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. 

Bit of a Slump

I have not had much energy in terms of the hobby lately. Part of it is that school has started again for both the boy and me. I have been getting prepared for classes and Daddy's Taxi Service is already racking up the miles. But even when I get to sit down at my hobby work bench at night, I just stare at things on the table. 

I might have said this before, but I think a big part of the issue is that I cannot make my projects simple. For example, I keep trying to add more and more details onto my little pre-dreadnought ships. I spend a lot of time fussing over how to build a better model. The same goes with painting figures. I should, but I can't be satisfied with table top ready figures. One of the main reasons why I switched from 25/28mm to 15mm was to speed up painting armies. If I look at the 15s that I did 20-25 years ago, they are fairly basic in the level of painting. No shading or highlighting. Now, they are far more detailed, even the rank-and-file troops. I think pumping in a lot energy into detail causes burn out. 

I know I sound like a broken record (can people still relate to this metaphor?), but I need to just start gaming with what I have.  

Hot Glue Stick Turrets

As I have mentioned previously, I struggle with making ship turrets and especially gun shields for my pre-dreadnought project. I have not been happy with the material used to make them. Rubber erasers sort of work, but even these are not perfect. 

Facebook posts these short videos (I assume they come from Tik Tock, or maybe segments from YouTube videos) that show people making tiny pieces of furniture, bicycles, and other objects out of scrap material. There is one guy in particular who uses hot glue sticks to make things. He isn't using them to glue things together but as material for when he needs a circular base. I started playing around with the glue sticks. It seemed to have similar properties to an eraser, but better. What I noticed was that its solid but not that hard to cut.  It seems harder than an eraser but is a little easier to slice. I can poke holes in it and it won't potentially tear, and when stuck a piece of wire into a hole to make a gun, the glue stick didn't deform as much as an eraser. This is particularly important when using thin slices to make gun shields. 

Results of my experiments 

First up is a basic cylindrical turret. One of the advantages of the glue stick over wood and cardboard is that I can line up the wires better so that they are more parallel. Very often the guns will not be parallel next to each other when using other other material. The translucent stick makes it easy to watch and control the angle of the needle as I poke holes in. 

The next type is a oval turret. After cutting consistent cylinders, I sliced off the edges on either side of the cylinder and then angled the end where the guns went into. One of the advantages of the glue stick over the eraser is that you can push and pull on the wire guns to help line them up better. An advantage of both the eraser and the glue stick is that you don't need to apply any glue to hold the guns in place. I doused the turret closest to the camera with superglue, but it didn't help one way or another. I think I was pretty consistent with slicing off the edges of the cylinder, but I think I can do better if I use a razor blade rather than my craft knife. 

Finally, I made some gun shields using the cut offs from the turrets above. I still need to practice but I think they are a big step up from what I have experimented with up to this point. The "carvibility" is equal to an eraser and there was much less distortion the shield when I pushed the wire through to make the gun.  

Final thoughts

I used mini glue sticks that have a diameter of 0.7mm. Standard glue sticks have a diameter of 12mm. I will probably buy a pack of the standard. It will give me a little more area in which to carve different shapes and give a little more surface area to build triple turrets or use slightly heavier gauged wire. I wish there was an even smaller diameter of glue stick. That would be useful for smaller turrets and things like sponsons. 

I have not glued the turrets to anything yet and was a little worried about whether superglue will stick to solid hot glue. However, the people making their little objects use superglue all the time to glue them in place so it should not be an issue. I do not expect painting to be an issue either. I think paint will hold to the glue fine. 

Fleet Review: Part Two, Krackovia

 Again, I've posted many of these in previous posts, but I decided to put them all together. 

Kracovia is the current rival to Avalonia. Their surprising naval victory over Avalonia has emboldened them to embark on a major ship building campaign.

First type of battleships. I was ambitious in adding secondary turrets. 

Second type of battleships. Secondary guns in casemates.

A coastal defense battleship that I posted awhile back. It is based loosely on the Turkish Mesudiye that was a central battery ironclad that underwent a major reconstruction. I classified it as a coastal defense battleship because it has two rather than four main guns. 

Protected cruiser. I would make a lot more cruisers but making mounted guns in gun shields is a real pain. I have earlier posts showing various experiments in making these. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make them efficiently and look reasonably well, please comment.

