to save the Ironclads having inflicted considerable damage while keeping Stacy's sea going squadron in good shape.  Sylvain crept back into port needing some repairs and the Chileans resumed their blockade.
• Once again D&C gave a good quick game that was fun, quick to learn and gave reasonable results.  All ships are 1/2400 from Tumbling Dice.  Good detail and nice little castings.

A typical D&C confused melee!  My Chilean Was up class, Peruvian TBs excited harbour and a Peruvian IC at the top of picture.

Spar torpedo attack.  Stylvain's comment that it was like something that Space Orks would use wasn't far off!

A hit!  A palpable hit (or two)!

Sylvain monitors slowly exiting the port and coming under fire from the Cochrane class ICs.

Another hit and a fire!

The two monitors taking it from both sides as the Cochrane twins split up.  The Chilean vessels closer inshore steered between the shoals to make it safely back out to sea, while the monitors had enough and steamed back home while they could.

 

War of the Pacific AAR pt 2

Continuing on from part one in my prior post....

Panorama view note the brightly coloured arcs of fire templates!

Jeremey's blockaders fire at my Peruvian torpedo boats and attempt evasive Hanover's

Getting down to business

Running through the QRS, the rule swerve very quick to pick up.

The tbs strike home while Curt's squadron comes near.  The near tb had a near miss with it's spar torpedo while the far one struck home for a kill!

Skipping ahead one of Jeremey's ships splits Curt's line

Things settle down to a general melee

At this point we wound things up with the following summary

• The Chileans sank one monitor, with Stacy nobly heaving too to save the crew.
• The wooden ships got bashed around with a Chilean sunk by spar torpedo and a Peruvian sunk by ramming.
• The sea going ironclads largely cancelled these serve out.  
• We reckoned that the Peruvians would sail into Iquiqui and be blockaded by the Chileans. 

Everyone had fun and enjoyed the game.  The rules worked well and were easy to pick up.  There was room for one or two tweaks but nothing major.  It was noted that the sequenced movement worked well and it was much easier to figure and execute orders than a recent GQIII game.

 

AAR War of the Pacific Pt 1

  A few weeks back, before we had more COVID restrictions in place, I GMed an actual naval game.  I took me a while to get my AAR together so I don't remember the turn by turn details but the basic situation is as follows.

• Ships are 1/2400 from Tumbling Dice painted by me during last year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge X.
• Rule were Dahlgren and Columbiad a fast play set by noted nail game David Manley available from Wargames Vault.  These were a new set to all of us.
• Curt hosted, so it's his sea mat (looks very spiffy), arid hills representing the coast of the Atacampa desert and a Spanish town masquerading as Iquiqui.
• Instead of a historical scenario I put everything on table but in a historical setting.  Basically I wanted to test the various ship types and the rules, and figure that this might be a one shot game using the toys.
• Jeremey had a squadron of Chilean cruising (unarmored) ships and was blockading the Peruvian port.  I took the local Peruvian forces, two ex-ACW monitors and two spar torpedo boats.
• Curt had a Peruvian relief force of two sea going Ironclads and a well armed but unarmoured corvette.  Stacy had a Chilean force also of two sea going ironclads and a well armed but unarmoured corvette.

Game set up.

The Peruvian relief force, Huascar, Indepencia and Union

Jeremy's blockaders, the sacrificial offerings.

Close up of Jeremy's ships.

I pretend to know what I'm doing.  Actually after a couple turns everyone had the rule mechanics down pat.

Long range shot.  Curt's ships in foreground.  My ships are attacking Jeremy in the middle distance and Stacy approaches in the distance.

More War of the Pacific Ships

Another set of 1/2400 ships from Tumbling Dice for my War of the Pacific project.  As obscure as this war is I've found a small community of bloggers indulging in the same project.

The two ex-USN Monitors

First up is the last of the Peruvian ironclads, the monitors Manco Cápac and Atahualpa (those Inca names are tough to spell).  These were ex-USN Canonicus class single turreted monitors which were built too late to see service in the ACW.    They were sold to the Peruvians, fitted with fore and aft sailing rigs and minimal superstructure and relocated south and around the Cape Horn (this being before the Panama Canal).   Must have been one hell of a rough journey given the low freeboard.  

This shows the completed ships vs the original.  It also shows the sea bases included by Tumbling Dice and how they fit on my 50mm long pdf bases.

