Distractions

I just picked up a copy of the rules Dawn of Iron. Thus far, they seem straight forward. This is the second or third time I have looked into taking the plunge into ACW Naval gaming. The original idea was to support a naval landing campaign for Sharp Practice. My main problem is a lack of understanding of what the key factors are in early steamship naval battles as opposed to Age of Sail battles. My thought has been to try and convert KMH and TCG to the ACW. But steam vessels move very differently than sail vessels. The rifled guns of the ACW are significantly different than the smoothbore guns of the previous era. The wooden hulls of the Age of Sail are completely outclassed by the iron hulls of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. But then there are other items like Cotton Clads to consider.

So I am looking to see how others have addressed this. Dawn of Iron is interesting. I will play a few games with it before I say more. the bundle include a print and play kit for the Battle of Hampton Roads. It has some paper ship flats to use if you lack any miniatures. So it is ideal to give it a try. I have the link at the top to the Wargamevault site for it. I am also looking into some STL models for this. There are some free ones on Thingiverse as well as some in 1/600 on wargame3d and more on WargameVault.

Anyway, this is a slight disctraction from finishing my War of Jenkin's Ear book. Hopefully that will get more attention in the near future.

Reading and other distractions

Things have slowed on the hobby front. Scouting events have taken most of my free time. With my son now in the Order of the Arrow, there are more events than ever. I wouldn't trade it for anything. My back may disagree after that last campout.

I started work on another paper building. This time it is the Brooklyn Hotel from the White Wash City line again. I made a mistake and didn't print out the roof. I corrected that but lacked the time to cut it out and glue it to the building. The main drawback of doing these buildings in paper at 15mm (1/100th scale) is the stove pipes. Rolling the paper ends up a mess and I am never able to get the angle cut correctly to glue it to the roof. As such, I am gathering plastic coffee stirrers. The ones that look like small straws. This should give me roughly the correct size. This still leaves the cone on top of the pipe. I haven't solved that yet and may just ignore it.

Trees are still a priority to wrap up the War of Jenkin's Ear book. I have some bases ready and tree trunks preped for foliage. I just need to make the time to work on them. Hopefully, that will happen this week. Once the current batch is completed, I will reevaluate how many more I will need. I am running into storage issues for the current ones that I have made. If I have enough coverage, I will push forward with the scenarios to wrap up the book.