I wanted to wrap up my Enfilade coverage with pictures from other events. There were some 80+ games at the convention, a number that was reduced by Delta variant concerns and filled in by heroic last-minute heroes. I wish I could tell more about each photo, just know that each of the hosts that took time to run a game is top notch in my book.

Sadly, I couldn’t get photos of all the games. I had my own game hosting responsibilities and spent time putting out convention fires as your obedient servant. If I have one regret, it is that I don’t have any photos of Bill Vanderpool’s games. For those who don’t know Bill, he never misses a game period, and is annually six for six running games for a very long time.

Even though attendance and number of games were down, I can’t say the same about our spirit as the everyone seemed to have a really good time. Looking forward to Enfilade 2022, Memorial Day weekend (May 27-29.)

And I also want to recognize our attendees and game masters for making Enfilade a successful game experience for everyone.

Thanks so much for reading. See you in the spring.

Note: Sometimes my posts are directly connected to what I’m working on or games I’m playing. This one is different and intensely personal. It’s part of my story. Maybe it’s for you and maybe it’s not. It’s something I’ve been working on for about a month. Just thought you should know, and thanks for reading.

I know I’ve told my tale of how my high school buddies turned me on to miniature gaming. Honestly, there are many I could name who have helped with my slavish love of this hobby. Dave Demick, Dave Schueler, David Sullivan (all the Daves) and so many more have had a role in this.

I always had interest in military history. I was a not-very-good model builder, but I built them anyway. I used to play these sort of proto-games with my neighbor Ray Powers, who was a couple years older than I and a really good model-builder, and we’d fly our planes and bomb stuff in each others yard, quite randomly.

By the time I was twelve or thirteen two things had captured my attention. I purchased the Strombecker miniature set of George Washington bombarding Yorktown. There were four 54mmish figures and a cannon for three bucks. Three dollars was a lot of money for me, but I carefully painted the figures using basic Testors and Pactra enamels I could buy at my local dime store. I don’t think I primed them. I loved it.

My friend Greg bought a different Strombecker set from WWI–the bombardment of Verdun or something like that. But when I went to the hobby shop in the Northgate Bon Marche–a going concern in 1968-I discovered something even better. The Bon had the complete range of Monogram Merite 54mm figures. I drooled. Also three bucks. For. One. Figure. I bought the French Horse Artillery of the Guard Figure. Of course I did. Why? Because my grandfather was in the artillery of course. I didn’t know French Napoleonics. Didn’t know the Guard. It could have been the Lunar Guard Horse Artillery for all I knew. The Pactras and Testors came out and I carefully made a mess of the un-primed mini. Of course Greg thought I was crazy. Three bucks for one figure when I could get four and an artifact for the same price?

Note: To give an idea of just how immersed in nostalgia I am, I have since re-acquired the Monogram Horse Artillery of the Guard figure as well as the Monogram Berdan’s Sharpshooter figure. They remain very nice miniatures, though they cost me somewhat more (but not ridiculously more) than three bucks each. I have yet to paint either one, said every miniature wargamer ever.

By 1968 painting figures was in my blood, even if I wasn’t very good at it and used the crudest of tools.

The gateway drug into historical miniature gaming was sort of historical board games. I’d love to tell you I was an early adopter of Tactics II and Blitzkrieg, but that would be a lie. When those games came out I was like eight years old. No, my path forward was definitely Milton Bradley’s American Heritage games. I loved Broadside and Dogfight, but I also played Battle Cry and Hit the Beach. The mechanics were simple. It was move/counter-move and easy to learn. Mostly I got clobbered and learned how to be a good loser, but it was fun and I had a blast.

By the time I was eleven or twelve (1966-68ish) interesting games began popping up at my local Frederick and Nelson department store at Aurora Village. Frederick’s wasn’t as interesting as The Bon, but they had sort of a book department and they had interesting adult-style games. They had the 3M bookshelf games, but these famous World War II battles began showing up: Midway, Battle of the Bulge, Stalingrad and others by Avalon Hill appeared. I was really interested, but the $12.00 price tag was well beyond my reach. I began reading a little bit about them too, and they sure seemed cool. Unfortunately other things like records and plastic models competed for my tiny allowance dollars at a time when a monaural record was less than three bucks and a quality Revell model was fifty cents. Pleas to my parents went unheard, and my entry into hex-based wargames was . . . delayed.

