Anyone can raise and command a regiment, and nobodies who have done so have even been known to do it with distinction. A large wargame army may be fielded in little more time than real troops could be recruited, equipped, trained and organized. But a navy, now - that's a whole different ballgame! If you want to become a naval power, you usually start by spending - not a King's ransom exactly, but certainly a markgraf's - for some of the really excellent commercial castings available. You can paint 'em up meticulously, select a typical commercial set of rules about the size of the Chicago Yellow Pages, reserve a gym floor somewhere to play on, and in the course of time, you may actually complete an action!
But this is not the HATSOFF way, and you may want to try it a little differently. The HEART OF AMERICA TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC ORDER OF THE FOLLOWERS OF FEATHERSTONE (HATSOFF) has been conducting weekly games with pretty much the same group of cheerful incompetents in every conceivable period for twenty-five years or so. The members almost always write their own rules, designed to simulate what a general or commander-in-chief does on a large-scale battlefield. The "five-page regulation" is in effect here; that's the one which says if you can't condense your rules into five intelligible typed pages or less, you probably haven't mastered your subject.
For naval rules, at least in the USS Monitor to HMS Dreadnought period, HATSOFF involves the "three-page" regulation. Nothing is simpler than writing blue-water naval rules which simulate the fluid, instant-decision nature of steam-driven warships in combat, where things happen fast. If you have to plod through graphs and charts and tables for twenty minutes with ten players standing around looking at their watches just to figure out the angle of dangle for one shell striking the level of bevel in the armor of someone's turret to at last find out what finally happened after you pulled that trigger half an hour ago - well, you'll never capture the immediacy of irrevocable decision and final conclusive result which is what makes a table-top battle not only exciting but realistic.
Rules writers too often forget how quickly actual events occur in a battle, much quicker than they are usually simulated on the table-top. Pickett's Charge was repulsed and the Alamo stormed in less than an hour. The Charge of the Light Brigade was over and done with in 15-20 minutes. The Bismarck opened fire at 0555 on May 24, 1941; the Hood was sunk and the Battle of the Denmark Strait all over but the shoutin' by 0601.
Naval rules should reflect the result of ironclads steaming at high speeds and firing big guns under command of the Admiral, not the black gang shoveling on more coal under a CPO, or, still less, the deliberations of the naval contractor ashore weighing the relative merits of Krupp or Harvey steel. What fun is that?
What actually happened in a naval battle of the steam-and-gunnery period is that vessels of varying speed, character, and capabilities maneuvered against, and fired on, others missed, and those that did score had some noticeable effect, depending on what they hit, where they struck, and how big they were. That's all blue-water naval rules need to show. With such rules, a naval battle can be simulated in a couple of dozen moves, taking a few hours, and a table-top admiral really can "lose the war in an afternoon", just like Jellicoe.
I had that very experience in HATSOFF World War I naval campaign at the storied Battle of the Tyrrhenian Sea, where I led a battleline of fifteen dreadnoughts, supported by 40-odd cruisers and destroyers, against a similar force. And, let me tell you, after ten players had engaged for no more that thirty moves or so, over a period of less than six hours, a fleet action was fought and a decision was, indeed, reached (we'll draw a discreet veil over what it was .... ).
So (you'll agree) naval rules should be simple, and I guess I could write some. But what about the hardware? Ships must look good or they're no fun to play with, and good-looking models come in inconveniently large sizes and cost an arm and a leg. They're made by highly trained specialists, hand-picked by Lord Minifig (the reclusive corporate giant who really controls wargaming), from the cream of graduates at the Ecole Polytechnic. I could never compete....
No, they aren't, and yes, you can.
The first thing to do is to get hold of some sound technical literature on ships - there's plenty of it. Jane's FIGHTING SHIPS is useful, Aldo Fraccaroli has written numbers of little volumes on all the navies of the world, and Steve Crawford's new book on BATTLESHIPS AND CARRIERS is handy too. They're available at any technical library. Or, you can do what I do, and go over to Dan Groves' and borrow his copies of Conway's ALL THE WORLD'S FIGHTING SHIPS, 1850-1905 and 1906-1921. Conway gives you all the data you'll need on all the vessels of the period, by country, and includes not only photos, but the diagrams you really need to know what your model should look like.
But what scale should I build in? 1:2400, 1:1200? 1/3 76th? N-gauge? 6mm? HO? 00? Forget it" it doesn't matter.
First, for your trial launching, pick out the smallest destroyer or torpedo-boat you'll want to build. For example, let's take the WWI destroyer USS Truxtun.; She was one of the famous "fourpipers" of that era and took part in HATSOFF last dreadnought campaign. Look at her in Conway. What are her visible traits? Hmmmm.... Well, flush-decked, four stacks in two groups amidships, torpedo tubes abaft the stacks, conning tower forward and deck-house aft, four-inch gun on her foc'sle and another on the fantail - OK, now I'd know her silhouette anywhere.
So, how small can I build this bucket and still have her look good?
The answer to that depends on the building materials you will use (and also whether you're deft or ham-fisted - if the latter, don't fret; practice will improve you). So, what is the easiest, cheapest stuff to work with? Well, wood stuff - balsa, basswood, even cardboard. It's easy to cut, file, smooth down, and it's dirt cheap! Perfect for hulls and superstructure.
