Muddy River Brown Water Blues Part err, well technically part 2 but there is no part 1.....

You may recall Dear Reader that there was much planning of a Stalingrad campaign for Chain of Command. We had penciled in a start date for April \ May but that slipped to June. Then our lead Russian Andy was advised by work that they needed him to work night shifts to deal with some production issues for a month or so - so Stalingrad has been postponed a little.

To fill the gap I was looking at some rules I picked up on Wargames Vault by the redoubtable Dave Manley - doyen of Naval Wargamers the world over. These were called "Dahlgred & Columbiad" (D&C) and were designed as small scale fast play American Civil War (ACW) naval rules. In addition to the rules I bought the accompanying "By Sea & By River" set which included a fairly comprehensive set of stats for both fleets of the ACW and also a small mini campaign designed to be played solo. As between me and my usual opponent Paul we have a fair selection of boats I thought "Why not?" I'm not a great believer in solo gaming so I decided to rope another person (Dave) into making the command decisions. It will pass the time for both of us.

I'll go into a bit of details on D&C later, but suffice to say the campaign revolves around a small flotilla of Union ships lead by an Ironclad feeling their way up an un-mapped tributary of the Mississippi looking for a Confederate Ironclad Ram rumor has it is being built upstream. Each campaign turn represents a couple of hours and five miles of river. the course of the river and any opposition are randomly generated by the campaign system itself, so no two games will be the same. To cut a long story short I received orders from Dave then played out the first day of the campaign, which saw his flotilla push past some shore batteries and sink two small Confederate Gunboats. It return his lead ship, the Cairo Class River Ironclad Carondelet suffered some light damage. I didnt take any pics as I never really intended to do anything with it. Dave tied up along the bank over night then ordered his ships upriver at dawn.....

Anyway this afternoon I had a cancellation at work. As the weather was beautiful I thought it a shame to waste it cooped up in the office sorting out paperwork so retired to the rear yard and run the next encounter. It turns out that the river in question looks remarkably like the table in my sun drenched back yard - who would have thought it?

The lead ship of the Union flotilla is the Carondelet. The flotilla is under orders not to waste time or risking damage by engaging in a long drawn out fight with any Confederate batteries but to push past them and locate the Ram

Batteries rather like this one "Battery Davison" which they encountered just before noon

Carondelet made all steam ahead and pushed on, followed by the "tinclad" Fort Hindman. The Fort Hindman had shown itself to be rather better at gunnery than the flagship the day before.

 The bottle tops are being used to determine initiative btw - a gold one is the Confederates, a black one Union. You are supposed to use cards but this was all pretty much spare of the moment and I could not be ar$ed to go looking for playing cards when randomly drawing from a stack of beer bottle tops was a viable alternative.

Carondelet opened up the battle - and as per the day before missed. The rules use a system of opposed & modified dice to represent gunnery. In the pics red is the firer. If the modified result is equal the target is harassed and suffers a shooting minus for that turn, if the firer is higher light damage is caused, twice as much heavy etc. As you can see, Carondelet cant hit a bulls arse with a banjo.

But Fort Hindman it seems can, causing some light damage to the battery.

Carondelet keeps up their abysmal shooting - in fact this is such a bad result it triggered a roll on the special effects table, resulting in a small self inflicted fire. Luckily it caused only local inconvenience.

Return fire from Battery Davison was inconclusive, the combination of damage to the battery and long range prevented them from getting any solid hits, and the Yankees steamed past at best speed.

There was a bit of an intake in breath as the battery switched fire to the vulnerable supply ships at the rear of the Union formation, but again the combination of range and not great shooting meant they escaped with only near misses.

The last transport moves out of range.

A victory of sorts to the Union as they have moved closer to their ultimate goal without taking further damage. They have however left another battery mostly intact in their wake that will continue to threaten any ships that pass.

Final shot of the cast and crew. Not sure when the USN went "dry" but in deference I had a non alcoholic beer. That was really the only blot on an otherwise excellent afternoon :-)

Captain Lakey and his flotilla are now heading further upstream. More action later....