I moved on. My grandparents moved to Edmonds from San Francisco. They were in their seventies and my mother and her sister worried about them being so far away. They convinced them to move back to the Seattle area where family would be able to help them a bit. They managed an apartment complex just a couple of blocks from my cousins who lived close to the wonderful downtown area.

I was blessed with two amazing sets of grandparents. They were always happy to see me, always kind. My two grandfathers were similar but different. My mother’s father, Jerry Casey was older than my father’s father, Jim Smyth. Both were terrific story tellers. Jim, born in Tacoma in 1907 never hesitated to tell about the family, was embarrassingly proud of the family. Jerry, born in 1894 in Ireland, orphaned at age three, was vague, elusive, almost silent about his youth and his family. They were both incredibly good to me, and there isn’t a day I don’t think about them. And I don’t mean to undersell the importance of my two grandmothers Ann Casey and Margaret (Mike) Smyth, who were sweet and supportive, and somehow didn’t wring the necks of their spouses who could be insufferable–much like me.

I would occasionally spend the night with my Edmonds Bentler cousins, and once in a while with my grandparents. Though Jerry was closed-mouthed about his childhood, he spoke often and freely of his experience in the British army. He joined at age 16 as a boy soldier. Originally he served in the infantry, 2nd Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers. But as the Great War approached he changed branches of service and served with the 47th Battery, 44th Brigade of the Royal Artillery. My grandfather was a proud Old-Contemptible and went to France with Sir John French in 1914, and served in France and became an instructor at the artillery school at Woolwich throughout the war. He was discharged in 1920.

At Grandpa’s house we’d often talk about his war experiences and other things. We might listen to a Sir Harry Lauder record or Irish/American pub classics by Ruby Murray Grandma would fix an awesome dinner and sometimes Grandpa would pull out a bottle of Guinness Stout and pour me a half a juice glass. At age 12, it tasted nasty, a position I’ve only recently managed to recant. He watched the evening news about the war in Vietnam. He wasn’t afraid to call politicians “Bums.” He read westerns by Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey.

My grandfather never drove as long as I knew him. He was a terrific walker until the day he died at age 89. Whether it was in San Francisco, Edmonds or the foot of Queen Anne Hill, where ever he lived, if I was going to visit with my Grandpa Casey I was going to walk.

And that was fine. We had great talks. My favorite memory was walking in Seattle in 1969. He was remembering his experience as an infantryman and said, “Kevin, if you couldn’t shoot, you weren’t worth shit.” I was shocked. I was barely beginning to experiment with interesting language and here was my grandfather just blurting it out. God, I loved him.

Often we would walk in Edmonds which had some wonderful shops including a hobby shop and toy store. Sometimes I would come home with treasures my Grandfather bought me. My mother would fuss at me and tell me I shouldn’t let my grandpa buy me ANYTHING.

One sunny spring day we’d gone for a walk and the local hobby store had its doors open. However, just inside in a rack, instead of the latest Tamiya models of Japanese dive bombers, there was a rack of Avalon Hill games. The sign on the rack said 50% off. Midway, Guadalcanal, Bismark, D-Day and others were there for six bucks. My grandfather looked at me. Then he looked at me looking at the games with all the interest of a hungry dog staring in a butcher’s window, and he asked if I would like one. My jaw dropped. I remembered, but then rapidly forgot my mother’s admonition. It was like a tiny bit of code being wiped from my hard drive.

Of course I said yes, and I thanked him very much. The real problem wasn’t getting to yes, it was choosing from the pile. Midway was intriguing, but I think I made the right choice in Jutland. In the end, Jutland is the Avalon Hill game most like miniatures. I didn’t know a lot about the battle, but I had heard of it and loved the box art.

The story could end here, but it doesn’t. Grandfather buys 12 year old grandson Avalon Hill game, he goes on to greater gaming glory. No, I took the game back to my grandparents’ apartment and immediately began looking it over. The basic rules. Ugh.

All those fleet organizations and search rules. Yikes.

My grandfather saw me poring over all this and pretty much said screw it, let’s just put some ships on the floor and have at it. So we lay out equal numbers of cardboard counters representing German and British battleships and shot at each other using the basic rules. It was easy and fun, not so unlike the Milton Bradley games I’d been playing.

