Blockade Runners Come Home

We did a fairly large ACW naval game today that I have been planning for a long time.  The basic set up is that the Union is blockading the mouth of a river and receive intelligence that Confederate naval forces are on the move, heading downstream towards them.  The Union forces assume they Confederates are trying to break out of the blockade, but in reality, the Southerners are coming to escort a couple of blockade runners into to the river.  The board was set up as a large ox-bow with a small fort and some individual gun positions watching the river.  The Union had the Kearsarge and two Itasca/Unadilla-class 90-day gunboats, along with a pair of mortar schooners and the river gun positions.  The Confederates started with the Morgan, Gaines, General Moore, Nansemond and Hampton coming down the river.  Rolling randomly, the Alabama, Banshee and A D Vance entered from the ocean side on turn 7 or 8.  By then, the Union ships and the Confederate river flotilla had joined action. 

The Union patrol just off the coast.

The Confederate battle line rounding the ox-bow, with a small Union

fort on the point.

The Union mortar schooners, waiting for a target. 

 

Alabama, A D Vance and Banshee (r. to l.) entering the battlefield.

 

The battle became such a swirling mess that at this point, I couldn't even recap the highlights!  Everyone was shooting everywhere.  It was a tough slog for the Union, though.  The Confederates had more ships, but there was an even number of guns and the Union had a slight edge in weight of shot.  The Confederates were pretty confident from the beginning, but did become rather concerned when these little guys popped up on the table - three torpedo boats and their tender, an armed tugboat.  

 

The shot of the game probably came when one of the mortar schooners dropped a 13" shell right down Alabama's stack, demolishing her stack, cutting her speed in half and enveloping her in smoke for the duration of the game.  The schooners hit General Moore at least once as well. 

 

 

There was a lot of action and finally, towards the end of the game, ships started getting worn down to the point where damage was getting critical.  The Gaines was badly hit by the Kearsarge and the gunboats, to the point we thought it might sink or be forced to surrender from morale failure.  Neither happened.  The Nansemond surrendered to the armed tug a turn before the tug was sunk, and then was grounded on the shore.  One of the gunboats tried to cut off the General Moore, only to rammed and sunk.

 

 

The torpedo boats were unfortunately ineffectual.  One was sunk by gunfire.  The second was rammed and sunk.  The third made two attacks, missing with the first and the second was ruled a dud.  The A D Vance and the Banshee made it to the river none the worse for wear - the Vance had minimal damage, while the Banshee was in danger of being sunk.  If only the Union gunners in the fort hadn't been celebrating their victory a little prematurely they might have been able to do a little more damage as the Banshee screamed past.  Here, the Vance (left - one of its masts was accidentally knocked off) and the Banshee race of the safety of the pilings.  Banshee won by a nose with the last Union shot chasing them around the bend.  The Confederates had done a number on the gun positions, as well.  Two of the individual positions had been destroyed, and the small fort and remaining gun position were damaged. 

 

It was a fun - but LONG - fight.  Turned out to be about 8 hours of gaming or so.  I have two more ACW naval battles planned - neither as involved as this one, though hopefully as fun.  All of the models are from Thoroughbred except for the A D Vance, which is from Peter Pig.  We used Bay Area Yard's Under Both Flags rules, which, despite its flaws, we still find to be one of the most playable sets we've tried. 









Air Battle over the Sinai

Haven't posted for a long time, but haven't played any games with my units in a LONG time, either!  We got in a short Check Your 6! Jet Age game Saturday night, pitting Israeli F-4s against Egyptian MiG-21s.  We used the stock scenario from the CY6!JA rules - First Kill: Phantom.  I had the RF-4, Perry was flying to my rescue with another pair of F-4s, and Doug and Perry's nephew Daniel each had a pair of MiG-21s. 

Basically, the scenario has an RF-4 running for home with two pairs of MiG-21s being vectored onto it by GCI.  Another pair of Israeli F-4s are coming to defend it.  The Egyptians started on opposite sides of the playing mat, parallel to each other.  Daniel, being new to the game, could have set up almost on top of the RF-4, but didn't realize it and set up a whole area back from it.  I actually could have escaped, but just for gamesmanship, I suggested we move the planes back six hexes since Doug's playing mat is a little small in terms of number of hexes.  There hadn't been ANY action to that point in the game and didn't think it would be too fun to finish the game without any shooting.  This gave me an extra turn on the board. 

 

I was running at an angle to the Egyptians.  I couldn't turn away from them.  Although this would have given me the exit sooner, it also would have exposed my tail to their heat-seeking missiles.  They caught up to me, though, and at almost optimal range Daniel and Doug each launched two missiles and Doug's other plane fired his cannon.

