ACW NAVAL WARFARE:
Smoke on the Water

1. Raming rules are inadequate. An example: CSS Fredericksburg going Medium speed collides with USS Miantonomah going at Fast. The result is 3 hull damage on the USS Miantonomah. In other systems, there would have been damage on both ships and probably flooding on the Miantonomah.
2. The game does not have any point values to allow players to set-up forces.
3. There are no guidelines on setting up forts, with comparative values for guns so that a defender can balance out his fort(s) and ships to an attacker's force.

Otherwise, the game does allow simplification of speed and armor to static values that make book-keeping fairly simple. The fort rules are fairly neat, with suppression being a factor.

Large engagements (of over 12 vessels) takes a lot of time until conclusion because of the gun-combat rules. Smaller battles work fine. Modifying the rules so that armor weakens or penetration occurs more from Double or Triple Powdering - or even allowing greater chance at Point-Blank Range - would speed up vessel damage, and allow more vessels in an engagement for shorter battles (given real-time constraints).

The game is technically excellent - superb mechanics, good layout and clearly written. The database suffers from some odd errors (and not just on Confederate ships). Pilot house armor on the Cairo should be better than light. Easy enough to fix. Especially as I have to revise the Cairo class stats for any battle beyond 1862.

The game could stand some sort of an 'opportunity fire' mechanic, but beyond that I'm very happy with the system. Our ongoing campaign continues to yield exciting games and moments of sheer tragedy. My last game witnessed a record three magazine explosions, as well as some really lethal rams.

Overall, I give SotW a rating of 9 out of 10. Well done!

We've been playing SOTW regularly for about a year and a half now, using the exellent Thoroughbred models in 1/600th scale. So far absolutely the best rules for Ironclad wargaming we've been able to find. And they only got better when we started to use the alternative ramming rules found on the Canis webpage.

The only problem I could find that was that some of the ship's statistics (especially armour factors) are not entirely correct, and that the differences within a certain class (e.g., Passaic class) are not mentioned. Of course this has nothing to do with the game mechanics, which are as said, excellent,and with a little research, easy to correct.

Don`t criticize ACW naval rules too heavily about ship stats. Lot of this is lost data, especially CSN.

Ships were planned and "designed" but the builder, and the individual naval officer in charge, frequently made changes. Often major changes. And that is not even allowing for non availability of materials. Or the substitution of sub standard material because the proper material was just not available.

Remember, also, the Confederacy was handicapped more and more as the war went on by the non availability of railroads to transport men and material because some Silly Old Boy had ripped up the rails to use as ship armor (inferior), or to melt down as raw material.