So let’s get this straight, my grandfather bought me this mysterious game, sees me struggling with the rules, excises the hard, and to the 12-year old, difficult parts, adopts some simple house rules and then gets his 75-year old knees on the floor and helps me give them a try. Today I’m ten years younger than he was, and I’m not sure how good I’d be at crawling around on the floor with my grandson (if I had one, sigh.)

Jutland was my first Avalon Hill game. Later that summer my father’s cousin would gift me a copy of Afrika Korps. For Christmas my parents gave me a copy of Bismark. I was on my way. We played the heck out of Jutland, with all its search intricacies and we played the advanced rules. . Greg got a copy of Gettysburg, which I always seemed to lose. But it was that spring gift from my grandfather that really set me on the road to becoming a miniature wargamer.

By the following year, my grandparents were on their way back to the Bay Area. We would be close behind them. Jerry was an active and proud member and several times Commander of his American and Canadian Legion posts. He was one of the few remaining members of the The Old Contemptible Association which commemorated those surviving veterans of the 1914 campaign. My grandmother passed away in 1974. Jerry continued on until 1982 when he died at the age of 89. they are much appreciated and much missed.

Introduction

David Sullivan and I were attracted to ACW naval miniatures when we first met back in the early nineties.  We drove north to The Sentry Box hobbies in Vancouver B.C. and picked up some of the Richard Houston 1/1200 miniatures and were off to the races.  We were immediately attracted to the old Yaquinto rules.  We played the rules right out of the box and bought some hex mats for movement and fire.

Of course we could never get hex mats large enough, and it seemed silly to play miniatures on a board game board.  We tried other rules as well.  Age of Iron, Hammering Iron, and Smoke On the Water are a few of the titles we tried.  I hated ‘em all. Though Ironclads is a rule set firmly rooted in its 1970’s origins, David and I just love ‘em.

When Toby Barrett and his 1/600 Thoroughbred miniatures appeared on the scene in the later 90’s we were immediately hooked. But it was clear that the hex mats had to go. Ships now took up two hexes minimum, some were three or more.  The only way to make it work was if we went hex free and made the required adaptations necessary to make Ironclads a true miniatures game. I sold my hundred or so 1/1200 ships and concentrated what has grown to about a hundred 1/600 vessels.  I’ve never regretted the change. 

Just to be clear, Toby purchased the rights to the Yaquinto rules some time ago.  It was his intent to take the original board game rules and make them a miniature game.  It didn’t happen.  My hope is that it could still happen some day.  I’d buy it in a heartbeat. These rules are a stopgap, a set of house-rules we have inflicted on our friends for decades, and we’re happy to share them with you if and until the worthy Mr. Barrett comes up with something better. And look, they are yours for free.  Enjoy them, or not.

Note:

You cannot play these rules without the original Ironclads game.  The game was published by Yaquinto in 1979.  It was republished by Excalibur games in 1993.  In order to play our hex-free game you must have the rules, ship cards and charts.  We are simply providing a means of abandoning the hex-grid and making Ironclads a true miniatures game.

The big changes:

The biggest changes in the game are to speed, gun ranges and turning because in the original game rules, these are determined by hexes. 

Speed:  We agreed that speed would be represented as they were in the rules. One point of speed would be represented by one inch of movement.

Fire:  This was a really tricky one.  Our problem had to do with scale and the size of the ships we were playing with. Some vessels with lighter guns, say  the naval 32pdr, would have difficulty firing the length of their ship, if we stuck with one hex=one inch rule. We agreed to double the gun range.  Yes, that gave some ships with really big rifles an advantage, but if we designed interesting scenarios  we could avoid exacerbating this problem

Firing procedure

• Our house practice is to measure from the gun to closest part of the target.  Your house rule could be different-maybe that’s stack to stack, or bridge to bridge, but using a generic firing point messes with ranges in our estimation. 
• We also use the firing templates provided in the game by the gun if there is a question.  Again, the scale of the models makes it a challenge to use a generic interpretation of what can fire and what can’t.  A gun by gun determination works best.
• To determine the range and penetration factor on the ship card, just run the tape measure out from the firing gun to the nearest point of the target.  Get an accurate measure.  If your tape reads 24” that will be equal to 12”  on your ships card.  If it is more than 24”, say 24 ¼ “ you’ll have to round up

Calculate penetration factors normally, just keep track of the range changes, and play on normally. 