 

 

Daniel's second missile obtained the kill before Doug even got to roll.  Perry was on the opposite side of the board from the Israeli friendly board edge so we decided to fight on, and I took over Perry's green pilot, while he continued with the skilled pilot.  I was able to get my revenge and shoot down Daniel's green pilot with my cannon, but his veteran finished me off in a head-to-head shot, while I missed.  And with that we decided to call it a night.  Not a bad tally for me - one kill, started with one plane and ended up losing two!   

 

 

This is the second Arab-Israeli air battle we've done and both times the Israelis have had their hats handed to them.  Not sure how that bodes, but it was fun anyway!  I really like the way my F-4s turned out.  I'm not quite as happy with the MiGs, but they look ok.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but there are thin light grey stripes on each side of each of the dark green stripes on the MiGs.  I have another pair of Egyptian MiG-21s to paint up and they are going to be in Nile pattern camo (which I like much better), when I get around to it.  The aircraft are from Tumbling Dice, and the stands and missiles are from Fight's On!  (And I should mention the decals are from Dom's, of course!)

Titans in the Desert

On the advice of a friend, I visited the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita, AZ, about a half hour south of Tucson, this weekend.  Rather than taking the basic tour, I did the extended 'Beyond the Blast Doors' tour for an extra few bucks.  It was well worth it!  This tour only runs on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month and is supposed to be an hour and a half long.  It turned out to last about two hours and fifteen minutes, and was followed up by a small "class" on the development of missiles from sometime in the past until the present.  This tour takes you through the command center, the crew quarters, down to the bottom of the silo and then up to the top.

Most of the tours have actual former Titan crew members giving them and the amount of information these guys possess - and pass on to you, the tourist - is incredible!  It was a lot of fun, the guides are - as noted - extremely knowledgeable, and extremely personable.  One of our guides was Bob, a former launch commander.  So let's begin out tour:

The outer blast door - 35 feet below ground level - weighs

in at three tons and hasn't sagged a millimeter in 50 years.

 Oops!  Just launched one in the general direction of Russia! 

They talked through the launch process and what it took to

send a missile on its way.

 

 

 The crew quarters and command suite are actually suspended inside a

concrete dome.  At the top is the 'hook' holding the complex to the

dome and at bottom is one of eight springs that supports it.  In an

earthquake in California, the launch facility at Vandenburgh AFB

didn't feel a thing!



While the springs support the weight and minimize vertical

movement, this doo-hickey minimizes horizontal movement.

 

The accommodations aren't much beyond four bunks

and a kitchen.  Very little cooking was done because

everything had to be cleaned to the satisfaction of the

relief crew.  They basically lived on Twinkies and Coke

when on duty.  When females were put on the launch crews

in the late 1970s, the Air Force - in its infinite consideration

for its personnel - provided a modesty screen for the bunk room!

The cableway connecting the command suite to the silo.

I think it was a hundred or so feet - could be more.

And there she is in all her glory!  From the bottom of the silo.

You can see the silo door is half open at the top of the picture.

 

The blast well, which channeled the exhaust, steam (thousands

of gallons of water were dumped on the missile during lift off

in order to dampen the sound and vibration and converted to steam

by the heat of the exhaust), and noxious gases to the surface.

And the business end, looking through the open silo

door - visible at the top right of the picture.  To give

you some sense of proportion the missile is 103 feet

from tip to tail and 10 feet in diameter, although the

engines were removed and on display elsewhere at the site.

Just a side note, although you can't get a sense of the size

of the silo door from these photos, it weighed 760 tons.  It

was claimed that a nuke could strike within a mile of these

complexes and they could still survive to do their duty.



Although these look like John Glenn spacesuits, they are

actually special suits used to handle the fuel, which was

extremely corrosive. 

Nothing like surviving another day without mutually assured

destruction, only to get bit by a rattlesnake in the access gangway!

 

I hope you enjoyed this brief tour of the facility.  If you're ever in southern Arizona, it's well worth the detour to see it.  For more information, please see the Titan Missile Museum's official website here.  Thank you for visiting!

A Small Air Combat Memorial Park

I found these pics in my files and thought I'd better put them up before I forget about them.  This is a small air park just outside Clay National Guard Center in Marietta, GA, which used to be a Naval Air Station.  I wasn't able to get a pic of the B-29 on the Air National Guard side of the base, but these make up for it somewhat.  What caught my eye driving by was the S-3 Viking, for a long time my son's favorite plane.  When I actually stopped to look, I realized they had aircraft representative of a carrier air wing.  So here we go:

Pretty neat stuff.  They had a small variety of other aircraft, Army and Air Force, but these were by far the more interesting.

A Few Ships on Commission

NOTE: This post is actually several months old.  Because of changes in my computer system and the geniuses at Microsoft, I haven't been able to post using my normal browser and have to use another one to access my blogs and post pics to them.

