Battle of Riachuelo

At the last club meeting I ran my Battle of Riachuelo scenario.  It went very well.  I started the scenario after the historic initial pass of the Paraguayan fleet by the Brazilian fleet.  In this historic scenario the Brazilians were setup moving down stream towards the anchored Paraguayans.

Rules:

• Iron and Fire by David Manley

Miniatures:

• 1:1200 ships by Pithead Miniatures/Spithead Miniatures
• 2mm guns by Irregular Miniatures

Terrain:

• Beige Vynl fabric for river
• Green fleece
• Woodland Scenics Bushes Clump-Foliage, Medium Green, 32oz

I thought I would run the game with four players, but it ended up running with six players with no issues.  I kept the terrain simple because I have no room to store a custom Riachuelo board and I just don't rerun the same scenario more than a couple times.  I used an orange kids washable marker to outline on the river the areas of shallows.  Below are photos from the game.


Photo 1: Initial deployment.  Paraguayans anchored at bottom.  Brazilian ships in line moving towards Paraguayans.  Two more Brazilians ships to enter.

 

Photo 2: Brazilian ships in line.  Note line showing extent of shallows on starboard of ships.

 

Photo 3: Paraguayan field battery provides support from shore.

 

Photo 4: Paraguayans decide to raise anchor and move towards Brazilians.

 

Photo 5: Ships from both sides are now getting in close.

 

Photo 6:  River is filled with smoke from the battle.  The Paraguayan flagship has rammed a Brazilian ship and captured the ship as their own ship sinks.

 

Photo 7: Last photo showing the second last turn in the game.  Not much changed in the last turn.

 

I called the game after four hours of game play.  Unfortunately the Paraguayans could not change the historical outcome.  The results were identical to history.  All Chatas (towed boats) and four ships on the Paraguayan side were sunk.  One Brazilian ship was sunk, but the Paraguayan Admiral was captured.  I did not tell either side what the victory conditions were.  The Paraguayans would have won if they did better than historically (lose less ships and/or sink more ships).

 

I recommend this scenario.  It is a good unknown or barely known battle.  The models are great and the rules went very smoothly, although I did forget about the possible effect of rolling a one on gunfire.  If I run the game again, I will start the battle further up river where the two sides first met.  Maybe we could see how the Paraguayans would do by not heading downstream and anchoring.

 

Rules wise, the rule about being easier to hit if stationary, maybe this rule could be dropped because the Paraguayans are at a disadvantage anchored.

 

A future post, I will share resources for you to use for building this scenario or just for reading.

 

Other posts on Battle of Riachuelo:

Paraguay Ships

Brazilian Ships

Order of Battle

Playtest Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Battle of Riachuelo Preview

A photo of some playtesting of the Battle of Riachuelo naval battle.  Kind of a mess, but want to share where I am at with the scenario.  I'll be using the Iron and Fire rules by David Manley.

Shore guns will be different.  Maybe some other improvements.  Also, you probably can't see it, but I have drawn in the shallows boundary using washable marker.


Previous posts related to the battle:

• Battle of Riachuelo OOB
• Brazilian Ships
• Paraguay Ships

Not the Hobby Norm

All of us in the Historical Miniature Wargaming hobby do things collectively that fits in the norm of our hobby.  Opposite of this we do some things that are outside the norm.  I can easily spot these in me.  I figure I would share some of these.


What is a norm?  I look at social norms.  An example of a social norm that I belong to is I shake a persons hand when I first meet them.   Alternatively, another social norm is everyone owns a cell phone in North America.  Well, I do not belong to that norm; I do not own a cell phone.  Our hobby has some key norms, like we paint our miniatures before running a game at a convention.  I can't imagine unpainted miniatures at a convention (i.e. Salute).  Maybe there are gamers out there that never paint their miniatures.


How did I determine what some of the hobby norms are?  I have been seriously in the hobby for 20 years now and I have read a lot of the polls on the TMP web site.


Here are some of my outside the hobby norm traits (more maybe added later):

1. Paint miniatures with enamels
• Norm: paint miniatures with acrylics
• Virtually the whole hobby from books, magazines, online discussions, video tutorials, and hobby stores focus on acrylics.  I started with enamel (Humbrol) paints when I was a kid painting model kits.  I know how to work with them and have stuck with them.  Maybe someday I'll go to acrylics, but I'm happy with the paint.
2. Bases not all the same.
• Norm: All bases for a unit or army look the same
• In the case of stands in base to base contact for certain periods/rules (i.e. regiment in ACW) then I can see the stands all being the same.  But, for the whole army to have the same grit/ground and grass tufts...not my thing.  For example my WWII bases I try to make them all different because the stands are all over the battlefield going through different terrain (corn field, swamp, forest, road, etc).  At least make different groups/units of bases different.
3. Not painting basing material
• Norm: paint the basing material with multiple colours.
• The standard method of basing miniatures is to glue down your material on the base, then layer various paint colours to make the ground look like ground.  I glue down my basing material and that's it.  My grey rock glued down is happy not to be painted over with various shades of grey.  Who knows, maybe I'll change my technique in the future and I'm not hearing any complaints about my bases.  Even if I did, I don't know if I'd change.
4. Historic battles
• Norm: fictitious battles
• Most games are presented as fictitious battles set in a historic war or part of a historic battle.  I am the opposite, I focus more on actual historic battles.  I enjoy the research and laying out the actual battlefield.  Nothing against the fictitious approach, just my preference.
5. Obscure battles and wars
• Norm: game common battles and wars
• Why would I want to paint up and put on a battle that someone has already done and/or I've played in?  I get more interested in a battle I have not seen someone done or is rare.  I guess one example is Korean War.

I'm not saying being in the hobby norm is a bad thing, I just thought it would be interesting to see how some things we do are actually outside the norm.  Maybe I should write a post about my hobby norms, but maybe that would be too boring.