Scorpion and Wyvern 1870

[MengJiao]

HMS Scorpion and HMS Wyvern were originally built for the Confederacy (and they show up in
Fall of the Samurai).  After the mess with CSS Alabama , they were bought by the Royal Navy (after briefly being Egyptian and making a big profit for the middlemen involved)
Anyway, here we suppose an alternative world where the Confederacy saves Mexico from the rapacious French using those Ironclade turret ships versus the more conventional French Ironclads Thetis and Joan d'Arc.  Of course in 1870 the Spartan beauty pageant poems where Thetis rules the seas had not been found and Joan wasn't yet canonized to full sainthood so North Carolina II and Mississippi II should have some metaphysics on their side:

[MengJiao]

HMS Scorpion and HMS Wyvern were originally built for the Confederacy (and they show up in
Fall of the Samurai).  After the mess with CSS Alabama , they were bought by the Royal Navy (after briefly being Egyptian and making a big profit for the middlemen involved)
Anyway, here we suppose an alternative world where the Confederacy saves Mexico from the rapacious French using those Ironclade turret ships versus the more conventional French Ironclads Thetis and Joan d'Arc.  Of course in 1870 the Spartan beauty pageant poems where Thetis rules the seas had not been found and Joan wasn't yet canonized to full sainthood so North Carolina II and Mississippi II should have some metaphysics on their side:

Nearly invisible in the murky ocean of alternative time-ime-ime things are getting critical:  the French are running straight and lining up their guns and have blown a lot off the upper stern off of Mississippi II.  The Confederates have slightly better guns and slightly better armor, but the French are slightly faster and quite capable as rams so the Confederates want to keep the range at about 500 yards to avoid surprises and do some damage:

[ArizonaTank]

So what do you think of the rules?  I am kind of interested in finding something like Yaquinto's old Ironclads...a game I truly enjoyed. GMT's Iron and Oak left me a little cold.

[MengJiao]

So what do you think of the rules?  I am kind of interested in finding something like Yaquinto's old Ironclads...a game I truly enjoyed. GMT's Iron and Oak left me a little cold.

   Yep.  Oak and Iron was curiously unexciting.  However, I've approached the business of ironclads from a different angle this time around and I might have been more tolerant of Oak and Iron...but what's past is past.  The thing is until the last year or so I've never liked miniatures much.  But then I started tinkering with the idea of dioramas for book trailers.  On impulse, I got some nice 1:600 ships...and the thing is, ironclads are pretty good in the miniature realm (slow, short range, absurd things like ramming and spar torpedoes etc.).
Okay so, for me, what is cool about the sail and steam system is the very nice ship "cards" and the 1:1200 printable models.
The rules are crude but effective and if you have the time and space and tolerance for miniatures (paper ones -- I do glue them to cardstock, I guess I could print them on cardstock but gluing seems to be my thing with little boats)
oh and LOTS of 10-sided dice...the rules seem okay and pretty simple.
The guns and armor seem to work reasonably well and have a more satisfying level of detail for penetration and damage and so on than in Oak and Iron.

[MengJiao]

So what do you think of the rules?  I am kind of interested in finding something like Yaquinto's old Ironclads...a game I truly enjoyed. GMT's Iron and Oak left me a little cold.

The guns and armor seem to work reasonably well and have a more satisfying level of detail for penetration and damage and so on than in Oak and Iron.

  Things went south pretty fast for the Confederates, possibly because the French had six shots to four even though
the Confederates had eight guns (but in four turret groups).  By about 15 minutes into the battle, Mississippi had taken 3 critical hits and ended up with very suppressed crew and an out-of-control fire.  North Carolina headed into the midst of the French to draw fire while Joan went into a tight turn in hopes of ramming North Carolina.

  The ramming didn't happen and NC and Mississippi were escaping sort of (though with turrets unable to shoot aft that might not have gone well no matter what) when -- yes, you guessed it -- NC's magazine exploded (equivalent to a + 20 hit only to suppression and hull on zero armor)...that's a lot of dice rolling so I gave up and with all that suppression, the crew would want to give up too I suspect.

  I guess that explains why Scorpion's task was to be a harbor ship in Bermuda until 1900, when she was sunk for target practice, raised and then sank finally and for good while on her way to Boston to be scrapped in 1901.

[W8taminute]

This game looks very interesting.  Those ship stats in the first post give me some great ideas for use in my personal mods. 

[MengJiao]

This game looks very interesting.  Those ship stats in the first post give me some great ideas for use in my personal mods. 

The game is pretty basic, but the ship sheets and counters are pretty spiffy and for that matter Ironclad warfare
seems to have been more basic than say fighting under sail or with good armor, good guns and good engines and decent freeboard (after say 1885).