At our August PW meeting, five Yankee ships were attempting to escort one Confederate transport along the Cootchie River, which, as everyone knows, runs south in mid-Utah, turns right in New Mexico, and empties into the Rio Grande. The game was a table-top version of the board-game IRONCLADS, originally published to be played on a field of hexes. Our host, Mike Koznarsky, set out his good-looking collection of ironclads, each of which was some 3 inches long, and the battle was on. Pitted against the Yankee flotilla were three Rebel ships, trying to stop the transport from getting from one end of the table to the other, a distance of 6 feet. I commanded the Confederate ship Columbia which had an assortment of 10-inch and 6-inch and 7-inch guns aboard. Be aware that I am not, at all, a fan of 'ship games'. I have participated in these events in the past... in all these games, each turn, I have moved my single token about 5 inches, I have crossed out the appropriate number of hull boxes when shot at, I have tossed the dice to see if my opponent crossed out any of his hull boxes, and I have repeated this cycle many, many times. Not at all exciting. And so it was on the Cootchie River. Orders The very first phase of each tum required orders to be written for each ship. Then all ships moved simultaneously, according to the written instructions. Now if I like ship-games not at all, I like order-writing games even less. "Move 3 inches, turn to port, etc., etc. What made it more confusing to me was that, during my time in the navy, some 40 years ago, I had been taught that the front end, the bow, was the pointy end of the ship, and the rear end, the stem, was rather squared off. Here, in this IRONCLADS set-up, my ship, the Columbia, had two pointy ends... what's a poor ex-sailor to do? As our Rebel ships approached the Yanks, we opened fire. My Columbia had a single 10-inch gun on the bow, with a maximum range of 18 inches. My other guns, the 6- and 7-inchers constituting my broadside batteries, reached out to around 30 inches. Mine was the rightmost ship in the Rebel line; I hugged the shore, moving at my 5-inch speed. Directly ahead of me was the Yankee ship, Pittsburgh, and it turned out that the Pittsburgh seemed to have pop-guns aboard... whatever caliber they were, they had no effect on the Columbia's structure. The firing procedure required a number of 6-sided dice tosses. In truth, I'm not sure if the outline below is correct, but it's close enough. a. First, toss two dice to see if a hit occurred b. Toss a single die... this told the location of the hit (hull, turret, etc.) c. Toss another die... this told the particular section of the ship that was hit (foreship, midship, etc.) d. Now the gun's 'penetration points' were compared with the target armor at the location that had been hit. Even if the penetration value was less than the ammor level, something 'bad' might happen to the ship. e. Now here's where it begins to get fuzzy. Toss another die, looking for 'bad' effects. f. And then there followed other dice tosses, for 'special hits', for 'critical hits', for this and for that. All I can tell you is that after a three hour battle, my Columbia suffered a single point of hull damage (out of 52!) during the battle. Not a man aboard died, the bridge remained intact, the magazine did not blow up, the engines ran smoothly, and the only sign of the battle was a small indentation on the bow where the Pittsburgh's pop-gun had bounced a round off. As an example, on one shot, the penetration factor of the Pittsburgh's guns were a "6", whereas my armor value was a "27." No contest. In contrast, when, at a range of around 6 inches, I fired at the Pittsburgh, my penetration was "30," while his armor value was "8?" In truth, the 'penetration-minus-armor' difference didn't seem to be that important. A positive value meant, of course, that penetration had been achieved, but it was the next series of dice tosses, that told of the damage, that were of greater importance. Contrast In contrast, the Confederate ship, General Bragg, run by John Shirey, took heavy damage, charging directly into the Yankee flotilla. Indeed, it appeared that this ship could have handled the entire Yankee fleet all by itself. The General Bragg first rammed Fred Haub's ship, the Queen Of The West, and took out all her 'flotation points', which were different than 'hull boxes'. With nary a flotation point left, the Queen Of The West went down on the spot, and the General Bragg charged on. Shirey had another ship, the Arkansas, which rammed and sank Jim Butter's Indianola... BOOM!, and the Indianola's flotation points were gone. Shirey was gradually depleting the Yankee fleet of its entire supply of flotation points. But the main Confederate ship, the leader of the pack, General Bragg, suffered for her actions. She was the target of most of the Yankee guns as she made her way toward the Union transport ship, and toward the end, all of the General Bragg's own guns had been hit and were out of commission... Ieaving her with her one major weapon... apparenNy, a depleted-uranium ramming prow. Jim Butters commanded the transport, and he tried a quick end-run around the General Bragg, hoping that the other Yankee ships could block the Bragg. The transport was a fairly fast moving ship... she could go 7 inches per tum. Alas! No use. It was now Turn #10, and WHAMMO!, the General Bragg struck again and for the last time. Her target this time was the transport... and the Bragg hit it amidships. I'm not sure of how many flotation points the transport had... but rest assured that the Bragg took 'em all away. Battle over. Back to PW Review September 1997 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1997 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com