Once in Peruvian waters they were used for coastal defence and fought the Chilean fleet  in the final phases, including a duel with the Huascar after her capture, but were eventually scuttled to prevent capture.

One of the originals, as much of a bodge as my models.

The models are admittedly complete bodges.  TD doesn't make a Canonicus class monitor so I used a pack of the USS Monitor model, which was 20% shorter than these ships but it was the closest available.  I added the rig from spare fore and aft sails from one or the other TD packs of ships.  My best guess is that they came from the two Cochrane class ironclads, which I modelled mostly unrigged as they removed as much rigging as possible during a mid-war refit.  The final models are nowhere nearly being replicas of the two ships.  But they look like Civil War monitors with rigging and rudimentary superstructure attached, which is exactly what they need to look like.  If any one cars to model exact replicas Spithead miniatures makes them in 1:1200.  i didn't go that route as I like the cost and space effectiveness of 1/2400 and couldn't figure out how to order anything from Spithead.

Chileans at sea

Next up is a squadron of Chilean unarmoured ships, or Cruising ships in the Victorian vernacular.  There's no specific models for these in the TD range, so I sued whatever models looked about right based on period photos, rough dimensions available and models on hand.  We have the corvettes O'Higgins, Chacabuco and Mallaganes, all of which had an active part in the war.  

Last of all  is  the schooner Covadonga which had a history rivalling the Huascar's.  originally Spanish, she was captured by the Esmeralda (still on the work bench) and brought into Chilean service.  She had a key role in the Battle of Punta Gruesa where she outgunned the Peruvian ironclad Independencia,  who then ran aground and was lost.  Covadonga was sunk later in the war while on blockade duty by a rowboat rigged as a floating mine.

The original Covadonga.

Points wise that's six 1/2400 ships for a whopping 18 points.  Finally I'll leave you with the following video.  My wife and I are huge fans of Carol Burnett and I can't say the name O'Higgins (Higgins or Wiggins) without releasing my inner Mr. Tudball.

War of the Pacific Ironclads

Peruvians in front, Chileans in the background.  It turned out that only one shot of the Peruvian squadron  on its own came out, but my group shots have the Peruvians in the fore.

To follow on from an earlier post I have 4 of the major warships from the War of the Pacific fought between Chile and Peru from 1879-1884.  Back in the earlier 80s the Yaquinto board game "Ironclads" described it as a "Chilean-Peruvian Banana War", which is surely a misnomer as it was fought over the Atacama Desert where very little grows and certainly not bananas.  The key resource at stake was actually nitrate deposits from guano deposits at the large sea bird nesting sites,  yep....it was a war fought over bird sh*t.  Actually this war is also known as the Saltpetre War but 10 years earlier peru and Chile had allied  against Spain was in the Guano War.

Independencia leads Union

In addition to the Huáscar from my earlier post, back from the Peruvian fleet included these two vessels the Ironclad frigate Independencia and the unarmored corvette Union plus other oddities on the work bench.  

Independencia was armed with big rifles on pivots bow (8") and stern (7") plus 6" rifles on the broadside.  She was the Peruvian navies second most important ship after the Huascar but was written off after running aground in the war's first action.   Union was an unarmoured corvette packing a useful armament.  

Spot the doofus moment.  Note how the Blanco Encalada has more smoke and a flag.  I decided that I needed to fix this!

On the Chilean side of things we have the two central battery ironclad sisters Almirante Cochrane and Blanco Encalada built in the UK and completed just three years before the war began. They were named for naval heroes from the Chilean War of Independence, Cochrane of course being the Scot who was the inspiration for Horatio Hornblower.  They packed a punch of 9" rifles and feature the angled gun ports to give wider arcs of fire.  Cochrane survived until 1934 but her sister ship was torpedoed by the torpedo gunboat Almirante Lynch in the Chilean civil war of 1891 and was one of the first casualties of Mr Whitehead's invention.

Coinage added to give idea of scale.  Canadian quarter at the bow, loonie at the stern.

These are all Tumbling Dice 1/2400 model, and again I'm very pleased with these casting.  The Cochrane class come packaged in a pair, as do Huáscar  and Independencia.  Tumbling dice don't make specific models for the unarmored ships so I've used more generic models for these, including Union and HMS Amethyst. 

Look carefully, I've fixed the smoke on Blanco Encalada and took her flag off int he process.  Easily fixed however.