A gunboat based on a based on the imperial Russian gunboat Khrabri. Building masts are still a bit of challenge as can be seen in that stern mast. I use UV resin as glue to put together parts of masts, but sometimes, it gets to be a mess. 

Finally, torpedo boats. These were pretty quick to build. I have three more of these hulls and will complete those with an added torpedo tube sticking out of its bow. 

Fleet Review: Part One, Avalonia

Some of these I posted in the past, but I thought I'd present them all together. First up is the Commonwealth of Avalonia. Avalonia is made up of various sized islands. I have been working on a post on the various fictional nations. Some day, I'll get it posted. 

I am in the process of building some protected cruisers and armored cruisers. 

These two are near sisters. Both have 12" main guns. The difference between the two is the secondary armament. The right one has 6" guns in casemates. The one of the left is armed in 8"guns in turrets.

These two are armed with 14" main guns exposed in barbettes. 

I've already posted these two but these are older warships. Both are armed with 10" main guns.

This is an auxiliary cruiser converted from a ocean liner. It is armed with two 6" guns and four 4" guns.

I've also posted these destroyers, but I thought I'd repost them.

Last, here are some generic freighters and a liner. I built another one, but it seems to have disappeared. 

Next up, Avalonia's rival Kracovia.

Great War Salvo! Naval Rules

 I am currently at my home town which is a suburb of Chicago. I'm here to help my sister at least begin to clean up my mother's house to sell it, and to deal with some of her outstanding bank finances that for some unexplained reason, I must do it in present here and cannot be done online.

I was going to bring some of my painting supplies and some minis but it ended up that I brought one game, Great War Salvo! by Minden Games. 

I bought this about a year ago, but only did a quick read through. I read it again before I left for Chicago and thought it might be good contender as a relatively simple set of naval rules, it can be played solo, and you really don't need any miniatures. In fact, it can be played with a pad of paper and pencil, which is what I did just tonight. I do have their more comprehensive naval rules, Battleship Captain, but Great War Salvo! seems to be less complex. 

The book is divided up into basic and advanced rules, with some optional rules added that include submarines. Additionally, you get 12 pages of ship counters covering everyone involved in WWI. Ships include dreadnoughts, pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers, protected cruisers, light cruisers, and even armed merchant cruisers. The only thing you don' get are torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers. You don't get submarine counters either, but subs are a little more abstract. What allowed it to be a candidate for my potential pre-dreadnought wars is that they have a lot of pre-dread battleships as well as a lot of cruisers that were old enough to count. You probably cannot recreate the Russo-Japanese War as is, but I am somewhat a master of reverse engineering stats, so it would not be a big issue. 

There are a number of different factors, but they the usual types: floatation, turrets, armor, and speed. Hits on these causes loss of effectiveness.  Additionally, there are differences in gun effectiveness depending on whether you are firing broadside versus fore or aft. During each turn, players declare whether they are closing in, turning broadside, or withdrawing. This changes range bands. Weather is important, even in the basic rules. 

Combat is in two parts. First, you have to see if you can hit the target. It is a two D6 roll modified by range, but you do get a bonus if you hit the ship in the previous turn. If you hit, then you see if you damage the the ship by rolling three D6 this time and adding or subtracting modifiers. There are a number of modifiers but once you have run through combat a few times, it is pretty quick to tally scores up. Charts tell you whether or not you hit, if damage is taken, and what sort of damage occurs. Unlike some other rules I've used in the past, it is not a slow attrition of loosing hull points. There is plenty of opportunity for more serious or catastrophic damage to occur even in the basic game. 

The game does have an algorithm where the game is not necessarily a slugfest and combat can break off before a ship is sunk. 

For my first test game, I pitted the HMS New Zealand against the SMS Westfalen. I picked them because they were both on the same page. I played the Westfalen whereas has the AI played the New Zealand.

Weather was rolled to be fair and the ships started at Extreme range. 

Turn 1

The New Zealand got to go first and rolled to turn broadside. I chose to close in. This moved the range band from extreme to long. If I had also turned broadside, the range would have stayed extreme. The ship with the largest gun gets to shoot first. Shooting is not simultaneous, neither is damage. The New Zealand fired and hit me, but even with the +4 added to the to damage roll, it bounced off. The Westfalen fired but it missed. The armor factor of 4 on the Westfalen cancelled out New Zealand's broadside rating of +4. I rolled to see if the battle continued and it did. 

