The article by Jim Zylka on naval gaming in the American Civil War struck a responsive chord in me, as the nature of the conflict on the rivers has always appealed to me. The problem I had, was that my budget had already been pulled in several different directions. Therefore, if I wanted to get involved in naval games, I would have to be creative.

I have always liked scratchbuilding, and generally do all the houses and terrain pieces for my games myself. In addition, being a long time fan of late nineteenth century colonial gaming, I have built more than my share of gunboats over the years. The first step in the project would be obtaining a good reference source. I managed to pick up Tony Gibbons' book second-hand, and, armed with a calculator to do scale conversions, I was ready to start. I have to echo Jim's recommendation about this book. It really is invaluable, especially for scratchbuilding and painting, as it gives full dimensions for just about every vessel or vessel-type engaged.

First Adventure

My first venture was in 1/300 scale, as I thought the larger scale would look better. After building a few models, I tried a couple games using Age of Iron, and a homemade set, but I was not very happy with the feel of the game. The models worked for single ship actions, but trying to maneuver three or four boats at average size of about six inches long, was more than my five by nine foot table could handle.

I went back to the drawing board, and decided to have a go at 1/1200 scale models. Over a long weekend, I dove into the project, and managed to build about a dozen ships as a starting point. Borrowing one of Jim's scenarios from his article, I set up a game using the new models. The result was dramatically different. The game had an entirely new feel. Players finally had room to maneuver their vessels in a realistic manner, and fights took place at realistic ranges. Yes, we were pleased, and it looked as if I was firmly involved in ACW naval gaming.

Over the next few months, I continued to add to the collection, to the point where I currendy have about four dozen vessels for both sides, including four ironclad warships of the British Navy, that I have dubbed "The West Indies Squadron." I have done all manner of ships, from monitors to corvettes, and even added forts. The models are all built out of balsa wood, with funnels made from ball-point pen ink tubes, or other suitable items, depending on the size of funnel needed. Turrets and paddlewheels were made from various circular or semi-circular items.

I would never hold these up to comparison with Richard Houston's models, but everyone was impressed with the results, and the models looked really neat on the tabletop. In fact, I even managed to add some rudimentary rigging to the open sea models and double-ender gunboats, and even added deck guns borrowed from 1/700 scale torpedo boat models!

Basing

I felt that the resulting models were a bit too delicate to endure constant handling, so I decided to mount them on bases. The bases I used were plastic dominoes, purchased in packs of twenty-eight tiles for $1.00, at one of the local discount stores. The larger models do extend over the ends of the tiles, but the thickness of the tiles still provides us with a way to pick up the models without handling them.

The forts were quite a find in themselves. I had taken one of my children to the local craft shop for some material needed for a school project, and did some browsing while she looked for the items she needed. I came across a selection of paper mache boxes in various shapes, costing $2.00 to $6.00 each. I found several hexagonal shapes, and pulling out the metric ruler I always keep in my wallet, I determined that here might be the perfect raw material from which to make ACW forts and batteries. I bought a couple boxes, and as we drove home, I mentally planned the conversions.

Once home, I took out a couple of ship models to measure against, and looked for some pictures of actual forts. I proceeded to trim the boxes to size, leaving me with a pair of large, hexagonal forts, and several smaller batteries. Even the color worked to my advantage, being a dull greyish-brown. I added a quick drybrushing and the addition of gunport details and flags, and the forts were done. Here again, these are meant strictly for gaming, not display, but the overall effect was what I wanted.

At the same craft shop, I also found an ideal surface for the games. The shop had on sale lengths of decoratively colored, leather-like vinyl, one being a perfect shade of blue. (Sorry Jim, brown rivers just don't do it for me.) I purchased two yards, which allowed me to cut to size a perfect four by six foot gaming surface, for a cost of about $8.00. The finishing touch came from raiding our Monopoly game for houses. These are not exactly in the right scale; but given a rough paint job and viewed "from sea," they do give the impression of a town in the distance.

Happy Ending

That's my story. I am now happily involved in ACW naval gaming, along with the land campaigns of the American Civil War. My next project will be to build a couple of 1/200 scale (N Gauge) models to go along with the new 10mm GHQ figures I have gotten hooked on, so that I can now game real combined actions on the rivers and bays of the country. The keys to a project like this are research and patience. As long as you have good pictures of what you want to build, and the patience to fiddle with the small bits, you will find that there are no limits to what you can do.

One final note: while I found Ironclads to be just a bit too complex for the sort of game I like, the scenarios included with the rules are great, and are easily converted to work with other rules. Age of Iron has statistics for the same ships, written up in a format that goes along with its mechanics, so that with both sets of rules and the date in Tony Gibbon's book, you can virtually represent any vessel that took part in the conflict.

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