"River Wars rules set" Topic

Today I acquired a large collection of 1:600 Civil War ships from the Western Theater, and, as part of the deal, the Johnny Reb Gaming Society has been assigned the rights to the River Wars ironclads gaming rules for the Civil War. I will be reworking these fast-play rules and will hopefully be offering them for sale later this year.

In the meantime, please contact me at scottmingus@yahoo.com if you are interested in playtesting the rules while I tweak them. Constructive criticism is very welcome!

Best of luck.

If I may suggest,

Do some rules that allow the river boats to interact with land battles.

Gunboats firing at Shilo,

Ellet's Marines,

Reb land batteries taking on Yankee river transport.

all good stuff.

mjc

Battle of Sabine Pass, but I'm not sure of the presence of Ironclads.

The Jack Tar 15mm rules integrate with Johnny Reb 3 and I presented them in a past issue of CHARGE! newsletter.

These 1:600 River Wars rules are not currently integrated with any land battle rules, and I don't have any infantry that tiny, so that's not a project I will tackle. They should be easily integrated I would think, but I have never played any rules that use tiny infantry figures. Sorry.

Tiny?

If you sych the frontage of an infantry unit with the length of the river boat you can probably use 15mm infantry.

It's kinda like the "what size buildings should I use" issue.

Not really sure what size 1:600 is.

What size are the Peter Pig river boats?

mjc

1:600 is over 50% smaller than Microarmor, which is a 1:285. 15mm figures are approximately 1:96 or so.

Jim

One of the makers of the 1:600 ships also sells 3mm figures to use with his rules and vessels. They are indeed "tiny."

I'm sure you could adapt 6mm or 10mm to use with the ships. I've contemplated that myself.

You guys are missing my point entirely.

How much frontage does an ACW unit of say 500 men occupy in your game scale?

Just for the sake of argument here lets say the rules say this is 4" and represents 400 feet.

Now if we take a 1:600 Iron Clad that was 400 feet in length but happens to be 4" long we can integrate the two based on 'represented frontage of a unit' and 'length of the model'

You don't need to put any figures on the Ironclads -- I'm pretty sure you can use 15mm units and 1:600 ships all on the same table. I did something like this for a Fort Donaldson game years ago -- worked just fine.

If you used a true 15mm ironclad it would be out of proportion to ground scale of a 15mm game where each figure represents 100 men -- just like a true 15mm building would be.

That's why most wargamers use smaller scale buildings in their wargames to represent buildings and towns.

Well same thing applies to ironclads.

mjc

mjc

It would be nice if someone would sell 1/600 (3 mm) ACW case in one piece regiment/battalion/battery formations.

The 1/600 modern infantry and heavy weapons I've bought are detailed and stand out as individuals. I'd assume ACW infantry or cavalry in line or column formations would be detailed enough to paint as well.

Using infantry that is six times (15 mm vs 1/600) taller than the ships on the table seems silly if there was an alternative.

After all, how many formations would one need to cast (scale them in units of 200 men or horse so units could be built larger or smaller)?

Just a thought.

Dan

mjc,

Point understood!

I normally game Johnny Reb 3 using smaller scale houses with the 15mm figures to reduce the ground scale. The Jack Tar naval addition to JR3 might work well.

Dan,

If you look on the Peter Pig web page I think they do sell blocks of 3mm troops.

mjc