Wednesday 11 April 2018

Dahlgren and Columbiad

My latest set of quick play naval rules have hit the streets - or at least the servers at Wargame Vault. "Dahlgren and Columbiad" is a set of ironclad rules aimed at battles in the American Civil War and the ironclad wars in South America. It is aimed at games involving a small handful of ships and so it compliments "Broadside and Salvo" which was aimed more at fleet actions such as Lissa. It comes with a range of representative ship data for the ACW and South American wars



Dand C is supported by two theatre-specific booklets.

"By River and By Sea" covers the American Civil War in more detail, with two campaign systems and comprehensive ship data for over 175 ships and classes of the Union and Confederate navies.



"War of the Pacific" is something I've been working up to for decades and comprises a campaign system, ship data and brief campaign history covering the War of the Pacific, 1879-1883 between Chile, Peru and Bolivia, and also with my “Iron and Fire” more detailed rules from A&AGE. Ship data for the complete Peruvian and Chilean fleets is provided. Having visited Chile in 1994 and stood on the decks of the Peruvian / Chilean ironclad Huascar this is the culmination of over 20 years planning, and something I'm rather pleased and proud of :)


The third element of this project is the Paraguayan War, or the War of the triple Alliance, which again will feature a campaign system and comprehensive fleet data. This is all set to tie in with the excellent range of 1/1200 models from Spithead.

All three are available from Wargame Vault for a fiver. Links below if anyone is interested.



13 comments:

  1. David I picked these up as soon as I got the notice from Wargames Vault - well done, they look excellent. Can you provide links to suppliers of Chilean/Peruvian ship models- I couldn't find the companies that you list in the rules.

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  2. Drop a line to Spithead Models at vanilla55 at sky dot com and ask him for a copy of his lists

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  3. HI Dave,

    I am using your War in the Pacific campaign setting via a digital platform for the campaign.

    I sent you an email a couple o days ago to an email address we used to communicate a number of years ago (5 or so). I don't want to put that email up here but could you let me know it got through to you please?

    It included a number of questions related to the campaign system.

    Cheers

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  4. Hi David,
    What is the best forum to ask questions about/discuss these rules? Not sure if you prefer this one or the Wargames vault or some other?

    Kind regards, Simon

    Cheers

    Simon

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  5. Here is fine, I get email notifications of comments so I should see questions coming up

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  6. Thanks David. Not sure if my questions posted OK so let me know if the Qs didn't get through!

    Simon

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  7. Sorry if these end up as repeated questions but looks like my original questions didn't post properly!
    1. What happens on a D6 roll of 3 or 4 when contacting a target ship with a Spar torpedo? I see 1 or 2 is a dud and 5, 6 it explodes but can't see anything about 3 or 4.
    2. Did you have a ground scale in mind when you designed the game? The reason I am asking is that I see that the ACW supplement talks about narrows and just wondering what a good width is for narrows and normal rivers when playing the game.

    Thanks Simon

    PS had an excellent Lissa game with four players on Monday night with Broadside and Ram. The -2 AP modifier kept the Italian wooden Divisions largely out of the game as with the original!

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  8. 1. On other rolls the torpedo does not detonate, but remains intact so that it can be used again in subsequent attacks (I am posting an update to clarify a few things soon, so I will add that in too)

    2. I tried to be non-specific, but when I'm setting up a scenario I look at an inch being around 50 to 75 yards. So the Mississippi at Vicksburg ends up being about 15-16" wide. That said I often make the rivers rather wider than they ought to be to give players more room to manoeuvre

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  9. Hi David. Is one of the earthwork batteries listed on P32 of By sea and By River meant to have rifled artillery?

    Cheers

    Simon

    Simon

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  10. Hi David,

    I see that the stats for CSS Arkansas show her without any aft-facing guns. Is this case?

    Kind regards,

    Simon

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  11. Oops, yes I missed those. Should be FW: GF2, PF+2. I have updated the file and will issue a correction soon.

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  12. Did the USS Tyler have aft firing capability? I note there are no stats for that arc but suspect that could well have been the case!

    Simon

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