After a long journey, I'm pleased to announce that the Print-on-Demand card packs are ready and now purchasable! I've broken these down into three items: Ship Card Pack: $30USD Mini Card Pack: $20USD Card Bundle (Both Mini Card Pack + Ship Card Pack): $40USD I received the parcel of proof copies today and I tore into the box as quickly as possible. After some false starts with the bordered versions of the cards, I made some changes and removed the border and I couldn't be

Over the weekend I ran a demo game for Dawn of Iron to test things out ahead of sending the book to the publishers next week. I threw together all the ships that I had, some terrain, and headed to my semi-local club. I wasn't sure how many players there would be and I only had one sea mat to use as well, so I hit on an idea to run a Capture the Flag style game. It was fun and I highly recommend it if you want to run your own demo as it forces the players to get moving and tak

In this video, I walk through how I made some piling fortifications for my American Civil War naval wargame battlefields using resin support cast-offs from my 3D prints. Please leave any questions and comments below, and thank you for watching!

The wait is nearly over! I'm finally in the last stages in preparing Dawn of War for Print on Demand. The road has been littered with challenges, most of them self-inflicted in my eternal quest for perfection! Since we're so close to being done, I thought I would share a sneak peak at what's heading your way. The Dawn of Iron - First Anthology is a compilation of all of the Dawn of Iron releases to date. This includes: The Dawn of War Rulebook Battle of Hampton Roads Battl

In this video, I walk through my method for making miniature flags from scratch for my 1/600 American Civil War ships and boats. I've used this method to decorate both land units and forts, among other small projects and across several scales. Please leave any questions and comments below, and thank you for watching!

Last month I talked about making small-scale trees for my riverine battlefield table. This month, I've added some hazards that I can add to the waterscape. When I first got into naval warfare, I had an assumption that waterscapes were largely featureless, at least in terms of wargaming. But the more I study ACW naval battles the more I found that to be untrue. Not only did the characteristics of the water impact the battle, but so too did the underlying terrain, such as rocks

Today, 160 years ago, the CSS Virginia and USS Monitor clashed in the first battle between ironclads. The amazing people at Little Wars TV pulled together a great video to mark the occasion, even going so far to play wargames...on the replica deck of the USS Monitor at the Mariner's Museum , in Newport News, Virginia. So cool! I feel really honored to have played a small supporting role. A special shout out to Patrick Woodard (3D sculptor extraordinaire from East Coast Ir

Jon at All Miniatures Great and Small gives Dawn of Iron a review and takes us through a rules overview.

When I set about to create some battle reports for Dawn of Iron, I realized quickly that I don't have a lot of terrain to use with 3-6mm scale miniatures. So I decided to correct this and start with some woods since they are generally ubiquitous for all North American riverine scenes. Supplies For this project, you'll need A pile of discarded supports from a 3D printer (without rafts) Sprue Cutters/Clippers Chocolate Brown Paint Medium Grey Paint Medium Paintbrush (for painti

I've had a few requests for a quick tutorial on how I paint the wooden decks of my ships. I should note that, as usual, this is my method and is in no way definitive. If you've got some tips or a different way to tackle decking, drop them in the comments below! The Canvas: Textured vs Flat Surfaces This method works on textured and flat surfaces alike. However, when working with a texture, just be mindful of painting along the grain. The Colors I want to mention that I've set

The American Civil War produced some of the strangest ship designs I've ever seen. Among the most odd were the river gunboats known collectively as "Pook's Turtles". These vessels saw combat all up and down the Mississippi River and many of her tributaries and were a vital component to the Union victory in the west. Let's have a closer look at these turtles and their wartime careers. Eads & Pook When the war broke out and the Union unveiled its Anaconda plan to surround and s

When the American Civil War began in 1861, the US Navy was charged with executing the famous Anaconda Plan, which aimed to strangle the Confederacy by securing all the waterways and coastlines from rebel shipping. At the time, the navy was rather ill-equipped to complete this mission, but a crash program to convert civilian steamers into gunboats started to make up the numbers of ships, boats, and steamers required for the task. On the Mississippi River, the federal governmen

I sat down with Mitch from No Die, No Glory to talk about the Dawn of Iron release. You can listen on Spotify or YouTube below:

This 19 June 2021 marks the long overdue first officially recognized Juneteenth. This holiday marks the end of slavery in the United States and has been celebrated every 19 June by African American communities since 1866. Now, finally, this historic moment is now broadly recognized at the federal level and will be officially celebrated in the United States for the first time today. We each should mark this and every Juneteenth by remembering those that were held in bondage an

One of the interesting little innovations of the US Navy during the Civil War was the mortar boats (sometimes called rafts). These were essentially small, unpowered platforms that could carry a single powerful13" mortar. These would be brought close to the action by towboats, lashed to the shore, and bombard rebel strongholds. They were particularly useful at places like Island No. 10, Fort Pillow, and Vicksburg, and many other similar sieges. They were only 60x25ft (18.5 x 7

Adding flags and banners is a big part of making ships or rank-and-file troops look the part on the battlefield. Not only do these add unique bits of color to the battlefield, but they are also a rare opportunity to model movement into your otherwise static models. For my scratchbuild projects, I wanted to settle on a solid and reliable method for making flags, especially for smaller scales such as 3mm in the case of my 1/600th scale ACW ships and troops. I also decided again

I wanted to extend a huge thank you to Mitch Reed at NDNG for hosting me on the HMGS Round Table and letting me drag on a bit about my Ironclads project. Lots of excellent talks throughout the Round Table event, so be sure to go check them out! Here's my interview talking about general design principles, Ironclads, and other projects:

I ran through a couple of playtests of Ironclads a few weeks ago to test out a few game features, but also to try out some simple coastline bits that I made. My recent building run was to complete the ironclads involved in the First Battle of Charleston Bay fought in early April 1863. I also made the iconic Fort Sumter, which has a funny story of its own that one day I'll document. The short version is that I radically under-scaled the fort and didn't catch it until it was a

After the City-class ironclads, I moved on to the Ellet rams. These were a bit tricky to build. Owing to the civilian origins of Ellet's rams, there's no real plan views for these ships. So to make them I had to resort to drafting my own plans based on photos, etchings, and illustrations. I've made a PDF of the plans in case any readers out there might find them useful: Pook's Turtles and Ellet Rams Plans (1/600)... In the end, I drew up four versions of the Ellet rams. I

Admittedly, when I started working on Ironclads all I thought about were the coastal ironclads like USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. Therefore, I saw this project as a small series of dueling ironclads, maybe 10 ships in total. I had barely scratched the surface when I discovered how wrongly I had interpreted the naval battles of the American Civil War. While the Union "blue water" fleet kept the rebel ports closed, the riverine "brown water" navy fought long and bloody fight fo