British 80 gun Caesar and nameless French 76

Has It Been So Long?

According to my blog, it's been about a year since I posted any ships from the Age of Sail project.  I'm sure by now I've lost my ship adventuring loving audience.  Maybe it's time to take them back by a storm at sea!

Here we have a named ship for the British, the 80 gun HMS Caesar, and some nameless wretch of a 76 for the French.  As it has been my habit, I make these ships in pairs.

The Caesar

First to raise expectations:

This is a LINKY-LINK to BW's post of the HMS Caesar.  He did a smashing job and I believe it's the same Langton model.  Take a look at the other ships too because you know you want to...I'll be here when you get back.

And while I am highlighting people with more talent than myself; Here's another CLICKY-Click to Vol's blog and his excellent ships.  I could of swore he had a post on the Caesar but I couldn't find it.

But now to dash you back to reality.  Here is my Caesar.

Actually came out pretty well.

Don't tell anyone, but I kinda screwed up on the pendant.

Ship, Ship, Shippy Ship Ship.

A close up of some of the rigging.

The stern cabin looks pretty smart.
Also, I need at least one shot with my fingers in it to show the scale.

Sail off  to the storage bin.
Safe Travels.

French 76

Next up is this French 76.  However, I don't have any rules that really differentiate between a 76 and 74, so really it'll just be another 74.  This isn't any particular ship so it's got no name for the present.

Ahh, we meet again, my old enemy, the double sail jib.
It is a such pain to get on right.

In all humility, I think I've gotten pretty good at ships.
They are some of my favorites models..

I do like the more rounded French Stern cabin.
Remember that I have the hands of a lumber jack
which helps make the ships look extra small and petite.

This ship too can sail off to the storage bin.
Safe travels and fair winds.

The Immediate Future is Floating on the Ocean.

So, for the moment let’s pretend that the Kublacon Convention at the end of May is not going to be cancelled due to the virus.  We shall see.   At the convention  I have signed up to host some Age of Sail games because I wanted to run games because I enjoy such things, but wanted to make it easy on myself.  It’s NO PROBLEM to plunk down the sea mat and some awesome looking squadrons, plus it’ll be easy to transport.  This won’t be anything Trafalgar-ish, just around 7-10 ships per side.  Like I said, no problem.

But there’s a problem; I don’t have that many ships. 

All my ships safely in their storage bin.
See, they made it there safely after all.

What I have is 5 ships per side, that’s including these two new ones.  Time to get to work.  Nothing spurs productivity like a deadline.  For the foreseeable future, I’ll be a Ship Making Machine. 

My Age of Sail lead pile.
Each circle is a hull and masts to complete 1 ship.

Waiting in the shipyard are 5 ships, and I’m gonna try to get them all done in time for the convention.  It is a little over 2 months away so there should be plenty of time (in theory).  Maybe if there’s an excess of hobby time and these get done ahead of schedule, I’ll start in on some extras like super cool broadside markers.  Or of course I could just order a few more ships.  

But time is a wastin'!  What am I doing just sitting around blogging.

Two more ships in the works.
Facing away from each other like they're siblings on a time out.

Maybe it’ll go pretty fast, the basic parts of the ships do go together pretty quickly.

So if you need me, I’ll be out to sea. So....

Sea you next time!

Knot if I don’t see you Schooner!

That’s a really bad pun, I’m such a Nautiboy.  But really I just gave in to the Pier Pressure.

I'm Shore that I have you Tide up in laughter. (last one I promise)

On a Serious Note

It's a surreal time right now. Take care of yourselves and your families.

Blood, Bilge, and Iron Balls Review

A post about the Age of Sail rule set Blood, Bilge, and Iron Balls, with some house rules added, and some talk about hobbying in the end there. 

I admit it, I mainly got these rules because of the name.

