Photos of Fort Sumter

 Not much left of the Fort. But still interesting

Dawn of Iron: The American Civil War at Sea

 From Facebook.

Last night at Boards and Swords Hobbies in Derby, UK Richard Robinson , Simon Clark and I had another practice through the participation game of Dawn of Iron we are taking to ‘The Other Partizan’ wargames show in Newark, UK on the 9th October.

HOME | Mysite (partizan.org.uk)

We have tried this twice before and the aim is to get a workable participation game lasting about 45 minutes with two participants. The show lasts six hours so we want to get as many players through as possible. So, we decided to limit the game to six turns. Last time we reduced the number of ships per side to two but we again tried three per side to give a variety of ship types, bearing in mind potential players will expect to see ironclads:

CSS Albemarle – Ironclad, CSS Arkansas – Light Ironclad and CSS Little Rebel – Cottonclad.

USS Benton – Light Ironclad, USS Cairo – Light Ironclad and USS Queen of the West – Cottonclad.

Both sides had a land battery.

The effective river bend scene is 4ft by 4ft with three sandbanks and we have reduced shallows to 2” wide. One thing we did do which is not in the rules, Mike Haught , is to dice off each turn to decide who activated a ship first.

Turn 1. General advance.

Turn 2. Arkansas was hit and suffered a Fire and Worsening Situation.

Turn 3. Arkansas later repaired Worsening Situation but took additional Fire, Flooding and Propulsion. Benton took a hit on its Gun Deck. Question for Mike Haught , we assumed that if you repaired a Cumulative Damage which caused a Hull Hit that the hull was thus repaired.

Turn 4. The Little Rebel was now going the wrong way round the large sandbank and engaged the shore battery. Otherwise although the fleets closed little damage was caused.

Turn 5. Albemarle rams Cairo at speed 2 and causes one Critical and one Cumulative. Arkansas causes one critical hit on QoWest and sails past it. Queen of the West does Hard to Port and rams Albemarle at speed 5 causing 2 Critical and one Cumulative taking one cumulative herself. The Albemarle is sunk.

Turn 6. Arkansas gives QoWest a broadside and sinks her. Little Rebel comes off the worst against the shore battery and is Derelict.

In conclusion a Union victory. This took us an hour and a half which is too long so we concluded that we had to reduce the sides to two ships each for Partizan. If you can come along it would be good to see you. We are on stand PG15 which is next to Syborg 3D’s stand T5 (who have Dave Manley’s ships) and more importantly the Cafeteria!

Civil war montiors

 There is this amazing site on Civil War shops. Their Monitor section has a heatlh of great information for a gamer and modeler.   Link: Civil War Montior classes

Navy Source for civil war ships.

 This is a great reference for Civil War Ship. The page lists all US and Confederate ships & Ironclads.

Civil War Ironclads & Ships

My first good 3d resin prints

  Finally got the Photn S running.  But the screen quit working.  Lucky for me any cubic any sale special on the Photon Mega X.  What an amazing resin printer.   The next problem was to resolve the type of resin I was using.  The Any cubic grey normal was to brittle.   

 So I got on you tube to find the best type to use.  The old saying you get what you pay for is so true.  Siraya Tech resin was the answer.   So I did more reseach to find out that if you blend the Siraya fast grey with their Tenaius flexible resin. You end up with the perfect mix.  The prints are no longer brittle.

Here are my prints

1/600 scale ironclad USS CHILLICOTTE

28 mm  Chinese ship cannon

Ironclad battle of Drewery's buff.

 Great video on the naval battle on May 15, 1862.   

Magnetizing Thorougbred ship bottoms for storage.

 Storing miniature ships has always been a pain in the butt. They fall over, get bashed together and all the things we hate.  Well the fix is using magnetic business card blank.  One side has the adhesive, The other a magnetic surface.  These magnets are for sticking your business card to the refrigator.  That way you can find the repair, the dentist or whomever you need.  We all know how hard they can be to pull off the frig.

Well why know stick this type of magnet to bottom of your pewter ship.  Damn it works great. No more bouncing around while transporting to a game.   Here is how I did it.

These can be found on the internet

Bought a hundred, The leftover will be used on gaming bases

Make sure you flex the magnet flat

Line the ship model and make a line

Next using the ruler scribe a line

Flex the magnet along the line. This will break it in two

Peel off the white backing

stick it on to the ships bottom,  If you are having problems
making the magnet stick, Your best friend is super glue

A little short no proble

keep your scrap piece just for this problem

Stick the scrap piece on, Than trim to fit.

I use steel cookie storage boxes.  The magnets stick great to the surface. Plus the 
plastic lid keeps you miniatures dust free.

 

Ironclads modeled by Mark Haught

 Mark did a outstanding feat f modeling these Ironclads & Timber clads.   His paint skill are the best I seen in a while.  

 All colors are Vallejo. The Arkansas and the hypothetical half-built CSS Tennessee are Cavalry Brown. The city class boats are London Grey, and the timberclads are chocolate brown. The decks start life as green ochre and I added streaks with a gradual addition of white to the green ochre

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 more likely just rusted iron plate. The Arkansas was described as "rust colored" by eyewitnesses, but I've also seen "red brown" in accounts. So as usual for ACW creative licenses are in ample supply for us wargamers!

The Stl files can be found at 3D modelling

More Thoroughbred ACW Ships

 Here are more of Thoroughbred amazing ACW ship castings instructions,