The Danish War
Publisher’s Preview
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
October 2025

It took us long enough, but we are finally expanding our naval game offerings into the 19th Century, with Ironclads: The Danish War. It’s the first game in a new series (Ironclads), and it’s designed as an introductory game to this new system. So it’s not a very large game. But it does have a lot of action.

The Danish War in question in Ironclads: The Danish War is the 1864 clash between Austria and Prussia on one side, and Denmark on the other. Denmark was not giving up the principalities of Schleswig and Holstein without a fight (well, maybe Holstein – it was a complicated issue). The Danes were ridiculously outnumbered by her enemies in terms of population and army strength, but actually had a stronger fleet than what the Prussians could muster. And so the Danes put on a blockade of North German ports, and the German Confederation called on Austria, which did have a fleet, to break it. And that was the basis for a naval war in the North Sea and the Baltic.

The war at sea began in the Baltic. In March 1864 a Danish squadron put a Prussian squadron to flight at the Battle of Jasmund, and maintained the blockade. All of the ships involved were wooden. The Danes brought a screw-powered ship of the line, a screw frigate, and two screw corvettes. The Prussians had a screw frigate, a screw corvette, an armed paddle steamer, and six screw gunboats. Running away was probably a good idea.

That left the German merchants still howling for relief, and it arrived in May in the form of an Austrian squadron. Without waiting for the rest of the squadron (which included his boss), Wilhelm von Tegetthoff went right at the Danes, who had two screw frigates and a screw corvette, with his own pair of screw frigates. The Danes did more damage, but they lifted the blockade, so both sides claimed victory.

That Battle of Helgoland would be the last fleet action of the Royal Danish Navy, and also the last battle fought exclusively by wooden ships in European waters. Everyone involved had ironclads, but none of them happened to see battle.

So that little war is the basis of The Danish War, the game. It kicks off a whole new series called Ironclads, even though no ironclads fought in either of the historical battles. But that’s okay, because ironclads were part of the Danish and Austrian fleets, while the Prussians were awaiting delivery of their own first armored warship. So we do have ironclads in the first Ironclads game.

I tried very hard to keep the game system as close to Great War at Sea as possible, to make it easy for players to slip into it (since it is known that all sentient beings play Great War at Sea). Like Great War at Sea, it has two levels of play, and separate scenarios at each level. In the operational game, fleets seek each other out on the operational map. When they find each other, play moves to the Naval Tactical Map (the same one found in Great War at Sea) and there the ships fight it out. Battle scenarios skip the fleet-seeking part and skip straight to the shooting and ramming. And there, once again, the mantra is, “Roll a 6, stupid!” The parlance and basic logic of Great War at Sea (high numbers good) are carried over as much as possible.

Some changes were inevitable: the ground (water?) scale is much closer than in Great War at Sea, and the ships much weirder, so we have firing arcs to worry about. Ironclads are tough but not impossible to sink (the Austrians sank one at Lissa with cannon fire). Still, it’s hard to sink an ironclad, and easy to sink a wooden ship with the new shell-firing guns everyone is deploying. Austria’s Finance Ministry estimated that six wooden ships could be built for the price of a single armored ship of the same size and firepower. The ironclad was still probably the better investment.

The period we’re covering in this game series (the 1850’s through the 1870’s) was an age of rapid technological change, at least compared to what had gone before (not holding a candle to our current race to the singularity, but for the people of the time, it was strange and bewildering). Fleets of the time fielded four very different types of ship at once, sometimes mixing them in the same fleet: screw-powered ironclads, screw-powered wooden ships, paddle-driven wooden ships, and purely sail-powered wooden ships. I did my best to keep these rules streamlined, so you can play the game easily. It also means that we now have a set of sailing-ship rules.

Like Great War at Sea games, The Danish War has an operational map, in this case covering the southern part of the North Sea, the western part of the Baltic Sea, and the entirety of the Jutland peninsula (you know, Denmark) dividing them. It’s the same pattern of offset squares you know and love, at the same scale as Second World War at Sea (those are set based on maximum sighting distance, and the Mark One eyeball did not change between 1864, 1914, and 1944).

Sails matter on the operational map. Marine engines just weren’t very good, and they ate a great deal of coal. Sail power helped extend the coal supply, and many naval architects described the steam engine and screw as “auxiliary power” well after they had become commonplace.  Screw propellors, however, rule the tactical map. You get to go where you want, when you want. Paddle wheels give you that as well, but they also make for an irresistible, and unmissable, target.

The fleets are not very large; The Danish War includes 90 pieces, 50 of them double-sized ship pieces. They’re the same die-cut and silky-smooth ones you love, and the same size as the ships from Great War at Sea. As in Great War at Sea, we have the “visible” qualities of the ship right there on the playing piece: speed and firepower. The “invisible” qualities (armor, fuel capacity, staying power) are on the ship data sheet, which looks a lot like the equivalent from Great War at Sea.

It defies game industry logic to launch a series with a small game (you start big, and go small later). The Danish War brings you plenty of action for its size, and I think it shows off the game system very nicely. And it’s exactly the sort of topic (An Austrian-Danish naval war? Really?) that I love to write about and design games about.

You will like this game.

Join the Gold Club Here.
See your Gold Club Insider newsletter to order East Indies Campaigns.

Sign up for our newsletter right here. Your info will never be sold or transferred; we'll just use it to update you on new games and new offers.

Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.