Blood, Bilge, and Iron Balls Review

There was night recently where I was left to my own devices but didn't feel like painting miniatures and wanted to play something.  And because it was last minute and I have no friends it had to be a solo game.  I was groping for something easy to set up and take down which pointed toward the Age of Sail, because it's so easy to plonk down the ocean mat and some of my beautiful ships.

For my test game, I set up 2 French ships in line
and had 2 British ships attacking from an angle.
All ships are 74s

Let's Talk First About the Ship Record Sheets

I've never played an AoS game that didn't use ship logs.  It comes with the territory and is practically a necessity to track the many things that can happen on these complicated vessels.  As BW once put it; A Ship of the Line of that time was as complex as a modern day space shuttle. 

A record sheet

The book has all the ship logs for all types of ships, and can also be downloaded from the Pen and Sword site.

Here we see that we are concerned with hits to the usual areas of interest: the Hull, Rigging, Guns, Command, and Crew.  There's also a section to track the set of the sails and speed, and a table to track fires.  Fires seem to happen in the game a little more than I like but I love the way that they slowly escalate and then become a BIG HOT problem if not dealt with early.  There's probably a life lesson in there for our own BIG HOT problems. 

Some aspects that I really like:
Many of the hit boxes are grouped together in clusters called 'stars,'  for example; a crew star is made up of 7 points.  When the crew takes damage, you cross off the points of the star until it's all gone and then on to the next star.  A star is still available for use in repairs / boarding actions / dinner parties as long as it's not all crossed out.  This is a great way to illustrate the crew degrading over time.  The same thing goes for rigging damage, each mast is a little group.  There are some special stars that represent the marines and special parts of the crew who have unique skills; the sailing master, the gunner, and the carpenter.  When these stars are crossed out the ship functions less effectively which is a very nice touch to add some historical flavor to the damage.  For example, when the Gunner star is crossed out representing that the experienced gun captains have taken casualties, the ship gains a -1 to shooting. 

Also I really like the way marines are represented in the game.  Marines shooting from the deck and crows nests into the enemy ship were a big part of close range fighting.  Also marines are very useful in boarding actions as they should be. 

On the down side (depending on your perspective), the ships are all generic and the same across rates.  While a 74 3rd rate has more stuff than a 44 5th rate frigate, a French 74 is the same as a British 74. In fact, the  ship records don't differentiate between nations but just "here is a 74."  Almost all the ships also have the same movement rates as well, so there's no such thing as a faster sailing ship because it's got a clean bottom and shiny new sails.  And there are no skill rating for crews

On the whole the ship record sheets have enough going on with them that you feel like you are running a sailing ship of the line. A new player could probably control 4 ships pretty effectively and an experienced player even more.  though playing 1 ship would be boring. 

And now that we understand the record sheets, we can get into the game play.

Game Play

The game turn is essentially made up of 6 phases; a Sailing (movement) phase, a Firing phase, and a Repair for each fleet.  So in a two player game with one hero controlling the British and the other villain controlling the French (to take a classic example) there would be a British Sailing phase, a French Sailing phase, a British firing phase, a French firing phase, and you get the idea.

But the fun part is, these phases are done randomly.  You either can use cards or chips drawn out of a colorful sack like I do.  So a turn can end up being British Sail, French Fire, French Repair, British repair, French Sail, and then British Fire.  This creates a lot of tension in the game and allows for a bit of luck (or some might call it skill, though others would call it dumb luck) where maybe one can fire twice on an enemy before she can return fire depending on how the chips come out.
This activation sequence also makes the game pretty solo friendly, which is pretty good given my friendless existence. 

My ships get up close and personal in my test game.
Ships shooting from close and point blank range will really pound each other to match sticks.
Around this point I realized that I liked these rules. 