I've been really lazy about posting for the last several months.  The boy and I have been playing a lot more lately - his latest craze, actually, is chess.  He asked me to teach him about a few months ago and we've played several games since, not including several more games that he played against the computer. 

What I have to offer here, though, is a handful of 1/6000 ships that I painted on commission.  I wanted to try painting authentic camouflage on them and asked the owner if he minded if I played around with them.  Nope, play away, he said.  So I did. 

First up is the Arizona in pre-war camo and the Pennsylvania in the blue on blue camo she wore from '42 through '45.

Next there are two Japanese behemoths and some early carriers.  Not much camo on them, though.

Finally, we have the creme de la creme!  Here are the Chiyoda and the Chitose in their '44/'45 camo schemes as well as I could portray them in 1/6000!  They took a while, but I thought they turned out very nice!  

Hope you enjoy them!  I'm actually jealous - wish I had painted my own ships in this way.

New Year's Eve, 2013

We usually try to set New Year's Eve/Day aside to hang out and play games with the kids.  While they were watching a movie, I got one of my favorite games out and reread the rules, then cut up some cheese and sausage to have with crackers while playing.  I got a Dubliner, a mild Gruyere and a Gouda, along with some summer sausage and a mild salami (the girl doesn't like strong flavors - in the end, she didn't like the cheeses except for the Gouda).  I really liked the Dubliner and the Gruyere - can't remember having had them before, surprisingly.  The Gruyere, if I recall correctly, had a very milky flavor, while the Dubliner was more of a buttery flavor.  Both were hard cheeses, which was a nice contrast to what we usually have around the house. 

Anyway, enough of that.  I haven't played Formula De for at least thirteen years, but figured the boy was finally old enough to give it a shot and I've had a hankering to play it for a while now.  We used Zandvoort No. 1 from the Netherlands. 



In the picture above you can see me in the red car and mom in the white car with the red fin running neck and neck on the straightaway in the middle of the photo, with two turns to go before the long straightaway to the finish line.  Unfortunately, for the girlie, mom caught on pretty quickly and the boy got some expert advice from dad after struggling through most of the game, so she ended up in last place while dad won the first race.  The boy gets the concept of the gears, but not enough to plan what gear he should be in a turn or two in advance to safely corner so he tends to get some amusing results when moving. 

This morning, I was trying to get some job applications done so mom played a game on Zandvoort No. 1 again with the kids.  Julia showed what she was made of, beating mom and her brother.  The boy still wasn't done, though.  We played another game (minus J who was raced out by that point) on Monaco.  I won again, but mom stalled at the start and so was basically a turn behind the whole game anyway, while Adam had some trouble negotiating the curves. 

And speaking of New Year's Day, the traditional New Year's Day pizza turned out impeccably this afternoon.

I think this was the best one I've ever made.

Happy New Year, my friends!

Snap Shot: a Blast from the Past

Last week the boy asked if we could play a game.  "Sure," I said, "what do you want to play?"  He goes up to my room and brings down Snap Shot.  I tried to explain to him that it's a pretty complex game for a 7-year-old, but he would not be deterred.  So through the week we set up the characters and the animals (we played the introductory scenario, where the animals escape from their cages on the scout ship).  This morning, we finally had time to play it.  He decided he wanted to be the animals, so I was the four crewmen.  Since their starting positions are set by the scenario, there really wasn't a lot of choices to make, but I did make sure that the three crew with heavier weapons were in the forward part of the ship, while the guy who only had the snub pistol was in the drive room, since he was likely to either be attacked first, or get locked in the drive room when the iris valves were shut from the bridge. 

The boy didn't have a bad strategy and I was able to lock one animal in a stateroom, although they had full control of the Common Area.  One also got trapped in the Air/Raft Berth by the closing of the iris valves.  Once my crew had weapons, I opened the stateroom to work on taking out the beast in there only to realize that I was too close to effectively hit him with the weapon that I had.  Same thing happened when I opened the iris to the Common Area and started fighting the animals in there. 

A little later in the game, you can see the guy in the Drive Room and the beastie in the Air/Raft Berth are still whole, while there has been a lot of action in the corridor between the staterooms and into the Common Area.  The counters that are upside down show the unconscious animals and crew members.  I think, crewman C had escaped the corridor and closed the iris valve, unfortunately sacrificing one of the two crewmen in the corridor. 

In the end, I had one crewman dead, one unconscious, one wounded and one unwounded, while he had two animals dead outright and four unconscious, which I was able to finish off at my leisure.  It was a fun little game and the boy enjoyed it.  His first question after the game was, "Now can we play Traveller?"  I am afraid that will have to wait for another day, but I'm thinking of ways to cut it down to a 7- and 10-year-old's level so the kids will enjoy it and want to play it over time, growing with the game so to speak.  I'm sure he will keep bugging me about it until we do play it.