Example: Remember the 11” Dahlgren now has a maximum range of 36” with changes in penetration at 24” and 12”.  The 7 “ 2B Brooke rifle now has a maximum range of 102”, with changes in penetration at 28” and 14”

Turning:  In many respects turning is the most difficult of the changes.  We all know the Union ships tended to have better engines and turning gear than the Confederate ships, but that was certainly not uniformly the case.  In the game that is reflected by the number of hexsides a ship is allowed to turn at a certain rate of speed.  I would argue these ratings are fairly subjective. 

David suggested using turning circles for ships, and he created these on a scale of A to I.  The smaller the circle, the nimbler the ship.  “A” would be a tug or other small ship.  I would be the Virginia with her balky engines and bad turning gear.  Remember, in the rules and on the ship cards, the faster a ships goes, the slower it is to turn, so as you’re writing up your ship, be careful to take a look at the movement line, where the turning changes are and rate your ships accordingly.  Do your best to make a good faith effort and your partners will be fine.

Following Up

As I have said many times in many other places, Ironclads is my most played set of rules.  I love the period and I love the game.  Many complain about the charts, that it’s quite fiddly and mired in its 1970’s roots.  I love it because it respects the period and this small-fry naval war so different than what was happening in the rest of the world in the 1860’s.

It doesn’t always get everything right.  That’s the risk one runs of trying to rate every aspect of every ship from engine capacity to rear armor to each and every gun.  If you run across an error, fix it.  Plenty of words and photographs are shed on the American Civil War at sea, don’t hesitate to use them.  However, if I had a choice I’d choose The Old Steam Navy, volumes 1 and 2, by Donald S. Canney, which covers most of the Union navy leading up to the war.  It does leave out sailing vessels such as the Cumberland. For the Confederates, I’d go back to Canney for The Confederate Steam Navy.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some fine sets of rules out there.  If I was doing a really large game, like Mobile or New Orleans, I would use David Manley’s fine Iron and Fire rules.  I’ve also played a dozen or so games of Sail and Steam Navies and there is a lot to recommend them.  But in the end, I just enjoy Ironclads more, and so do my friends—that’s what counts.

Add-ons

I’ve provided links to two useful items.  The first is a file for David’s turning circles.  It’s a four page .pdf document.  Print ‘em on cardstock and they’ll last forever. 

In addition I provided a blank log sheet.  If your hand-writing is as wretched as mine and either can’t fit it in the space provided or you can’t tell your “4” from a “9” this is really handy.  It’s in Word and easily edited.  I also have taken to scanning the ship configuration from the ship cards and replacing the outline on this form because honestly, who draws?

If you give it a try, I hope you have fun with it. Let me know how it goes.

Let me just say March was a great month for getting stuff done, especially if you were a Spaniard serving in America between 1797-1810, or if you happened to find yourself fighting in Vietnam in 1968.

I made a couple of orders to Gringo 40’s and the Hue buildings arrived, but not many new purchases, which was a good thing.

Oh, and I played in one of my few miniatures games since December. David Sullivan and I got together, hauled out our Vietnam figures and played a game of Ganesha’ Flying Lead. It was much fun–even if we did it wrong. You can read David’s account here.

But, as with most Covid months, March was about painting. I don’t know what it was, but I did my best to dedicate myself to getting stuff done. One thing at the top of my priorities is finishing a project, and that is my America Rampant stuff. I finished the Americans before Christmas. I started working on my leftover Woodland Indians and wrapped up the last of them this month. I’m nearing the end with my Spanish infantry.

I had painted a bunch of the Spanish infantry but was kind of scatter-shot with their organization. First of all, I did these before the adoption of Rebels and Patriots as the rules of choice for the period. My units were ten figures to the company and R & P demands 12. So there were figures ordered and stands reorganized and it was kind of a mess. Previously I had two battalions organized into myriad companies. (For me a unit is a company.) Now it is two battalions, the Luisiana Battalion, and The Hibernia Battalion. Each has a grenadier company and four fusilier companies. This feels a lot better.

The figures are old RSM figures I order from Dayton Painting Company. Don’t tell anybody but there was some re-painting involved so everything more or less matches. Pretty basic block painting too, because that’s how the originals were painted.