I seem to be following trends this Challenge as 19th century South American wars are on an upswing.  The Perry's released figures for a slightly earlier war across the Andes and there's a recently published set of rules for the land operations of the War of the Pacific.

These TD models have been scored at 3pts a pop, so that's a whopping 12 points for me.

The Battle of Pacocha 1877

The original action 1877

Recreated in 2020

I continue to tick along at a snail's pace on my challenge, and have here the three participants from the Battle of Pacocha in 1877.  These are 1/2400 scale ships from Tumbling Dice from their Victorian Era range.

First up is the instigator the Peruvian turret ship Huascar.  The Huascar was seized by rebels in the wrong side in a failed coup by the former finance minister (and future Peruvian President) Pierola.  With the coup defeated on land Huascar took to piracy and boarded some British flagged ships, triggering a Royal Navy response.

Note that the model shows Huascar cleared for action with bulwarks lowered to allow the turret to fire and thus showing the white interior. 

The Huascar was built by Laird's in the UK in 1866, she has armour of up to 7.5" and carried two 10" rifles in her turret plus a couple of smaller guns.   I used the present tense intentionally as she is still afloat as a museum ship in Valparaiso Chile, one of a few ships afloat from the Victorian era.  Her full history is impressive.  Built to fight the Spanish in the Island War she got to Peru during the war but didn't see action.  After fighting the Royal Navy she surrendered to the Peruvian government and served in the War of the Pacific against Chile.  Captured by the Chileans after a heroic action, they refitted her and used her against the Peruvians.  Finally she was involved in the Chilean Civil War of 1891. 

A famous ship with a proud history under two navies flags.

Britain's Imperial might c 1877

The predictable RN response came from the Pacific Station based in Esquimaux, British Columbia.  Rear Admiral de Horsey's flagship was the iron frigate HMS Shah.  Shah was big, fast and well armed but unarmoured.  She carried 9" rifled swivel guns fore and aft and a broadside of 7" rifles.  She also carried early Whitehead torpedoes and fired one at the Huascar, which outran it!  She proved expensive to run and this was her sole commission, although her iron masts can be seen on HMS Victory, having replaced the more fragile wooden originals.

I rigged the Amethyst as a barque.  It turns out that she was ship rigged in 1877 but changed to a barque rig on her return. 

HMS Shah was accompanied by the wooden corvette HMS Amethyst, name ship of the last class of wooden cruisers built by the RN. Typical of the small cruisers the RN used to patrol imperial waterways, she was armed with 64 pounder rifles on broadside with swivels fore and aft.  She served from 1873-1887.   

The battle of Pacocha was a tactical draw but a RN strategic win.  The RN hit the Huascar multiple times but didn't have armour piercing shot so did no damage.  In return, the Huascar was undermanned and fired slowly and badly causing only splinter damage to Shah's rigging.  The Huascar did avoid the Shah's torpedo, hampered the RN attack by staying in the shallows where the Shah couldn't go and avoided an attack by torpedo launches the next day.  However, the crew gave up the piracy gig and surrendered to the government 2 days later.

I added black funnel smoke from cotton batting soaked in black paint.  This took me back to my University days of carving 1/1200 scale pre-dreadnoughts out of balsa.

If you're are keeping score this is my second project using 1/2400 scale ships from Tumbling Dice and I have been very pleased with their models.  They are clean cast, relatively easy to put together and paint up well.   I had intended to work on my Anglo-Dutch fleets first but their rigs proved fussier to get right so plowed ahead on the ironclads.  I don't have the skill set or patience for fiddly sail rigs in general and have suffered great heartbreaks with past efforts at modelling sailing ships in 1/1200.  So far these TD ships are much easier to rig and appear much less fragile although we'll see how they stand the test of table top battle.  I should also point out that in action, these ships would furl their sails or even strike top masts altogether to reduce clutter.  However, I couldn't resist doing them fully rigged.

I added Canadian quarters (about the same size as a 5p piece) for comparison.  I also included the correctly named Windhond!

I've got a variety of odd naval projects underway and am beginning to regret not setting up a Sandi Cheek aquatic squirrel side duel for the most naval projects!

Points wise, I think it's typically 3 points for a 1/2400 scale ship, plus what ever points the 4 flags net me.  At about 9 points a post,  my challenge will definitely be the slow boat to China.