Musings on the Spanish American War and Pre-Dreadnoughts-

Pre-dreadnought naval warfare has always intrigued me. Anachronistic rams, armaments comprised of numerous gun sizes, poor fire control, rumble home hulls, etc. 

One of my first blog posts back in 2009 was about my Spanish American War collection from War Times Journal. Six years later, I showed off my 1/3000 Navwar fleets for the Balkans War between Greece and Turkey.

My preferred ruleset for this period is When Dreadnoughts Rules the Seas by Brian Dewitt. Many years ago, Brian showed me the rules by gaming the Battle of Lemnos with my own fleets. 

I have unopened 1/3000 fleets from Navwar for the Chinese, Russian and Japanese fleets, comprehensive enough to refight the various scenarios for the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars. 

I still have yet to paint up those Chinese, Russian and Japanese fleets, however I recently picked up the Osprey Campaign on Manila Bay which rekindled my interest in gaming the naval aspects of the Spanish American War. 

Reviewing the Navwar catalog I was disappointed to see that there were only a few ships from the SAW in their expansive listings. My original fleets for the SAW were from War Times Journal back when they cast their models in metal. I doubt I have very many of them around. 

Pursuing the Spanish American fleets in 1/2400 provides more options: Panzerschiffe and Tumbling Dice offer fairly complete ranges and Viking Forge also offers some of the ship options. Ultimately, I decided to order Spanish and American fleets for Santiago and Manila Bay from Tumbling Dice. I don't mind going slightly larger from 1/3000 to 1/2400 for the Spanish American War, alot of the ships were smaller cruisers and gunboats and that would be very fiddly at 1/3000. I look forward to their arrival. 

Cold Wars 2025

At the end of February, HMGS held the 2025 Cold Wars convention. Cold Wars always seemed to be the runt of the three major HMGS conventions and recently had take a few years hiatus so it was a surprise that it made a comeback. The venue choice was an old one from year's past...the Eisenhower Conference Center in Gettysburg, PA. 

Decades ago, I remember going to an HMGS convention at the Eisenhower but I didn't really remember much about my experience. 

Work has been pretty chaotic and demanding recently and this was an opportunity for me to meet up with my friends Bill and Rob. We could push some lead, roll some dice and share a beer. 

The Eisenhower was a short drive and upon arrival I was a little underwhelmed with the facilities. There were two hotels (Eisenhower and Aspire) and an old indoor sports complex. Games were held at both hotels while the sports complex hosted registration, Wally's, the vendor Hall and tournaments. The buildings were spread out on the site but we were blessed with mild weather so it could have been much worse. In addition, the food selection left a little bit to be desired. 

Enough of the negativity, the games were good and I ended up purchasing more than anticipated. HMGS put together a convention that allowed me to play games, but hobby stuff and spend time with friends...and that's all that matters. For that I am grateful. 

Bill, Rob and I played a game of Blitz Bowl where my Skaven lost 11-0 to the Dwarf team handled by Rob and Bill. I really enjoyed the game and need to paint up all the other teams I own. 

The star of the convention was Kurt Vonnegut's long lost boardgame GHQ. The well-known author was apparently a little-known board game designer. GHQ is a mix of WW2 and Chess. It really makes you appreciate the primacy of combined arms. There is artillery (motorized, conventional and heavy), infantry (motorized and foot) and paratroopers. 

Friday night we managed to continue our tradition of playing in Brian's Friday Night naval game. Brian is the best game GM and his games are always a blast. This game was the much loved, Form on the Admiral's Wake. The scenario was a Napoleonic clash between British and Franco-Spanish fleets. 

I was an admiral with British and we lost pretty convincingly. We had some interesting personalities on both sides and it was really entertaining to see how their various gaming styles came though on the tabletop. Always so much fun, win or lose. 

There were some very cool looking games and I have to thank Rob for taking these pictures.  

Friday's Wally's was pretty disappointing but Saturday brought some good stuff being sold. I purchased a bunch of 15mm Aztecs from Gladiator/Black Hat, 15mm resin supply dumps and a large bag of 6mm Baccus War of the Roses (which turned out to have more 6mm ACW, 6mm Gauls and 15mm WW2 Japanese than WotR figures). 

At the vendor Hall, I picked up a really cool book by AK Interactive which depicted armored vehicles used by various factions of the Lebanese Civil War and also a book on the battle of Salamis. 

One of the first projects that I completed was my 15mm IDF and PLO for the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. I was always tempted to expand out my armies to include a few Lebanese factions. Perhaps the eye candy will inspire me to get that kick started. 

Despite my initial misgivings, the convention turned out to be very rewarding in various ways. Most important was the opportunity to spend good time with great friends. 

