“It must be confessed that both ships were queer-looking craft, as grotesque to the eyes of the men of ’62 as they would appear to those of the present generation”
– H. Ashton Ramsay, engineer, CSS Virginia
A few years ago I discovered Bob Cordery’s excellent Gridded Naval Wargames* and began using it to explore different naval battles. The rules for American Civil War ironclad engagements worked quite well on my initial try, though I modified the critical damage system slightly for a little more depth. At first I used basic hand-crafted 1:1200 models for the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (what us Northerners commonly learn in school as the Merrimack), but as I dove deeper into ACW ironclad warfare, I sought to collect professionally cast models. What started in the “Before Times” prior to the covid pandemic has since expanded into a significant sector of my wargaming hobby. Thankfully I’ve found some good suppliers of models to fuel my habit.