But, how about the smaller, more regular components of a vessel - stacks, guns, turrets, etc.? How am I going to pare down a piece of flimsy balsa to a regular, perfectly cylindrical funnel about one-sixteenth of an inch long, without going blind or slicing my thumb om
The answer is to use other cheap, easily worked, regularly-shaped materials for this. Some are even edible: spaghetti, angel-hair pasta, pencil leads of varying thickness, brass rods or straight pins.
Mix all this together with some Elmer's Glue, wield your trusty X-acto knife, and you're ready to launch. Hulls are balsa, with basswood upperworks. Guns and torpedo tubes are fine, 0. 5 pencil leads. Small stacks and turrets are short sections of angel-hair pasta, or straight pins. Bigger turrets and stacks are made from spaghetti, thicker pencil leads, or basswood. Masts are straight pins, with cardboard fighting tops, reinforced and rounded off with Elmer's. Build your smallest ship model as small as you can and still be able to handle it. It will look good or grotesque depending on your eye and skill, but you should end up with a Truxtun no bigger than 25-30mm.
That's your scale.
Divide the actual length of the DD or torpedo boat you picked out of Conway by the actual length of your model and you have your 1 mm = so-many-feet ratio. With a scale thus set, you can keep your models small enough to conveniently fight on a table-top. Your biggest battleship will run no more than 70-80mm long. Your scale will differ for different periods, but the range of size for ship models you can conveniently handle (no matter what the scale) and use on a table-top is about 1" to 4" long. Any smaller and you can't see 'em; any bigger and you can't keep 'em on the table.
But, you will note one problem with your model, no matter how skillfully you built it. It looks good, but if anybody sneezes, the ship takes flight!
Here is where an unsung hero comes in. General Eisenhower was once asked who he thought did most to win World War II. He answered "Fred Higgins," and when the reporters got through asking who the hell he was, Ike explained that Higgins had invented the sea-going amphibious tractors without which the Allied armies could never have gotten ashore anywhere.
The unsung hero of HATSOFF navy is Henry Hodgkins, veteran of the surprise torpedo raid on Taranto which opened our 1906 Italo-Austrian naval war, presider over a disaster of his own in our WWI Mediterranean dreadnought campaign, notable for leading Norman knights into battle naked in a medieval conflict, an actual ex-diesel submariner (or sub-mariner, as HATSOFF always chides him), and a guy I went to grade school with. From somewhere, and for some reason, Hodge produced about sixty pounds of sheet lead, and gave it to me.
Eureka! I cut that lead into convenient strips (which you can do with scissors), pounded 'em a little thinner with a hammer, filed down the rough edges, painted 'em sea-blue, and mounted balsa models thereon. Weight problem solved. And, with a ship mounted on its own little patch of ocean, you can put a name plate on it, too. There are, for instance, scores of four-pipers in the Truxtun class which all look alike, but with a name plate, you don't have to pick up your model and turn over to keep track of who's who.
Navies used different identifying colors, brass trim and color schemes at different times, although some shade of gray overall was usually adopted when the shooting started or the admiral's inspection was over. A uniform shade of dark gray will hide a lot of flaws in your workmanship. I'm looking at my model of the French cruiser Jeanne D'Arc fight now, one of my earlier efforrts flushdecked, six funnels in two groups of three fore and aft, with that exaggerated "plough" ram the French Ministry of Marine thought so chic around the fin-de-siecle. She's 42mm long, and all my short cuts are hidden under dark-gray paint. What a silhouette! You can always tell a Frenchman at sea....
But, if you want to paint in the brighter, peacetime dress typical of the Victorian navies, you'll have to be a lot more careful and precise, because more color enhances your errors. Nevertheless, I'm looking at my armored cruiser USS Brooklyn - tropical white hull, buff upperworks, black trim on her funnels - and at the protected cruiser EMS Powerful - black hull, white superstructure, yellow funnels - and they'll knock your eyes out. Powerful was the largest warship of her day when commissioned in 1897. My model is 50mm long.
I find I can build a battleship (even a tough challenge, like USS Kearsarge or Kentucky with those tricky superimposed turrets) in about 30 minutes of actual work, although you have to wait longer for the glue to dry. You can turn out three or four destroyers in the same time. Given this pace, watch your naval arms race escalate.
I have built an 1870's international squadron of about twenty vessels to take on a comparable American Navy, following to its logical conclusion a squabble the Grant administration got into. I have constructed dreadnought-era navies for Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, and the US (the British alone have 27 destroyers). I'm working on an international Franco-Russo-Italo-Austro Germano-US and Japanese pre-dreadnought fleet to face the Royal Navy in the "Boer War at Sea?" campaign HATSOFF now has well under way. We've already fought the 1880 naval war between The Republic of Texas and the Mexican Empire (see Volume 1, No. 10 of ADVENTURE GAMING MAGAZINE, 1982, for an account of it), and the "Great Caribbean War" of 1902-03 between the Mexican Empire and the Confederacy. Civil War ironclad actions have been a feature of HATSOFF ACW campaigns since the 60's, and there's certainly more to come - and all the models are scratchbuilt!
Give it a try - it's cheap, easy and fun, and that's what the hobby is all about!
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© Copyright 2000 Hal Thinglum
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