Kind of New Project Planned

Capture of the ironclad Huáscar
by Thomas Somerscales

I am both an optimist and a pessimist. I come up with these optimistic plans for gaming with other people and then they crash and I go into pessimist (depressed) mode. However, I have polled a few of my colleagues at work and they seemed to be willing to have a game. Maybe I can convince Will to join us. 

The plan is to have a one off, beer & pretzels naval battle taking place around the later 1860s to early 1870s. I initially was just going to do a straight up American Civil War game, but I didn't feel 100% going historical. I teach at a Southern college that has been trying to rebrand its image, and there is a lot of potential issues that I could face with administrators if they here about this, even thought this will be purely under the table. The fact that I totally understand is why I am hesitant concerning a civil war battle. Second, I don't want to be constrained by what ships will be involved in the battle. Third, if you have not figured it out by now, I really Imagi-nation scenarios. I can see the Huascar battling it out with a Union monitor...I guess that is how my brain is wired!

So, the plan is to build more ships (!). I am going to make them a little bigger than what I currently do. Somewhere between 1/800 to 1/1000 scale. Currently, my ships don't really have a scale. I am going to build about 10 ships maximum, roughly five per side. There will be a combination of monitors, casemate ironclads like the CSS Virginia, and various others particularly maybe smaller ships armed with spar torpedoes.  I will try to make them simple (he says knowing full well that he probably won't).

The scenario will be the mouth of a major river. One side must get their ships up a certain point of the river, the other side needs to keep them from doing so. Depending on how many people I get to play, will determine how many ships per person. We have some pretty large tables in labs and conference rooms in which to lay a blue plastic tarp on and I can fashion the shore lines with either those wooden hexes I have or cut out felt. 

I have not decided yet on rules but they need to be pretty playable. I might even throw together my own rules. The game probably can't last for much more than two hours. 

That is the plan. Like everything else, I will post my progress on this blog.