Turn 2

Again, the New Zealand got to go first and rolled to close. I decided to close as well. Because we both closed, we skipped the medium-long band and brought us down to medium range. New Zealand fired first but this time missed. I fired and also missed. Again, the battle continued. 

Turn 3 

New Zealand went first and turned to broadside, so I decided to turn broadside as well. The range stayed at medium. The New Zealand hit me and was able to cause damage. I took took 2 floatation points of damage but there were no further consequences in the basic rules. The Westfalen fired back hitting and causing damage in the form of a turret hit. This meant that from then on, the New Zealand gets a -1 when trying to do damage. I rolled and the battle continued.

Turn 4 

Getting initiative, the New Zealand rolled to close in. I decided not to press my luck and ordered a withdraw. The range stayed at medium. We both fired and hit each other but there was no damage taken on either ship. I was hoping to end the game, but the AI said otherwise. 

Turn 5

Pretty much a repeat of turn 4, with the New Zealand continuing pursuit,  but with both ships missing each other. 

Turn 6

Finally I got to go first, but I chose to continue to run. The New Zealand decided to turn broadside (maybe captain AI decided he was tired of missing or his shells bouncing off my ship). What that did however was to increase the range to medium-long. That slight increase in range was enough cause the New Zealand to miss (really low dice rolls didn't help). The Westfalen fired and scored a hit and knocked off a floatation point off of the New Zealand. Again, the AI determined that the show must go on.

Turn 7

Again, the New Zealand stayed at broadside while I continued to run. That furthered the range to long.

Again, the New Zealand failed miserably to hit me. I managed to hit him but no damage this time. Finally, the war gods of the sea looked favorably upon the Westfalen and called the battle over.

The game took under an hour to play. It probably would have been shorter but I had to get used to tabulated the pluses and minuses. I got the hang of things and by turn 4, things sped up. I'm sure there were some things I goofed up on or missed when adding up things. For example, ships are rated with different speeds. It seems that these speed rating are only related to the effects of speed on damage, at least that was is what it seemed in the basic rules. Also, one of the things I had to remember was that even though the game only uses D6 dice, different charts use different numbers of D-sixes. For example, many of the decision charts only use one D6, but as I stated above, the to hit chart uses two and the to damage chart uses three. 

I enjoyed it. Once I got the swing of things, the turns moved pretty quickly. I think the range bands can be converted to either squares or hexes that would really help if I was to play a multi-ship game. It would tough to juggle a game with only paper and pencil. 

Even though I don't have any miniatures with me, I do have paper, thin cardboard, and glue. I can draw up some quick and dirty ships. I should have brought the various gridded naval wargame rule books with me, but I my David Manley rules are all on pdf. I can have a mini solo naval con on the dining room table. 

A Trip to Europe Part 3: London

 The last part of our family vacation was London. I have to say that after three weeks, I was starting to run out of steam. But, I psyched myself up and looked forward to new adventures. 

We took the Chunnel to London. Like many things, I don't remember my last experience taking the train, but it was a pleasant train ride. It seemed like at least half of the trip was above ground enjoying the countryside view.

We enjoyed a game of cards during our journey under
the English Channel. Ivan seemed to have lost interest

We stayed at the 3-star hotel that was not far from St. Pancreas...sorry St. Pancras station. Of the various places we stayed at, it was probably the most "mid" as my kids would say. The place was a little shabby and climbing the stairs to get the the room was quite an adventure, especially for me. I would say the final flight of stairs was at least at a 65 to 70 degree angle. But if that was the price to pay if we wanted a room with our own bathroom. Me and my bladder is way too old to trek downstairs in the middle of the night to relieve myself!

British Museum

Another plus was that our hotel was within walking distance to the British Museum. We had to have a hardy breakfast before going to the museum. English breakfast, though there was no blood pudding. We were okay with that. Keona opted for some porridge, however, she did indulge at a later breakfast. I have to say, that was the tastiest bacon I've ever had!

King Ashurbanipal's Flood Tablet

Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, a lot of reflection.
The kid in the back does not look impressed.

