This time around, I'd like to address the following three items in brief detail: 1. "Mississippi Flotilla, a miniatures rules set by Roger C. Campbell 2. 'Warships of the Civil War Navies", a book by Paul Silverstone 3. 'Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War', a book by Tony Gibbons Mississippi Flotilla "Mississippi Flotilla" was written in 1988 by Roger C. Campbell, a teacher and naval reserve officer currently living in Jacksonville, Florida. Roger grew up in Columbus, Georgia, and frequently visited the Confederate Naval Museum there. Based on what he learned, he was displeased with the treatment given by existing naval rules sets to the CSS Muskogee, so he decided to write his own rules set. Roger developed his rules around a central theme, this being to represent the various vessels with their designed capabilities, and not to present them as they actually performed in battle (thus ignoring the mechanical and propulsion problems that tended to plague the various vessels, particularly the CSN ones). The rules set has developed a growing circle of fans in northern Florida at various wargame conventions. The rules set itself is only nine pages of text, with an additional nine pages devoted to table of contents, vessel characteristics tables, and tables for shooting, ramming, damage, etc. The text is sometimes less than adequate and contains some of the worst typographical errors and/or bad grammar that I've seen in a long time (Roger tells me that all of this will soon be corrected in a soon to be released new edition). A scale is not given in the rules. Maximum shooting range is 36" for heavy guns, and vessels move 1' per knot of speed. Most vessels arc allowed to make several 30 degree or 45 degree turns during their movement phase, but 1" is deducted for each turn taken, and 1" of straight movement must be taken between such turns. All firing of guns is resolved simultaneously during the shooting phase of the game turn. Guns are individually fired as in other popular rules sets. The guns are categorized into small, medium, large, and heavy types, with larger guns being able to shoot farther and having a greater chance of getting a hit at a particular range increment. There is a fairly lengthy list of shooting modifiers to reflect such things as size of gun firing, rifled guns, crew quality, the target vessel's armor rating, smoke, and several other factors. This was felt to be somewhat cumbersome by several of my fellow garners, but the system works and is still pretty fast. If a hit is obtained by a gun, a roll is made on the damage table and the result is noted on the target's data sheet. The possible results for any given hit include gun knocked out, smoke stack hit, fire, boiler struck, steam pipes struck, propulsion shafts jammed, magazine hit (vessel blows up), bridge hit, steering cables severed, and shot penetrates hull. Every hit obtained is a potential CRITICAL HIT in these rules. Some damage can be corrected" (removed) with the proper die roll on subsequent turns. Flooding damage is uniquely handled in these rules because vessels do not have flotation points to keep track of. Instead, for each hull penetration hit received, one knot of speed is subtracted from the maximum speed. If a vessel receives enough hull penetration hits to reduce its speed to zero, and none of the hits are "corrected" during the following turn, the vessel sinks due to having a maximum speed of zero for two consecutive turns. This means that faster vessels can take more hull penetration hits than slower vessels, which does not strike me as very realistic. Why should a small tug with a ten knot maximum speed be allowed to take more hull penetration hits than the heavily armored but six knot maximum speed USS Essex? I personally feel that the use of flotation points in some way must be used to accurately simulate flooding damage, and in this respect the system appears to be flawed. The whole concept of correcting flooding damage during the course of a battle is inconceivable, in my opinion. I can't imagine how the crew could plug up a shell hole below the vessel's waterline from within the hull in the midst of a battle! Roger lists the vessels' armaments on the vessel characteristics tables, but allows the gamer to place the guns on the vessel where-ever he desires. This is giving the players too much freedom, and I strongly urge the use of another rules set , such as "lronclads", as reference for placing the guns. Roger has included rules for forts, shore batteries, spar torpedo attacks, and ramming as well. Bookkeeping is kept to an absolute minimum with these rules since there are no flotation points or armor points to keep track of. Players must write their movement plot for each turn and keep track of any damages accrued, as well as damages corrected on later turns. The gamers in my group really liked this minimal amount of paperwork, and found that it made the games less tedious than "Ironclads" or "Age of Iron". The battles we've had have been fast paced and quite a lot of fun. All in all, what we have here is a very playable and enjoyable rules set, that is also very unpredictable in nature. Despite how I feel about the flooding damage procedure, I'll continue to reach for it when the time comes for our group to have a naval battle. This rules set is very reminiscent of Paul Koch's "On To Richmond" rules set because if you don't like something, and want to change it, such can generally be easily accomplished. "Mississippi Flotilla" sells for $7.00 postpaid to U.S. addresses, and $8.50 to overseas addresses. It can be obtained from the author by mailing a check made out to "Roger C. Campbell" and sent to: Roger C. Campbell / 2834 Calumet Circle / Jacksonville, Florida 32250 USA. Warships of the Civil War Navies Silverstone's new book is very nice, a veritable encyclopedia of the vessels of both sides. It is about 270 pages in length, and has many photographs that I've never seen before, some taken of the vessels after the war. Each chapter has a short section of text, followed by the characteristics and/or photographs of the various vessels, as well as their service records. This is a good reference book, but one that is really just a dry collection of data. Warships and Naval Battles of the Civil War Tony Gibbons' new book is an absolute naval miniaturist's delight. At last, someone has given us a source that shows via over 250 nice full color illustrations how the vessels probably looked. If you've been looking for a painting guide for your ACW vessels, I don't know of anything better than this! While it may not feature as many vessels as Silverstone's book, you can sit down and read text histories of each of the vessels covered in the book. I was practically doing cartwheels in the aisle of the bookstore when I saw this one! Check with your local bookstore, or call Barnes & Noble Bookstores at (201) 767-7079 to order Item #1607522. The price is $24.95 plus a $4.00 shipping charge. It is worth every penny of the price and should be on every ACW naval miniatures enthusiast's bookshelf. On a scale of 1-10, I'd rate this book as a 10+! Back to The Zouave Vol III No. 4 Table of Contents Back to The Zouave List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 The American Civil War Society 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