Sailing Phase

Moving the ship is very easy in this game but still ticks enough boxes of sailing that it feels like sailing ships and not space ships.  A ship's speed is determined by how much sail it has set, it's attitude to the wind, and how many masts it still has standing.  Sail Set is a little too simplified, it's either Full, Half or Battle Sail, or None.  But perhaps see my house rules below.  Ships can turn while they move and turn better downwind then upwind which I like.  Ships have to move their full distance and basically it means a ship at half sail is gonna move around 2-6 inches and at full sail around 6-10 inches. Since there are no crew skills tacking is automatic, which I also like because I think rolling for that is a PITA. 

Fire Phase

Ships can only fire when their sides card/chit is drawn.  Which can be a little maddening for veteran Age of Sail players who want to "fire as she bears."  There is no reload mechanic.  There is no special ammunition.  It might sound hard to get off any shots when you can't control when your ships fire but in my little solo test game I found it not to be a problem really.  Ships still fired all the time, and you had an interesting dynamic about adjusting your tactics depending on what cards were already drawn this turn.  Gunnery is pretty simple and uses D6s, and instead of breaking guns down by caliber its simply that larger ships with more and bigger guns get more dice.  A 74 has 7 guns and 7 dice, a 100 gun ship has 10 guns and 10 dice, and so on.  Modifiers are few and are basically just the range, and ships that are point blank from each other will pound each other to match sticks.  This is very streamlined and works, and is fun because you still roll a lot of dice.  I found that I didn't really miss looking up each gun deck and using 12 pounders on the top, 24 pounders in the middle, and 32 pounders on the bottom with each having it's own to hit number.  With these rules it's just the closer you are, and the more guns you have, the better. 

One annoying thing is that the modifier for firing high at the rigging is a -2 or a -1 depending where you look in the book.  It REALLY bugs me when modifiers are not consistent.  The use of Cannonades is an optional rule and not well thought out in my opinion and it’s probably easier to just leave them out since the weight of the broadside is already abstracted. 

Another thing missing is that there is no modifier for firing guns at full sail, when there REALLY should be.  Ships reduced sail in order to reduce the damage taken to their rigging and to create a more stable platform for their own gun decks, so I’ll be adding a house rule for that.  For those more familiar with the rules may see my house rules section down below if inclined. 

Damage:

Each time a ship is hit is crosses off 1 point of a crew star and then draws a card from the damage deck for additional damage.  Rakes are handled by drawing more cards per hit, which is a nice mechanic.  The damage deck is made up from a deck of normal playing cards; each suit represents a different area of the ship: rigging, hull, crew and command, and the guns.  Jokers are like critical hits.  Higher values are more severe hits.  For example: Hearts are hits to the hull.  Low numbers are 1 hull hit while face cards are 3 hull hits.  So if a ship takes 5 hits it crosses out 5 points of a crew star (starting on 1 star and when it’s out of points moving to the next) and then draws 5 cards and applies those affects.  This is a fun mechanic and makes the damage to each ship start to be unique but not over whelming.  My only complaint about it is that the rules do not explicitly state when you shuffle the damage deck.  I’m assuming that you shuffle at the end of a turn but it bugs me when rules that use decks don’t state when to shuffle them; because when you do affects the probability.  Odds of getting a particular card go up the longer you deal from the deck.  I mean, we’ve all seen movies where people count cards at black jack right? I’ve never done it, but that’s because I’ve seen movies of what happens to people who count cards at black jack. 

There are also some nice mechanics to what happens to the ship when its chain of command gets hit; represented by the command star. 

Ships strike when various damage tracks are crossed off completely, however it’s been my experience that it’s always the crew stars being all crossed out that makes a ship strike.  There's no roll for morale, and I'm not sure how I feel about that just because I am used to morale rolls.  

Repair Phase

I like it when sailing games have rules for conducting repairs, but don't like it when those rules are a bunch of extra book keeping.  I'm hard to please as the wife will tell you.   These rules do repairs really well.  Basically for each crew star available it's 1D6 to assign to a damaged area.  This creates a nice dynamic where in the beginning of a battle, light damage to the ship is easily repaired, but as the battle progresses and more and more crew stars are eliminated the number of repair dice dwindles and eventually can't keep up anymore, and you have to triage what needs are more urgent.

