The latest Portable Wargame book is now on sale!

I am pleased to announce that the latest PORTABLE WARGAME book has been published! It is THE PORTABLE IRONCLADS WARGAME and was written by David Crook and edited by me.

The book is 96 pages long and is available in four formats at prices to suit the pockets of all wargamers.

• Hardback (from Amazon ISBN 979 8 3673 7158 1 for £19.99)
• Softback (from Amazon ISBN 979 8 3673 6389 0 for £9.99)
• Kindle (from Amazon for £4.99)
• PDF (from Wargame Vault for £4.99)

The book is described as follows on its back cover:

This book builds on the earlier Portable Wargame rules for fighting battles during the so-called ‘ironclad’ era of naval warfare that were included in ‘The Gridded Naval Wargame’. In this book, the author has created a set of rules that are mainly aimed at the American Civil War, a war that saw both sides embrace the new concept of armouring warships to make them less vulnerable to the more powerful guns that were being manufactured. The fact that both sides were capable of building or extemporising such warships – sometimes in a very short time and in very difficult and trying circumstances – is testament to their ingenuity and skill, and to the pioneer spirit exhibited by so many Americans in those days.

The Americans were not – however – unique in having the capacity to both build and operate ironclad warships, and as the book shows, the French and British were more than capable of building sea-going ironclads – and the guns with which to arm them – in large numbers in a relatively short time. They soon became the suppliers of ironclad warships to the world, and many of the warships that took part in the other naval conflicts of this era were launched in British or French shipyards. The rules in this book can be used to recreate these other battles, and it is hoped to produce appropriate supplements at a later date.

The book's contents look like this:

• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• A short history of the development of the early ironclads
• Wars in which ironclads saw action
• American Civil War
• The Second Schleswig War
• The Chincha Islands War
• The Third Italian War of Independence/Seven Weeks War
• The War of the Triple Alliance/The Paraguayan War
• The Boshin War
• The Russo-Turkish War
• The Peruvian Civil War
• The War of the Pacific
• Designer’s Notes – How I got to Where I got to and Why!
• The Fundamental Rules of Wargaming
• The First Rule of Wargaming
• The Spirit of the Wargame
• If in doubt ...
• The Rules
• Sequence of Play
• Combat Resolution Overview
• The Rule of 1 and 6 – Gunnery or Ramming Attacks
• Firing
• Movement
• Ram Attacks
• Mines and Spar Torpedoes
• Damage and Sinking
• Forts, Shore Batteries, and Offshore Defences
• Ship Specifications
• Examples of Ship Specifications: The American Civil War
• Union Ships
• Confederate Ships
• Generic Vessels
• Examples of the rules in action
• Firing Arcs and Firing
• Ramming
• The Rules in Action – More Trouble along the Missenhitti
• Introduction
• Six months later …
• Setting the Scene
• Dramatis Naves
• Blueberry Bend, at the Confluence of the Missenhitti and Yahoo Rivers … November 1863
• In conclusion
• Modelling the warships of the American Civil War
• A Review of the Fleets
• The Union Fleet
• The Confederate Fleet
• Final Thoughts, Further Thoughts, Errors, and Omissions
• Bibliography and sources of information

This is a great addition to the PORTABLE WARGAME series of books and will hopefully not be David's only contribution.