Bulldogs Away Playtest

I had a moment to playtest the most recent version of David Manley's Bulldogs Away. I had played a few solo games years ago but that was the first edition and I had long forgotten whatever I had initially learned. For the playtest, I'd fight a small action loosely based off an event that likely happened in August of 2008 during the Russian invasion of Georgia. In that action, a Georgian vessel was struck by a missile fired from a Russian Nanuchka-class corvette (Mirazh). At that time the Georgians had a Type-148 Tiger class fast attack craft donated by the Greek Navy (Dioskuria) and a Matka-class missile boat donated from the Ukrainians (Tbilisi).

I don't own any Matka-class models but I do have some Nanuchkas, Type-148/La Combattante models and also Osa-class missile boats. For this scenario, a single Russian Nanuchka will face off against a Georgian Type-148 and a Georgian Osa-2. In reality, the Georgians didn't have any Osas nor did they have any missiles on the Dioskuria or the Tbilisi (yikes!). Additionally, I gave the Nanuchka the export version armament of SS-N-2D Styx missiles instead of the more modern SS-N-9 Sirens that Russian versions were equipped with. 

Here we are in the Black Sea (which looks rather blue) off the coast of Abkhazia. The pre-game setup involves determining how many "radar blips" you have. You can have more blips than ships which can cause uncertainty for the enemy as to where your actual ships are. The Russians and Georgians rolled poorly. The Russians (not visible yet) only received one blip while the Georgians only rolled for a single blip which means the Type-148 was going to be visible.

And here is the Russian Nanuchka disguised as a blip.

The Georgian Type-148 cruising the waters off the coast. The Georgians won initiative and, after a round of movement (all ships going speed-3), the Type-148 attempted to identify the Russian blip without success.

During the Russian turn, the Nanuchka revealed itself as it attempted to detect the Georgian blip which it successfully did. No ships were within range for visual identification.

The mysterious blip now becomes a Georgian "contact".

And here is a picture of the situation after the movement and detection/identification phases. The Nanuchka (lower right) has a Type-148 approaching from the top-center of the picture and a Georgian contact in upper right hand corner. 

During the missile launch phase, first the Georgian Type-148 fired off a salvo of four Exocets (white caps) at the Nanuchka. Next the Russian Nanuchka launched two SS-N-2D Styx missiles back at the Type-148. Then the Osa-2 revealed itself (not shown) and sent two SS-N-2B Styx missiles (red caps) to join the Exocets already screaming towards the Nanuchka.

The Type-148 with the two yellow caps representing the SS-N-2D Styx launched from the Nanuchka. In the future, I will make some laminated card counters to represent the missile launches.

After launch phase was completed and all missiles fired being placed on targets, it was time for the combat phase. This is where the Russians losing initiative bit them in the backside, and I will explain why: In the combat phase, the winner of the initiative gets to pick which ship they'd activate first, during the combat phase in Bulldogs Away, the active ship shoots guns at targets, fires off SAMs against incoming missiles, deploys countermeasures and fires off CIWS but then must resolve missile attacks against it. 

The Georgians had the initiative and activated the Osa-2, which didn't have any missiles launched against it. The Osa was too far out to fire off its guns but at least it didn't have to fend off any incoming salvos.

The Russians were next and they needed to activate their lone ship. The Nanuchka was facing an onslaught of four Exocets and two Styx but at least it had SAMs and countermeasures like chaff and flares to give it some defense. Unfortunately they didn't do so well. While resolving the four Exocets,  the SAMs and countermeasures failed to intercept any of the incoming. Two of the four Exocets found their mark.

Here is a picture of the ship templates after resolution of the first Exocet hit which only caused some very light damage. The SAM system was KO'd but everything else was still operational. The good luck didn't last long as the second Exocet slammed into the Nanuchka causing critical damage. A roll of the different systems and weapons revealed that pretty much every system was destroyed: the fire control, elctronic countermeasures, elecro-optical equipment, electronic support measures, guns, missiles, etc.  

Here is the end result. At this point, I decided to end the test game as the Russian vessel wasn't going to be doing any fighting back. Perhaps I should have resolved the Styx launches as well but I wanted to post this report first. 

After I took the snap of the Nanuchka burning, it reminded me of this image of a burning Libyan Nanuchka which was knocked out in the Gulf of Sidra in March, 1986. 

Anyway, I digress...I enjoyed the play-test. I will go back and re-read through the rules to see what I got wrong and what I got right. Each turn has a lot of phases, the combat is very violent and the ships can't take much damage (realistic). I'm hoping to paint up enough ships and get proficient enough with the rules to get in a game with my good friends Rob and Bill at the upcoming Historicon convention.