Boarding:

After all the event cards (or chits) are played out, any ships involved in boarding actions then fight it out.  I like the way boarding is handled in the rules.  The sequence needs some minor clarifications but other than that the rules work well and do what I expected: Marines are really useful, the boarder can become the boardee if things go poorly.  Boarding actions go on for the goldilocks amount of turns (basically a few turns): so long enough not to be over instantly but short enough not to drag on and on.

After all that; it's reshuffle the damage cards and the event cards and start the turn over


British Gunnery

There's an optional rule that I didn't use for my play test but am planning on using all the time now called British Gunnery.  It states that a British ship may fire it's guns during the fire phase OR the repair phase.  It doesn't shoot twice, but just more options of when to fire.  The ship must have a full command star to do this.  If it does fire during the repair phase then it treats the fire phase as it's repair phase, but makes repairs at the cost of 2 crew stars per repair die.  I think this is a great rule to give the British the leg up that they had during this time period.

And That's Basically the Game, But What Else is in the Book?

There's a bunch of ship logs, a few scenarios, and a campaign section.  Full disclosure, I haven't read the campaign section; because who am I kidding, I haven't played a campaign in over a decade.

Overall:

BBiB is a good AoS ruleset that provides a fun game overall.  Most of the mechanics are streamlined and easy to pick up, and provides just enough historical flavor in the way that the ship operates, takes damage, makes repairs, and used the crew to make me feel like it's about sailing ships.  What it gains in streamlining it looses other aspects that are typically in AoS rule sets; all ships of a type are the same, there are no rules for elite or poor crews, sailing is generic etc..  But these can be added with some simple house rules that I discuss below.  Overall, a recommended rule set for playing multiplayer games with each player controlling 3-5 ships.

Stews House Rules and Clarifications:

This is a section mainly for those who already have the rules and want to read how I will tinker with them.  

One thing missing is speeding up or slowing down.  The only way change speed in these rules is to change sail (only 3 options) and change direction to the wind, because ships don't have brakes.
Yet while ships often 'hove to' by turning into the wind to slow down and reducing sail, they in fact did have brakes as there were a number of ways to slow the ship down while not changing it's heading; spill wind from the sails, use less sails, back sails, etc..  SO in future games I'm gonna try out this House rule:
Ships start the sail phase moving at it's indicated sail setting.  At the end of the sail phase the player announces whether the ship is reducing or adding sails (because other ships can see what she is doing) and the player can then adjust the sail speed either left or right or up and down.  Example: A Ship with 3 masts at half sails wants to slow down next phase.  He announces this to the other players and then can choose to either shift to left to No Sail or shift down to using 2 masts speeds. 

Two thing missing is a modifier for firing the guns while at full sail, as I talked about above.  Here's my idea: -1 modifier while shooting if at full sail, and if hit while at full sail the ship takes a rigging hit as well as the usual hit to the crew.

Three thing missing is the ability to rate crews.  No crew is better than any others.  The amount of crew stars a ship gets is based on it's size..  I think one way to give a crew a boost is to assign it an extra crew star or two; in this way the ship will make more repairs and stay in the fight longer because it can take more hits.  Conversely if you want a ship to have less stamina you can take away a crew star.

Four thing is some ranges for smaller ships.  My AoS models are all Langton 1/1200 ships and the rules are written for slightly bigger ships as the author expresses on his blog here.  The ranges I'll use are: Point blank is w/in 2" (this is basically base to base, if you measure from mast to mast), Close Range is 4", Medium Range is 8",  Long range 12", and extreme range 16".  I'll keep the sailing distances the same though as moving around 6" a turn seems about right to me.

With All This Talk About Sailing Rules, I feel Like A Ship is Coming On...

Or maybe two of them.

