Cover image credit: By Kurz and Allison – taken from Wikipedia

So here’s a new one: I’m not the person inspiring this trip down a random historical rabbit hole–my son is.

He picked up this book at school and started telling me about the Battle of Hampton Roads, about how cool the ironclads are and how the south refit a northern vessel (USS Merrimack) and named it the CSS Virginia, which fought the USS Monitor. It was a really interesting battle, particularly the lead up. There’s multiple mishaps and some small details that really elevate it as a fun and interesting battle. As a bonus, it’s the first ever ironclad duel. I highly recommend digging into the battle itself and won’t spoil any more. It’s a worthwhile read or YouTube watch.

Now for the two issues at hand: what rules and what miniatures? I started with a very sleek looking ruleset: Dawn of Iron. It’s a rather simple ruleset that uses cards and preselected movement–at a glance it felt a lot like games like Wings of Glory, which I thought might be good, but when applied to the Battle of Hampton Roads, it fails to capture things like the the CSS Virginia taking an hour to turn. All told, the ruleset felt a little too simple–perhaps ideal for playing a game with my son, but not quite what I was looking for.

Next on the list is Sail and Steam Navies. This one hit the mark for me. It has the right level of gunnery, movement, and fancy cards that let me tick off damage readily and quickly.

More details on it another time–for now, suffice it to say it appears reasonably easy to learn, but just chunky enough to capture the key elements of the battle I want to capture. I’d venture to say it’s just shy of midweight, but on the scale of naval rulesets it’s something along the lines of “Baby’s first acceptable naval game.” It’s no Harpoon, I assure you.

Finally, we come to the miniatures. Graciously simple as I have a resin printer. I’ve gone with East Coast Ironclads. Simple, clean designs and he has a pack for the Battle of Hampton Roads specifically which covers everything I want for play with my son. My hope is to paint around 10 or so ships and play the battle out in segments where we only control 2-3 ships each. He is super excited to paint up some vessels–though I think he may be disappointed when he finds out there’s sailing ships in there!

He’s so excited for ironclads he went and built a bunch of them in Lego. It’s the first time he’s really taken a genuine interest in a historical setting without any support from me. There’s no such thing as a boring historical setting, for my money, but I’m glad he chose the Civil War. It’s a setting I have not gotten on table very much despite some deep rooted personal desire to do so. I owe thanks to a good friend, Aaron, who convinced us to go to a Civil War reenactment early in August. It clearly made an impact.

I’ve already printed off the two main ironclads and I’m working my way through the rest of the ships. I hope to be painting with my son this weekend. Most of the time, the resin printer was a mistake. This time? This time it was worth its weight in gold for how quickly it helped me get this project to top of queue for me and the kiddo.

Full steam ahead!

…I had to. Sorry.