I also painted my quota of Vietnam figures. There were 13 Marine figures, six Viet Cong, and five NVA figures. My painted collection of ‘Nam figures is now 47, and I received another order ten or so days ago. Finishing these will be a priority in April.

Anyway, on to the monthly totals

1/300 airplanes: 6/150. No changes. Nothing new here. I’m starting to feel embarrassed.

1/1250 scale ships: 21/50. I’m claiming five adds for the month. First, I completed the three coastal fortifications on March 1, just to get thing started right. I’ve been working on the ships I received in my wayward WTJ order. I hoped to have them finished, but they aren’t all quite done. I finished the little Spanish gunboat Elcano, and the generic Thorneycroft type destroyer that seemed to serve in everyone’s navy. Nearly complete is the armored cruiser Princesa de Asturias, which will be the final add to the Spanish navy. About 50% complete is the American auxiliary cruiser USS Yale. Yes, I know, I already did that ship, but I’m painting a second version in its livery in the American Line. The Yale hadn’t adopted wartime gray when it steamed into San Juan harbor and shot it out with some small ships. I think I need this, don’t you? Another excuse to do a cool ship miniature.

As the Spanish-American war naval miniatures wrap up I’m considering another 1/1250 project and I’m considering the Japanese to go with John Gee’s Russian Pacific squadron. Because you just can’t have too much fun.

28mm figures: 166/400. No lie, this was a big month for 28mm figures. There were 12 woodland Indians and 47 Spanish fusiliers for the America Rampant project. There were 24 Vietnam figures. I got a lot done and enjoyed every minute of it. I doubled the number of painted 28mm figure in one month.

Lots on the plate for April in the 28mm department. I’m painting some Spanish-American war figures for John complete with rayadillo. The big goal, however is to wrap up the America Rampant guys and finish the Gringo 40’s figures I have left to paint which is about 18. That should keep me pretty busy.

Finally, no more 54mm figures to report, because the Hue building order came in and that will suck up any extra time I have. To date I’ve completed one building and there are about ten more to do, including some big pieces and then there are all the walls too. It’s a priority to move this rapidly forward, but the 28’s will take priority.

So the month of March ends strong

1/1250 ships 5

28mm figures 83

28mm buildings 1

March totals: 89 figures.

The Vietnam project has continued throughout the month of March. I’ve gotten even more figures from Gringo 40’s. I think I’m up to about 46 or so painted figures for the Marines, the Viet Cong and NVA. What’s nice is that several of my friends-David Sullivan, Dave Schueler, Bill Stewart, and perhaps others have joined in the army-building-and I think the pressure is off to paint up large quantities of figures. In fact, I would suggest there may not be an April order while I paint the fairly sizable order I granted myself with my tax return.

However, one of the areas I have felt the I’ve mentioned before, probably many times, the impetus for my Vietnam project is Mark Bowden’s book Hue 1968. The hard part is recreating the city-fight that was Hue. I’d seen some excellent buildings for Hue on The Miniatures Page and made some inquiries. It turns out there was an entire range of Hue buildings designed as STL files for 3D printing by a British designer whose company is called WOW. It was a Kickstarter project and the files could be licensed and printed for sale.

Unfortunately it wasn’t quite like making an order from 4Ground or Hovels. I don’t own a 3D printer, and I won’t. It’s just one of those new rabbit holes in the hobby that I cannot go down. I’m happy to paint and base and do research, but I just can’t do this.

But I will pay others to do so.

It turns out that a small shop in Virginia, Vulcan Printing, owned the license to the Vietnam buildings. Their name was passed along to me by WOW. I contacted them about doing the Hue Town Centre. They offered to print to 28mm all eight houses, all the walls, the large fortified church and the roads for $300. I don’t know about you, but for me that’s a lot of money to spend all at once on a big project. However, I want to be clear: never once did I believe it was over-priced at all, it was just a lot for me to spend on gaming all at once. I consulted with Lorri and she was okay with the purchase. I ordered and they thought they could have it printed and ship in a couple of weeks.

It took longer. The big East Coast snowstorm delayed supplies. There was an illness, a printer breakdown (there’s always a printer breakdown,) but eventually my order arrived in a big box. I was thrilled.

