"Hammerin' Iron"

by "Peter Pig"

Review by Andrew Freeman

If you want a simple, different, fun game this is definitely one to consider. What you get for your money is about a dozen pages of A4 with lots of interesting ideas for wargaming riverine ACW ironclad actions.

Movement and turning is regulated by hexagonal tiles which are laid in front of ships as they move. The same hexagons also define firing arcs for guns. A random movement element is introduced by use of movement cards. There is a "full speed" deck which is biased towards fast moves but no firing or an "action stations" deck biased towards slow move and fire results This mechanism causes some really hard decisions, you may be short of firing cards so do you fire this turn or close the range to fire next turn but risk taking more damage?

Firing uses a fairly standard mechanism with six sided dice. Larger guns roll more dice with each dice potentially scoring 1 point of damage. There are a few plus and minus factors and armour may turn a shot. Hits come off a ships point value and every time a multiple of 5 hits is reached "special damage" may occur, e.g. gun knocked out . Other sections briefly cover ramming, torpedoes, terrain, morale and so on all in a simple but effective manner.

The rules are written with 1/600 models in mind with each ship also having a separate model of its gun deck off the main playing area. This is important as the guns may be redeployed or destroyed during the course of the game. Needless to say the models produced by Peter Pig are ideally suited for these rules. With suitable amendments ships in other scales from other suppliers could easily be used. Suitable gundeck models are harder to find but these don't need to be the same scale as the ships. Overall then, what can I say but give it a try.

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