On Ships, Shakos, Secession, and Skirmishes

Yearly update! I haven't been blogging for ages- way too much time spent at the computer already what with teleworking most days of the month. But gaming life has been relatively good as things slowly return to some kind of normal (or at least as normal as they are likely to get).  

GdB François Bony, 8th Div/ III Corps 1813

So a mixed bag today. This past year has seen a modest number of games; by no means anything regular, but enough to keep the fires burning. 

 

These have included: 

 

Naval games (age of sail, WW1 and WW2). These are always fun and easy to set up. The WW2 game was a first; Giovanni here had been chomping at the bit to try the old (as in originally 1937- vintage) Fletcher Pratt rules. Frankly I wasn’t sure they would work on a ping-pong table, despite the mods given in the updated rules. But it was something he had long wanted to do, so we gave it a shot. 

 

It played out much as I had anticipated; while it has some good points, firing is a bit too deterministic, being a purely step-reduction system and with no provision for special damage. And estimating firing ranges on ping-pong table, even if scaled down, is just too easy, something the original game didn’t have to contend with given the humongous gym-floor distances and use of umpires. And it was evident just after three turns of play and some exchanges of gunfire that subsequent turns would just be steady and mathematically predictable slogs. 

 

But it was still quite an enjoyable afternoon. Giovanni has definitely been bitten by the naval bug, and it was fun to see the WW2 ships on the table again after many years. There are a number of rule sets we would like to try out, and see which of them best suits us.

 

When my friend Dave Morgan, owner of Sentry Box West Hobbies in Vancouver, closed shop back in the 1990’s he gifted me big parcel of 1/2400 GHQ US and Japanese warships- everything from CV’s and BB’s down to a destroyers. This past year I put a few together, and while fiddly to work with and to paint, they incorporate a phenomenal amount of detail and certainly look gorgeous when done.  

 

Here are the USS North Carolina and USS Northampton.

 

I love the US treaty-era heavy cruisers in particular, ever since playing all those games of SPI's CA as a teenager.

 

I have a number of Japanese ships on the painting desk as well, and have been experimenting with basing them. Very nice to feel the iron deck under my feet again. 

 

However, I have to admit that fast becoming a gaming favorite is the 18th C. Age of Sail, using the Fighting Sail rules from Osprey; the more games I play with the rules, the more I like them.

 

Rod and I had an excellent game just last week. This game had it all; lots of turns, fair shares of good and bad luck, shore batteries, boarding actions, and shifting winds causing problems for both sides.

 

A French victory, but hard-fought as two out of three ships made it into port past a British blockading squadron. We even had both a French and British ship grounding on the lee shore within broadsides of each other, with their crews having to have them pulled off by their ships boats (the British ship was also under fire from a French fort, but managed to row itself just out of range of the guns). 

 

The rules seem to give us the kind of game we want. As with Black Power, they are easy to tweak and I have already made a few house rules- for example, adding rules allowing for bow and stern chasers- to make it a bit more “meatier” for those games when we have less than four or five ships per side. But the rules play fast, we got a lot of turns in, and a real ‘story” developed.  

 

No pictures, alas. The ships remain unpainted- partly because space is at a premium on my painting table with miniatures I need to finish first, but also as I still have cold feet about rigging the ships. And at some point I need to order ratlines, or else try to fashion some on my own. Given the number I need, and postage/ exchange rates these days, the latter is tempting me.

Napoleonics- yes, Napoleonics!  We had a small refresher game of Black Powder, which somehow petered out due to the fact that Giovanni and myself hadn’t seen each other for a while, so we spent most of the time chewing the fat and getting a bit… tipsy. 

 

The most recent addition to my Napoleonics collection!

Front Rank figures, with a heavily-converted saluting officer.

Fact: when you’ve painted more division and brigade commanders, than you have painted divisions and brigades for them to command, you’re doing it wrong. 

 

Still, we enjoyed the game and are looking forward to staging more Napoleonic scenarios in the future. But I really need to get more Prussians and Russians painted first.

 

American War of Independence (!) Coming somewhat out of left field was a skirmish game using the Song of Drums and Tomahawks rule set, featuring Rod’s well-painted woodland tribesmen from Warlord, and my much older (and much less-well-painted) Front Rank equivalents. 

 

These were supported by five, hurriedly-block-painted (and even more hurriedly-based) British light infantry. That handful of redcoats represents the grand total of what I have for gaming that period, bar some old Front Rank Prussian grenadiers that might pass for Hessians. 

 

The game was an interesting change of pace for us, and proved to be a lot of fun. It was a good scenario, with lots of drama; I’ll likely post a full battle report soon. 

 

But despite that, and given all the other projects I have on the go, I can’t see myself going much further with the AWI. More likely the FIW if anything, as I already have more miniatures I can use for that one, both here and in Vancouver.

One of the problems is that the rising costs of miniatures, postage, and a crummy exchange rate are really making me think more carefully about what I need/ want / can justify spending money on. In many cases (Warlord!) the total costs of ordering abroad are well beyond my current comfort zone. 

But truth be told I really do need to work on what I have- and indeed to radically rationalize cull the increasingly out-of-control herd. 

Not on the endangered list, however, is my growing ACW collection for use with Rebels & Patriots. 

We haven’t even gamed this yet, as it is another of those projects where I need to reach critical mass for both sides, Yanks and Rebs, as no one else here has miniatures for the period.

But I'm steadily getting there. I’ve nearly finished the core of my Union force of infantry, artillery and (most recently) dismounted cavalry, but the traitorous Secesh need more work before they are ready in numbers to take the field.  

I also need more terrain- I’ve already posted pictures of the church I finished, but there is also now a barn and house. However, I still need to work on the fences I bought from Renedra- and that is a lot of fences! But one can never have too many fences for a decent ACW tabletop.

I'm very happy with the MDF barn, though.

And this sniper; a freebee from the Warlord Black Powder ACW supplement I got some years ago,

I have a skirmish campaign in mind for these, but more on that later.

Lastly, but by no means least, a shout-out to Richard and his new wargaming blog here. I've had the pleasure of chatting with him in some Zoom calls and in a number of fora, and he is always an entertaining poster- an all-round top dog, in fact.