The houses are all two stories and come in separate pieces, with a third piece the roof. The roofs are all tile, many of them showing battle damage, and are quite nice. The building stories are also nice. some show damage. Some have broken windows. Some have open windows that were printed over and will need some work to be ready to paint. the photo is of the first and only building I’ve painted, but there will be many more.

I was excited to get started. I wanted to do a nice job. I don’t have a ton of buildings in my various collections and this was definitely something different for me. I could have painted them just white with red roofs and been done with it, but I was intrigued with the damage and weathering in the Osprey illustration.

I immediately grabbed the first building primed it white and then painted it an overall gray thinking I would dry brush more white paint over the top and that would weather the building. Wrong. printed buildings are printed with bands of plastic and the bands show, like geologic soil layers. After doing some research with how best to deal with the bands, I developed a plan of action I can easily live with. I sand with 100 grit sand paper, carefully blow the residue off, and paint the entire structure with Varathane polyurethane. The polyurethane dries quickly and fills in many of the spaces between the plastic bands. From there it’s prime and paint.

There’s nothing fancy about these buildings. Hue was a center of the French colonial government and it had many very sturdy buildings that could be amply defended by the NVA. These were painted white. I primed them white and then made sure to go over them with your basic el cheapo craft white. The next steps were related to weathering. I took some Ceramcoat Sand Dune, a useful tan/gray color, and dry brushed it around the base of the first floor, under the roof eaves of the top floor and around the doors and windows of both floors. I did the same to create some “in need of maintenance” areas on the main walls. Step three was some thinned Vallejo black wash.

I opted to paint the doors and window frames Ceramcoat Barn Red. Weathered those with a little dry brush with Vallejo Sky Grey.

Matt-coated them and bingo, they’re done.

Not perfect, but they’ll do.

I’ve moved on to building #2. Many of the buildings have their doors and windows covered by something that looks like it should be easy to cut through. Wrong. This is part of the printing process and they are hidden by a cover that has to be removed. I can only describe it as a horrendous pain in the ass. I broke a couple of X-acto blades, am wearing a couple of Band-Aids from sticking myself. The most useful tools were an old steak knife and an all-in-one tool. Savage stuff. But I do think I’ve learned something for the next building.

My goal is to finish one of these each week.

About November, when we were discussing playing the Manila Bay game from our campaign, John raised a great question: does anyone have any coastal fortifications? He was interested in 1/1000 scale forts because that was the scale of the game we were going to play. But it sent off an alarm bell in my head. Hey what about 1/1250 fortifications? I hadn’t see any, couldn’t find any.

Turns out I wasn’t looking hard enough, because War Times Journal, bless ’em have four different coastal fortifications. My very tardy order from WTJ arrived last week with three of these to add to the one I already had. I’ve painted them up, so let’s take a look.

This is Shore Battery #1. Intended to be secondary strength guns, Definitely a more modern, i.e. early 20th century feel to it. Nice. Love the trench and the observation post

Shore Battery #2 is my favorite. These are larger cannon, 10-12 inches. Again mice detail. What makes this cool is that there is a gun that is extended for firing and one retracted for loading, like the guns on “disappearing carriages” at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island or from the forts on Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Shore Battery #3 takes us back to smaller cannon. The WTJ description claims it’s an earthwork. I’m not seeing it because it’s all straight lines. I didn’t paint it as an earthwork. It appears to have some damage, which I like.

Shore Battery #4 is a late 19th century battery, and that I can see. All medium to light guns. Again some nice details.

These are all nicely printed in plastic. They need to be soaked in detergent to remove the impurities before printing and priming. My paint jobs are pretty basic. Base coat of Vallejo Light Gray, dry-brushed with Vallejo Sky Gray. Dirt areas are Ceramcoat Burnt Umber dry-brushed with Ceramcoat Trail Tan. Gun barrels are all Ceramcoat Charcoal. Add judicious amounts of flock and life is good.

Each of these miniature are nice models. They range from about two inches in length to about three and a half inches. They have some clever detail, including staircases, trenches, observation posts, and decent gun detail for something so small.

As with all of WTJ’s plastic printed miniatures, they are not cheap. They range in price from $20.25 for Shore Battery #4 to $29.25 for Shore Battery #1. However, they do seem indispensable for the Pre-Dreadnaught era