Way back in March I posted about a Great War At Sea (GWAS) project involving Chile and Argentina.

That one is now on a backburner, with my new emphasis on the “what ifs” of the Spanish-American War.  As usual, the move from South America to the Caribbean did not involve a straight line.  Instead the initial detour was to “Plan Black”, a possible United States-Germany confrontation.  This, in turn, was an offshoot of a by-chance read about the international squabble(s) over Guam and the Philippines in which Germany was an active participant.

Plan Black was a bust, since the GWAS scenarios are set during the Dreadnought Era, and I wanted something turn-of-the-twentieth-century.  Looking for a path of least resistance, I dug into GWAS’s 1898, The Spanish-American War,  module.  This opened up some immediate possibilities.

Fortunately, I own a copy of David Trask’s “The War With Spain In 1898”.  This one volume history covers the naval aspects in some detail, going far beyond the usual coverage which is typically limited to the battles of Manila Bay and Santiago De Cuba.

The game’s scenarios cover some hypothetical situations, but I was interested in a campaign that assumed (and this is quite an assumption) that Spain had not neglected its fleet for ten years, and was a far better match for the United States “New Navy”.  This is where Trask’s book was so helpful.

But, things ground to a halt when I decided to use the alternate Dreadnought tactical rules.  These require a roughly 3 ft x 3 ft hexagonal grid sheet, and I don’t have one.

Amazon should be delivering a blue hexagonal grid sheet any day now.  Everything else is ready to go.

And, I will get to Chile vs. Argentina. Sometime.