Tower(s) of London, Tower Bridge, and HMS Belfast

Seemed to me that it was more than one tower. You'd think the ominous clouds would be a bummer, but instead, it added to the ambiance of the place. I wanted to go onto the HMS Belfast, but they had closed early for a private party. 

Probably the one suit of armor I'd
be able to wear comfortably!

You know its chilly out if I'm wearing a jacket
even if it has stopped raining!

Natural History Museum

Being that I am a vertebrate paleontologist (or at least pretended to be one for the past 40 years) and teach comparative and human anatomy, I was all about seeing the Natural History Museum. The last time I was there was around 1998 using the collections for my Ph.D. research. Here is the weird part about this whole Europe trip. So, back in Paris (and I can't remember what street we were walking down, but we had just come out of a pastry shop), we ran into two younger sisters of a friend from my daughter's high school tennis team. Here at Natural History Museum, we ran into one of my daughter's childhood best friends. Then at the Trooping of the Colors, amongst the bazillions of people present, we run into the parents of another of my daughter's childhood best friends. What are the odds?

Two things about the museum. First, they seemed rather obsessed with whales. Second, and I can be critical since I've been to a huge number of natural history museums all over the world, I was rather disappointed with the dinosaur exhibit. I remember it differently when I was last there. The lighting was pretty bad. Many of the specimens were elevated about 10' above the viewers. That made it difficult to really see them. Finally, it seems rather jammed in forcing the viewers in one direction. This was not so in the other galleries such as the mammals. 

National Gallery, London Theater District, and Chinatown

                                              

Buckingham Palace, and the Trooping of the Colors

We did Buckingham Palace on the same day as the National Gallery, but I added it to this section. We didn't know that the Trooping of the Colors was going to happen on the day we were scheduled to go to Stonehenge and Bath, but the company I booked with allowed us to change dates.

Trooping of the Colors was an event. Xiaohui (my wife) really likes going to events, so we went. It reminded me too much of New Years Eve in Times Square at the millennium. Yes, I was there, but its not something I have a big desire to relive. 

It was soooo packed with people, I'm surprised that I got the photos that I did. It started at about 10:00 (I think) and didn't end until 1:00. We got there an hour and a half early and it was already packed with people. My kids and I stayed along the main parade route while my wife went down the the Household Guard's parade ground where a lot of the marching and band playing took place. My kids got pretty burned out, so once we saw the royalty go by, we slowly made our way to the parade ground to find my wife. I think the most exciting moment was when we ran into the parents of Keona's friend. Afterwards, we wondered if the royal family really enjoy this. It was supposed to celebrate King Charles' birthday, but someone in the crowd said his birthday is in November. 

I had another picture of Nelson above, but
it was not a good one. This is better and I
tried moving this to where I had the original
photo, but Blogger likes doing weird formatting
issues, so here this one stays.

Stonehenge and Bath

Stonehenge has been on my bucket list to see, so now I can check it off! Bath was pretty interesting but I wish we had a little more time there.

The Keystone

Parliament, Westminster Abby, and Big Ben

We didn't do any tours, and Westminster Abby was closed for an event. We just walked around.

Monty and Me

I just had to add this picture in. Is this where
Mary Poppins gets her umbrellas?

Imperial War Museum

For our final day in London, we split up. Keona and Xiaohui went off shopping while Ivan and I went to the Imperial War Museum. We both really enjoyed it, but one of the biggest deal for Ivan was that we took a double decker bus to and from the museum. Of course we rode on the top!

The museum was the least crowded of the museums we went to and I'm okay with that. One of the interesting things I noticed was that D-day did not have a big display in the WWII hall. 

We then went to a gaming store, but even though it was an independent shop, it was 99% Games Workshop...big surprise there! They had a Fellowship of the Ring set on display, which I would have bought, but it was a mess finding things and the two shop keepers were of little help. 

Our last dinner, we went to a pub. I'm not a big drinker, but I wanted to try out a pub. The food was pretty good. It was a nice ending to a great vacation. The next day, Keona and I flew back to the US whereas Xiaohui and Ivan flew to China. Keona had a final robotics competition in St. John, Canada. Once she is done, she will join them in China.

That is it folks. I hope you enjoyed my travelogue. Now to get back to hobby stuff.