"10mm ACW naval combat at Fall-In" Topic

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Any opinions on these models?

They are nice but have obvious scale problems.

The scale problem proved a bit interesting in gaming. They are a bit big to deal with, however, the physical presence of the models attracted allot of attention. Absolutely great for a convention with newer players about. Much like playing a land battle with 25 to 52mm figures. In addition, as the models are big, you need to pick your battle carefully (or you need to do a floor game). In this case I did a river action on a river that frankly wasn't very big. An average person can fairly easily swim across this section of the real James river. In the real engagement, many of the ships ran aground, anyway (I even inserted a rule that anyone with a perfectly bad 10 initative on any given turn found themselves on a hidden sand bar no matter where they were in the river). I would also suggest (unless playing on the floor) not use rules that use pre-plotted movement. From what I have read in Mark Twain and other, those rules seem a bit strange in this era anyway in any battle except maybe Mobile Bay. Each captain did his own thing and each pilot did his best to find a course. Finally, you will notice I did away with ship info cards. The size of the models made it quite easy to put all the info on the bases. The players just used battleship pegs to mark damage, etc. So, even with bigger models the battlefield was considerably cleaner of paper game "debris". Another advantage is repairs. When I have put half this level of detail on 1/600 models and say dropped it. The model is pretty much finished. One of the wooden 10mm boats suffered some damage in transit. Very easily fixed with a tooth pick and some super glue. Finally, my favorite part, the models look good on the mantle when I get home.

Visually, the ships are a bit shorter and appear taller than the real ships, but they are fun to build and reasonably correct enough only someone with a trained eye noticed they were somewhat off in proportions. Jim made a good trade-off for playability, much better than the older 15mm lines. Frankly, as my eyes age, the size also has an advantage all it's own.

Overall, like land battle gaming, there is room for different scales. In certain cases I'm still doing 1/600, in others 10mm works better for me. Depends on the scenario and my goal.

You've done a nice job on them and I would agree that they are better than what has come before. The pattern maker did a great job on the ones that I have but I am unfortunately one of those folks that is bothered by the selective compression. I just wish they would have stuck to a stated model scale. On another tack, by adding such a large rectangular base, have you found the resolution of movement or movement-based combat (ramming etc.) to be clumsier than with unbased models?

A little clumsier, but not particularly bad. Having a clear base helped visually. The balance is that the base greatly reduced damage from handling and storage. Basically, the ship doesn't fall over in the carry box. She keeps an even keel. Also, with the amount of rigging you can do on these models, it does keep the ramming boats from doing real damage to the models by getting too close. Finally, the players are pushing the base rather than putting fingers on boats that do take considerably longer to build/paint than 1/600.

The interesting problem that comes up in games (I'm sure to a lesser degree at smaller scales) is where do you decide to mark turning radius? base edge? ship bow? somewhere else? However, the GM just needs to make a ruling early on.

Talking about movement, another interesting problem. Most rules are made for 1/600 ships. Obviously, you need to scale up turning circles, movement distances, gun ranges, etc. I found a straight scale (basically 3+x) up just isn't practical. The given scenario and a practical table size usually requires some experiments which usually gets you about 2x give or take.

The rules were pretty good for the game. I think that the more abstract rules are (the die roll covers the contingencies not a lot of charts) the more playable and I thoroughly enjoyed the game.

Turning circle…Using the front corners of the bases, it seemed natural to align the bottom of the turning gauge with the top of the clear base. You just moved the base along the tick marks the number of inches your speed indicated. This is another one of those abstractions I like because it makes the game simple and playable.

Hope you stage annother on at Cold Wars!
Cheers!
Joel in Northern Virginia

Thanks Joel. I'm planning to sign up for Cold Wars.