A couple of months ago, in the April/May issue, I spoke of a game of ACW ironclads. With the inherent simplicity (naivety?) of youth, I had drawn up the most basic set of naval rules... I conjured up what I termed a "1" ship and a "2" ship and a "3" ship.
A "1" ship was just that... it possessed 1 gun aboard; when it fired, it added +1 to its die roll; when it moved, it moved 1 inch. In short, the "1" ship performed all its functions with "1's". The "2" ship followed a similar pattern... it had 2 guns, added +2 when it fired, and so on. None of the usual naval nitty-gritty for me. The game used an alternate movement sequence, but in between each side's movement phase occurred a fire phase. Here, the types of guns had been noted on a deck of cards, and one card was drawn on each fire phase. If a "1" card appeared, all "1" guns of both sides fired simultaneously, a "2" card mandated that all "2" guns fire, and so on. One or two cards stated "All guns f ire", and if this card appeared, every gun on the table would boom out. The fire deck was an easy way of controlling the rate of fire of the various types of guns.
Brian Dewitt saw gold in them thar hills... he thought the basic idea behind the system was a good one, and he proceeded to flesh out the rules. We were invited to his 6' x 12' table in October, whereon he had laid out an impressive 5-foot wide river, and lots of little ironclads for the Union and the Confederacy.
The Yankee fleet was composed of 7 ships... three "1's", two "2's", and two "3's". I commanded the "1's"... although relatively harmless in terms of armament, they possessed the ability to ram opposing ships.
We Union players started on the eastern edge of the table... we were to make our way down the river to the cove. This was our objective, for the Rebels had, at this point, two ironclad Merrimacs under repair, and we were to sink them.
Opposing us was a slew of Confederate ships... I forget how many, but sufficient to put a crimp in our operational plan.
For some ungodly reason, there appeared at Brian's house, at the start of the game, an assortment of kiddies, 10? 11? years old, who Brian drafted into the game. Now, I am a tired old man, about ready to retire, a "serious" wargamer, one who revels in the minutia of historical accuracy, one who lives to re-create and simulate historical action on the table-top... and suddenly the kiddies appear...! More than enough to drive a man to DBA or DBM or WRG 7th or some other type of fantasy rules.
All the kiddies joined the Confederate side; we Unionists had nought to do with them but to sink their ships. And in the same vein as above, I can think of nothing more frustrating than to be outmaneuvered and outgunned by an 11 year old kiddy! Surely, in my gradual descent into senility, I deserve more than this...?
In truth, the kiddies performed well; there was a minimum of discussion (at least no more than would be normal with adults three times their age), and they caught on to the rules rather quickly.
The Union plan was that my "1" ships would try to keep the enemy busy, while our heavier craft would make their way to the cove. This was not so easily accomplished, for the defending Confederates quickly came out to contest the route.
Not all the Confederates, for lurking in a tributary leading off the south of the river, were two Rebel ships, which their commander, one of the kiddies, refused to move.
One of his young cohorts wondered why, and conversation went something like this:
- "Why don't you go out to meet them?"
"Because they'll blow me up."
"Not if you blow 'em up first."
Now this brief interchange, to me, summed up the military situation quite well. We have the cautious Southern naval commander, not wishing to risk his ships, and we have the optimistic, aggressive admiral, advocating the need to engage the enemy at all costs, espousing the blow-'em-up-first doctrine of warfare.
My three "1" gun ships proceeded along the southern bank of the river, and eventually met the ships of the cautious Southern commander. Equipped with the least effective armament on the field, the obvious ploy was to ram the enemy vessels.
And ram I did. Twice.
Both times I took my ships, each equipped with 300,000 tons of ramming bow structure made of reinforced depleted uranium, and WHAMMO!!, went right into the side of the target ships, puny paddlewheelers.
And both times my ships suffered more losses than did the targets! Here, each time, I had smashed, at full speed, amidships, into a grungy paddlewheeler, penetrated her side with my depleted uranium ramming prow, and to what avail...?? I suffered more "hull boxes" than she did!
And to add insult to injury, one of my ships sank (due to the hull box loss) right, after the WHAMMO! took place. She sank while her prow still penetrated the Southern ship. Now one would think the Union naval architects would have designed a ram with some sort of a hook on it, to hold it in place, and the Southern ship would have gone down with me. But no, my ram was covered with 10W-30, and it slipped free and clear, allowing my ship to go under, and the Confederate ship to keep on sailing.
I must admit that rules pertaining to ramming are tough to draw up... this was one area in which I ran into trouble when first ginning up the idea of a naval game.
After about 8 or 9 turns, our two Union "2" ships plus one of my "1's", all badly damaged, just about made it to the cove, where the Southern Merrimacs were located. One Merrimac chug-chugged out to meet us... evidently this one could raise a wee bit of steam power, but its sister shin lay helpless.
And then we Unionists faced two difficult decisions. The first was whether or not to ram the Merrimac facing us. It's true that our "2" was not a rammer, but the thought was that we knew she was damaged to start with, and perhaps we'd do enough damage to her to sink her. We chose not to... we were going to enter the cove and finish off the other ship.
The second decision concerned the mine field which protected the cove. Some 10 mines were in place, but we had been informed that a couple of them were duds. While we debated, my "1" ship and one of the "2's" sank under heavy bombardment, leaving us with only one viable craft.
The remaining "2" commander chose a mine, and went straight for it BOOM! The wrong choice. A critical hit, to boot! The ship was dead in the water, and the Union fleet was no more.
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© Copyright 1994 Wally Simon
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