Ironclads! Best of Show game at Nashcon 2024 by David Raybin

This was certainly “best of show” at Nashcon 2024! David Raybin always runs epic games and this was no exception!

Here is what he had to say:

How we built the flotilla game: Ain’t Whistling Dixie by David Raybin .
Our ironclads game appeared at this year’s Nashcon. My son,Ben, and I hosted over 40 players over two sessions. We had 6 foot width so players could reach the center of the table.

One of the most important parts of the game was the “ocean”, Which was originally a Home Depot tarp. My daughter, who's an artist, thought the thing was horrible and she started spray painting with different shades of blue and white. In the end this looked like the real ocean complete with waves. It was amazing and I must have had a dozen people wanting to purchase my tarp . Of course it was not for sale.
There are a lot of questions about the ships themselves. We had perhaps 30 ships in the game. Many of these were resin created by Old Glory. You could find some of these on the website. However, they were heavily converted by the addition of cotton bales and cannons and troops.
The thing is essentially scaled out at 15 mm but that is sort of rough. Many of you have played with 1/600 scale figures and ships but we wanted something much bigger.
Many of the other ships, however, were actually display models. I cut the bottoms off many of these ships with the Dremel tool and water lined the vessels. I still have a few scars to show for it.
Forts Morgan and Gaines were created by barstool tops. We just beveled off the edges a little bit and painted around the edges to create the illusion of land. The key of course is that you want to have as much ocean and just enough space for the forts.

The actual battle was fought 160 years ago and this concerned the famous phrase “damn the torpedoes full speed ahead.” The Union Admiral had to get past the forts and the “torpedoes” and sink the confederate vessels so as to render the port of Mobile, Alabama useless to the Confederacy. I think this was probably the most dramatic sea battle of the entire Civil War in terms of numbers of ships.

The key to the game of course is the vessel charts. I converted them to great degree when I had my pirate game and then this ironclads game used a similar chart. Each battery has so many fire points which dictate the number of dice you throw. Initially a 4, 5, or 6 is a hit and you cross off one damage box. If the vessel is an ironclad then about every 15th boxes is a critical hit Wooden vessels require critical hits more frequently.
And you roll on the critical hit chart terrible things happen. Of course, the critical hits are appear randomly on the chart.

Each turn the player writes down how fast the ship will be going and it can only speed up or slow down so many inches. The ships have very limited turn capacity.

The Confederates waited for the Yankees to get within range and then opened up on them. The great advantage of the confederate ships was that they had a ram on a few of the larger vessels. The confederates did a good job in ramming the union ships.

The game was to go on for four hours. There were a lot of ships sunk. When their ship is destroyed then you put a hulk in the water for a few turns which counts as an obstruction. Eventually the Confederates were able to delay the union vessels to where I declared the first session a confederate victory.
Of course the game was not historical because I had a whole lot more confederate ships then were actually in the real battle but hey, that is the point of a war game.

If it had been truly historical the union would have triumphed and it was just a matter of time of course
We ran a second session and the results were somewhat the same. Because of the length of the table and the number of players I had a small microphone and a speaker attached to my belt. People found that helpful and my voice was not shot after 8 hours of playing these games.

Because we only had ships and some small islands uh pickup was really quick. Everybody grabbed their ship and put it into my son's truck, and we broke the thing down in less than 30 minutes.
I have an ironclad rule ( no pun intended) that ships are going to start shooting within two turns. Is no fun for people to just float around for hours and never get in a shot. And my other rule requires a few hats be worn. Each admiral had an appropriate hat!

There were a few players who had played these rules before so that was helpful. However, almost everybody had played war games before and so everyone was into it after three or four turns. I just had to resolve the rams and a few tricky shots. It was just a hell of a lot of fun.
#miniaturewargaming #acw #americancivilwar #battlewargaming #ageofsigmar #battlemat
I'm glad we were able to put this game on and give so many people an opportunity to play this wonderful game. I suppose the only question now is what do we do next year?