Hammerin’ Iron (27/01/13 – Solo) Part 2

At the start of turn 4, the Reb fort fired at the ailing Switzerland – 6 hits took her down to 1 hit point and a critical hit destroyed the boiler so she couldn’t move anymore either. Also, as she was below one third of her starting hit points, the ship counted as “battered” so was less effective at firing, could only move 1 hex (if the ship still had a boiler!) and needed to take a morale test when activated which, if failed would force her to strike her colours and surrender.

Arkansas engages 3 Union ships

With the edge of the board fast approaching CSS Arkansas needed to start turning, so with her starboard gun destroyed only her rear battery was able to fire – USS Sassacus took 3 hits from her but crucially was set on fire by the shots. USS Passaic attempted to negotiate a sandbar and succeeded (not really that risky as she had a shallow draught) and because Arkansas would be out of the battle for a while, shot at CSS Hampton before she could sink USS Switzerland – 5 hits and a critical resulted in another fire. CSS Hampton now had to tackle the fire on board before activating and luckily succeeded in putting the fire out before further damage was caused – her rear medium gun then sank the Switzerland while the front gun missed the Sassacus.

Hammerin’ Iron (27/01/13 – Solo) Part 1

I’ve been on the verge of putting my ACW Naval ships into a Bring & Buy for a while now, but thought I’d give them one last chance with Peter Pig’s new(ish) edition of “Hammerin’ Iron” which I saw demo-ed at Salute a couple of years back. I’ve used a couple of different rule sets with these ships but can’t admit to any of them ever being much fun.

Reb initial deplyment

There is a comprehensive scenario generator included with the rules, but briefly there are 2 islands and 2 sandbars to be placed along with 2 objectives for the attacker to destroy (transports on the river and buildings on the shore) and a fort for the defender to use. However, the fort position is generated by the roll of 2D6 to determine which row of hexes it is placed – in this game I rolled an 8 which was the row an island was on so the fort was able to go there – this would make it even tougher for the Union as they would be under the fort’s guns from the very start. In this scenario, the attacker gets to place 3 ships (2 chosen by him, 1 by the defender) on the table, with 1 more ship arriving in turns 2 and 3 and a third ship possibly arriving on a dice roll. The defender gets 2 ships on the board at the start  (one chosen by him, one by the attacker) in a board row diced for by 2D6 but with no automatic arrivals for the rest of his fleet – he has to roll each turn, needing 9+ on 2D6 for a ship of his choice to arrive (or if he has to re-roll one of the D6 to achieve the 9, only a tinclad or wooden ship of less than 25 hit points can arrive). Also the defender has to lose one ship randomly from his force of 6 ships, but luckily for the Confederacy the random roll was for CSS Drewry (one of the 2 small gunboats) to stay at home.