1/2400 Missile Boats

Since I have a bit of wandering eye when it comes to maintaining focus with hobby projects, I wanted to show you what I am working while tackling the Crimean War project. The photos aren't the best but here are some 1/2400 missile boats. 

From left to right we have a Nanuchka missile corvette, two Osa missile boats and two La Combattante fast attack craft. All ships are by Viking Forge. I should add that I painted all of these over a decade ago. They remained in storage until now, when I decided to base them. 

Here is another photo with the addition of a Polnocny-class landing ship which is a 3D print ordered off of eBay. I also ordered a bunch of additional ships (Komars, Osas, Sa-ar 3s and a Sa'ar 4, AT-43 minesweeper and some Soviet-era cargo ships). 

The plan is to use David Manley's Bulldogs Away rules with these ships. I believe the first edition of the rules were released around 2006 (around the same time I painted those Viking Forge ships). Since then, a second edition was released which seems a bit more detailed. I also have 1/700 small craft for the Sri Lankan civil war.

With the small collection of 1/2400 boats, I can wargame some Iran/Iraq battles, Arab-Israeli and even some hypothetical actions like Egypt/Libya, SADF/Angola and a refight of the 2008 Russian battle with Georgian Navy (in the wargame scenario the Georgian boats will have missiles to make it a bit more even).

 

Cannon, Cross and Crescent Play Test

I finished up my initial 1/2400 Tumbling Dice renaissance galley Turkish and Christian fleets so I decided to play a very small play test of David Manley's Cannon, Cross and Crescent ("CCC") quickplay rules for the period. 

A little about CCC. They are, as mentioned, quickplay and have some DBx feel to them. Ships have factors for heavy and light guns, boarding, stoutness, movement and turning ability (there are a few others). Different types (and nationalities) of ships have different values for these factors to reflect how the ships were constructed and how their peoples like to fight. 

Heavy guns have a 6" range and light guns 3". Light guns have a much wider arc of fire however. Shooting combat is straight forward: roll a dice, add your gunnery factor and any other modifiers and your opponent rolls a dice and adds it to his ship's stoutness factor. If you win small, expect some damage or crew casualties. If you win big, you may wreck your opponent outright. Boarding is similar: get stuck in, roll to attempt boarding (anything but a "1" is good to go), roll dice and compare boarding factors and modifiers. 

A turn is comprised of a command phase where you attempt to make repairs and check morale among other things which is followed by a series of action phases (3 action phases per side). You determine which side's action phase it is by drawing a card. I opted for a randomly drawn colored die (I had three red dice for the Turks and three white dice for the Spanish). This creates some additional uncertainty from the normal IGO/UGO system.

Here is the Turkish fleet comprising of three light galleys and one regular galley (2nd from bottom), the Turkish fleet is also accompanied by four bases of small boats. In the CCC rules, these can tag along to the big ships and add their manpower to boarding actions. The Turks are already fairly powerful with boarding actions as it is, so you know what they will want to do...

The Christian fleet, comprising of two galleys and two light galleys. For today's game I opted to make them Spanish. The Spanish are strong in boarding and have good firepower for their light guns. The light galleys don't have heavy guns however...no small boats for the Spanish since they have two regular size galleys in this fight.

Here is the relative dispositions of the fleets looking from the Spanish side of the table.

No real tactics will be on display for this play test, Don Juan and Barbarossa are probably very disappointed in the simple scrum planned. The fleets close in to each other...

The fleets close in on each other. At this point you may notice little white beads on the starboard bows of the center Spanish galleys and a black bead on the port stern of the Turkish galley. Let me explain...in CCC, you will want to denote a few situations/status of ships: who has fired heavy guns, which ships have suffered crew casualties (halving your boarding factor) and which ships have suffered damage (halving both boarding and gunnery factors). To keep bookkeeping to a minimum, I have small pegs inserted onto 3 of the 4 corners of the ship base. I place a small plastic Perler bead on these pegs to show status. The white pegs show the Spanish galleys have fired their large guns and one of those salvoes damaged the Turkish galley (black bead).

The fleets have come to grips with each other. The Turks closed in and were successful in boarding attempts on three of the four attempts (the light galleys on the far right came close but didn't make contact). The Spanish light galley on the far left has suffered damage when the Turks fired their heavy guns on contact.

Based on the prevalence of the yellow beads, you know something has happened! The yellow beads indicate crew casualties. If you notice the Spanish light galley has been replaced by a near sinking wreck. From what I recall, they were previously damaged and had crew casualties. They took a second crew casualty which turns to a damage but since they were already damaged, they became a wreck!

