Game Night with Luke, 25th April

I headed over to Luke's and we played a little Hammerin' Iron Naval. I played the confederates again and Luke took the Union with plenty of Ironclads while I favoured smaller ram ships. It started well for the south as USS Benton suffered a mishap before it arrived on table and was already damaged and failed to bring the damage under control until it was rammed and sunk by USS Manasas. Meanwhile heavy fire from a usefully placed fort was causing issues for the remainder of the Union fleet, while the Confederate rams prepared to pounce from behind it.

In the end with two Cairo class sunk and the rest of the fleet severely battered, despite the loss of a few Confederate ships it was a decisive Southern victory. I am really enjoying these rules and must get my ships painted!

Club night 13th January

Steve and I decided to play a Dystopian wars game. I have not yet used my new Dreadnought, and the 1.1 version PDFs re-inspired us to play again. Steve had to knock out my big ships to win, while I had to destroy more than half of his fleet, including all the larger vessels. I started with most of my fleet on my right, with a small element on the left.

Above: Early moves

Both fleets moved forward and opened fire.My AA proved remarkably effective against the incoming rockets thanks to some jammy dice rolls that would continue for most of the game, while my return fire caused some serious damage to the FSA battleship. The fleets continued to close and I concentrated my fire on the enemies left, destroying all the support frigates and inflicting more damage on the battleship.

On the other flank I managed to bring my destroyers and frigates to bear in combination and destroyed the enemy frigates opposing them. They then began to sweep towards the centre, despite some heavy losses from enemy bombers.

I was then able to move most of my fleet towards the centre and bring my heavier short range fire-power onto the cruiser occupying the centre of the FSA fleet, destroying them and then turning my fire against the airships, bringing them down. I was then able to board and capture the severely battered enemy battleship.

Although my big ships were damaged they were not out of it, and all the FSA really had left was their dreadnought on their far left. I pulled my air fortress back as it was beginning to suffer against the rockets from the dreadnought.

At this point we called it a day as the FSA fleet was defeated and my Prussians managed to claim a victory, thanks to a bit of luck and a finally better grasp of how to use my fleet effectively and maximise its strengths.

ACW Naval 30th December

For the last game of the year Luke and I planned to play our Warhammer league game, however Luke's work delayed him, so by the time he got to mine it was a bit late, so we rolled my Hammerin' Iron mat out on the floor in my flat rather than going to the club and played a ACW naval.

Luke again took the Union, while I took the confederates. I had more luck with the placement of my fort and the forces I started with getting CSS Arkansas right up against two of the Union Ironclads from the start and a fierce firefight started immediately, me forcing the Union to move by releasing a fire raft into them.

Combined with the fire from my fort, I exploded one of Polk's turtles, and then rammed another with CSS Van Dorn, before she was crippled herself. The massed fore of a surprisingly resilient Arkansas and the Fort pushed the Union fleet to navigate a narrow strip of river on the opposite bank between the bank and a line of river pilings (we use these to represent sandbanks).

As my final ships turned up, there was no sign of the last Union ironclad and the final floating ship was the third of the Union Cairo class, and was already badly damaged and facing the might of the whole Confederate flotilla, so Luke conceded a major victory to the confederates.

Club Night 16th December

Although I have not got them painted yet we decided to risk the mockery of other club member and try out Hammerin' Iron. I umpired/learnt the rules while Luke and Steve concentrated on rolling dice. First of all we played a version of the demo game Martin runs at shows, tweaked to fit my vessels just to introduce them to the rules.

Once we had done this we leapt into a full game and it was great fun, even if I was mostly watching! Luke cunningly used his army support to bombard one of the objectives, while in the river his fleet engaged CSS Arkansas which fought long and hard and took a real pounding, but somehow was still afloat at the end of the game.

The union also took heavy losses, but managed a minor victory. This game really got me enthused again and I am keen to try and find the time to finish adding all the masts and details to the ships so I can then get on and paint them!

Club Night 3rd December

Due to the sever weather we have had here (lots of snow if you didn't know) the Haywards Heath team (myself, Luke and Steve K) decided we would game here rather than try to get up to Crawley so we decided to try out the Uncharted Seas rules look had bought on Steve dining table.

Steve and I took the Bone Griffons (undead types) and Luke took the Iron Dwarfs (who are, well, dwarfs!). Lukes fleet was the typical naval dwarf force of steam driven ironclads with plenty of artillery, some in turrets. Out force was a little different. We had oared galleys which we chose to fit with trebuchets and undead Orcas which we could use to tow out vessels for a turn of speed or send into ramming and boarding (by spreading disease) enemy vessels. Another key part of the rules is a card system. The decks are fleet specific and consist of a predefined mix of cards, some common to all fleets and some specific and add a nice little change to the style of the game.

In the first game Steve and I scored a decisive victory, with some cards that enhanced our shooting we hammered the enemy battleship with long range trebuchets fire while we attacked the small frigates with the Orcas and sank them easily. We then turned our fire on the destroyers and destroyed them before laying the Orcas along side the damaged battleship and the last crew succumbing to disease from the animated carcases.

We had time to play a second game so we swapped our trebuchets out for gun decks (a craft piece of magnetising Luke and I had done) and the Dwarfs took some submarine and an airship. Disaster struck from the off. The Dwarfs went first and used there enhanced gunnery card to target one of our cruisers with the combined fire of a squadron of frigates. With a lucky roll it exploded taking its sister ship down and damaging the battleship.

As the battleship limped forward to close the range the Dwarven destroyers and frigates closed and destroyed the other undead cruisers. Although the Orcas dealt wit the submarines the battleship was damaged heavily and under the combined cannon fire of the opposing fleet was smashed to drift wood. 1 game all!

These were fun rules and it will be nice to start tweaking the fleets and trying some different scenarios and adding some terrain to manoeuvre around. Luke has also ordered their Dystopian wars, a steam punk Victoriana game with blimps and airships, presumably with a similar mechanism that should be fun.