Hammerin' Iron

Sorry for not Posting on the blog on Saturday. I was having a bad day, and justifiably. I won't go into details.

Anyway that's enough of the sadness and on to the important things like playing games and painting models. Far more important much more interesting and a whole lot more fun.

So at the club yesterday Graham, Matt and myself played a game of "Hammerin' Iron" A set of rules for ACW naval battles. A fun and quirky set of rules in which each side has 6 ships which total to a similar number of points. Graham had the confederates while Matt and Me had the Federal forces. It turned out that we were the attackers and Graham the defenders. Our mission was to destroy a supply depot and sink some barges. We started with 3 ships, 2 monitors and a tinclad which was only armed with light cannon. Graham started with 2 ships and a fort! I now hate forts! The pregame lead to a mishap for my monitor which had engine trouble that resulted in it starting the game unable to move until it was repaired.

I started with the Tinclad and sent it swiftly towards the storage depot. Matt chugged his Monitor forward and I repaired mine which was now on slow speed orders! Matt bought a reserve ship on.

Graham opened up with the fort and drew first blood (a single hit) on Matts Monitor. He moved his other two ships. The weaker one away from us and his own Iron clad directly towards us. He also managed to bring on one of his reserve ships.

The next few turns saw my tinclad fly past the storage depot doing minimal damage on it then speed on to attack the barges where it did manage to cause two hits. My Monitor parked right by the depot and was able to eventually, destroy the lot. Matt's ships did all the real fighting. His monitor took a beating as it was targeted by all of Grahams ships and the fort. Both sides managed to bring on extra ships which quickly got into the action.

Finally Grahams Iron Clad moved past Matts monitor and targeted his two other ships which were unarmoured, but carried a fair number of guns. The picture to the right shows my Monitor in the background firing at the depot Matt's monitor (with the blue order marker) and my tinclad in the foreground. The other two ships are Grahams, his Iron Clad on the right and a Cotton Clad directly in front of Matts Monitor. Grahams had a tinclad that managed to Ram on of Matts wooden hulled ships. While it did not sink it was quite badly damaged from being rammed.

By the time I had destroyed the depot. Graham had managed to destroy my Tinclad which was not too hard it only having a few damage boxes to begin with. He also rammed one of the wooden hulls and set that to the bottom and finally managed to force Matt's monitor to strike it's colours. While we had only sunk one of Grahams. Eventually we run out of time and Graham worked out the victory points while packed everything away.

Despite the Union Heavy losses we managed to score 41 Points while the Rebels could only claim 34. A minor Federal Victory. Due to the fact that Matt fought off the Confederates long enough for me to completely destroy the storage depot. So to conclude while we lost significantly more ships by staying on task we were able to scrape a victory.

Thanks for Reading, I hope to post again on Wednesday.

Cheers Clint