The beginning of the 2nd turn saw the end of the battle. Three compromised Turkish ships ganged up on the left Spanish galley, damaging it and inflicting crew casualties. On the right , the remaining Spanish light galley was captured when it was finally boarded by the Turkish light galley who then backed up and fired its heavy guns into the right Spanish galley. 

With both of their light galleys lost and the remaining galleys damaged along with crew casualties, I decided to call the battle and declare the Turks the winners. The Turkish fleet lost two bases on small boats but that's it... The game only lasted a turn and a half and went for about 30 or so minutes.

I'm sure I did some things wrong but I still had a blast. I will reread through the rules and run another play test. I highly recommend these for simple but nuanced renaissance galley combat.

 

1/3000 Age of Sail - Form on the Admiral's Wake

I love the HMGS conventions, and one of the things I love most about them are Friday night age of sail wargaming with Brian DeWitt's "Form on the Admiral's Wake". Brian is an excellent convention GM, he gets what a convention game should be and he hosts multi-player games that are quickplay, fun and furious for all. His Admiral's Wake ruleset is one of my favorite and it inspired me to purchase hundreds of 1/3000 ships from Forged in Battle (FiB). Over the years I have only managed to paint portions of the French, Spanish and British fleets. Last week, I decided to take on the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (or Kamperduin for all of you Batavians reading this). I would speed paint the little buggers and try to take advantage of the drab Dutch paint schemes and GW's range of contrast paints. It was a success!

Here are the bulk of the Dutch. They are FiB's "small 3rd rate ships" coded NAP-24. Since the Dutch ships were a bit smaller, I wanted to represent them with a slightly smaller model.

Here is another angle of the same ships. The painting process involved prepping the ships (no assembly required), gluing them to bases and priming them Tamiya light grey. The hulls got a wash of GW contrast paint, rigging and masts painted dark grey and the sails where painted Reaper Polished Bone and then stained with a diluted wash of Skeleton Horde contrast. I then followed up with a drybrush of Polished Bone. Some hull details (gunwale stripes and stern windows) and ensigns/pennants were painted, finished up with the blue water on the bases.

Here are the four 74 gun "big boys" for the Dutch. The flagship Vrijheid is on the far right with a slightly different main mast pennant. You'll notice some hull color variation and this was because I used Cygor Brown at first but opted for Snakebite Leather for the remainder.  I also diluted some of the contrast paint with GW contrast medium. I like the variation in hull color and I read references that some ships were darker than others because of age and tar usage.

You may be wondering where the frigates are. If so, you are an observant and keen little admiral! I painted them but didn't upload any photos of them. Overall I am very pleased with the Contrast paints for these ships. They aren't as detail painted as my initial batches but they are good enough and they are done. I will be using contrast paints for the rest of my 1/3000 ships. I plan to use some reds and yellows for my French and Spanish ships. Stay tuned!

 

1/2400 Renaissance Galleys

Continuing on with my barrage of photos of miniatures I painted previously, I decided to post some snaps of my 1/2400 renaissance galleys from Tumbling Dice miniatures. I picked these miniatures up because I am a fan of quickplay rules, a fan of naval wargaming and a fan of David Manley publications.

David has a set of quickplay renaissance naval rules called "Cannon, Cross and Crescent", I purchased them and really like the mechanics. It motivated me to pick up some fleets from Tumbling Dice and I managed to paint up a portion of my Muslim fleet.

Here are some "large galleys". These buggers come in several pieces: hull with masts, sails and bases with the oars sculpted into them. They sound fidly but they aren't that difficult to assemble. I decided my Muslim galleys will be mostly green.

Here's an aerial view showing all of those lovely galley slaves rowing to their hearts' content.

We have an overhead shot of the single-masted "small galleys", I made these guys a little more diverse in their coloring. 

Right now, you are probably wondering how small the "small galley" is compared to the "large galley", well here you go: small galley, small boats and large galley. Funny story about the pennants on the large galley, I picked them up from Tumbling Dice and had a helluva time gluing them to the ships and thought the paper was very thick and difficult to work with. I realized some time later that these are adhesive backed flags on a backing paper. Yikes! Very nice flags and I highly recommend!

Now you are probably wondering what the hell those small boats do. In the rules, they essentially feed crew to the galleys for boarding purposes. Here is another picture of them. 

The last picture here is of a large galley next to a wrecked and sinking galley. While the floating galleys are from Tumbling Dice, I picked up a bunch of galley wreckage from Hallmark's 1/2400 range. Cool right?!

I hope to finish this little project off sometime in 2021. Fingers crossed!

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Painted up some 1/3000 Spanish ships for the Battle of Manila Bay. They are based for "Fire when Ready" by David Manley. I painted the Castilla in black as opposed to whitem because it would be easier to identify as part of the Spanish fleet. More too come...