A WIP shot of the two ships on my hobby desk.
Both are painted, and now just need to be assembled and rigged.
Hopefully correctly.  I am rusty at making ships.

A French 76 in the works.
But really, what't the difference between a 76 and a 74?
In most rules, not a thing.

A British 80 gun in the works as well.
This will be my version of the HMS Caesar

These completed ships will most probably be the next post.  Try not to hold your breath till next time.

I've also been very distracted of late in real life, and my time spent blogging and commenting on other's blogs has greatly been curtailed.  SO if you have missed my inane comments on your brilliant blog posts, rest assured there are good reasons.  I finally found enough time to complete this post just so my online presence doesn't completely disappear.  I appreciate your brilliant comments on my inane posts.

French 80 and British 74 Ships

After the marathon game of Post Captain last January I was reminded that there were more ships to paint.... and now they're finished!

What a story!  what a twist ending!  What an obvious conclusion! 


Or is it....

Paint What You Want Play (Or Alternatively: The Stronger motivation)

In general, the best way to motivate painting is to play games.  I know for myself the more games played means the more painting done.  This is because I'm a 'paint to play' gamer.  I've never bought or painted a figure just cause I thought it was cool and be fun to paint.  Each figure is meant for the game table to be gamed with (no matter how long that may take...sometimes a looong while. lol).



After the Gaming Weekend (as posted in Jan) of AoS and ACW, while motivation was high for those genres some ACW infantry and  ships were placed on the paint table.  Speaking for myself, this is something that often happens, that the selection of hobby projects is influenced by what I played last.  However, sometimes momentum for these projects can sag when the mind starts to look forward to the next game.  I get some cognitive dissonance if I am painting for one genre while planning to play another.  I'm excited for the next thing and want to prepare for that.  I also think that this happens to a lot of wargamers, which is why so many miniature projects get half started or languish in varies stages of completion.  Wargamers get distracted by the next thing on the horizon and don't finish what they start.  because we are bad people.  No, it's that:


We are more motivated to paint for future games than from past ones.
 
Just something that I noticed.

So it took a little self discipline to finish these ships as I was thinking about other things, mainly Lord of the Rings, but more on that in a future post.  Try not to hold your breath in anticipation.  But I am glad that I stuck to it because now the fleet has grown by 2 more ships.  And I have that sense of completion of a project finished.  Cue the contented sigh.


Plus, I really like the way they came out. 

French 80 gun SOL

First up, I present to you a French 80 gun Ship of the Line.  I've been needing one these for awhile. 
This ship would represent the Bucentaure, which was the same design as the French Formidable, which is the French Admiral's Flagship in the Battle of Cape Ortegal Scenario.
The future scenario can be seen in a past blog post HERE.  (how was that for a mind bender?)

A very proud pennant in this pic! 

I think the more correct paint scheme for the Bucentaure would be just plain yellow sides, but honestly there is just so little info on how the ships were actually painted. It just doesn't seem to be a thing that mattered much.  I can kinda understand, as it's not like a ships color mattered in her identification.  And as I tend to use the ships interchangeably (unless it's a specific model of a famous ship), I tend to just go for nice looking paint schemes. 

it's required that at least one photo has my fingers in it, just to show the scale. 

The Stern came out looking pretty.

For this ship I added some Red on the gunwale and upper deck. 

British 74 gun SOL

Adding to the numbers of the British, here is another 74 gun 3rd rate.  The backbone and work horse of any Napoleonic Age of Sail fleet. 

A blue strip on this one, just because it looks sexy.

This ship was not made to model any ship in particular, just a generic 74.

Rigging everywhere! 

Now sail off to the world at large!  Or at least into the storage bin.


Last year's goal for AoS was to have 8 ships, and now that goal is reached albeit 3 months late.  There will certainly be more ships in the future.  For now, 4 ships a side is a good amount for a 4 player game using Post Captain (2 ships each).  Goal achieved!

I award myself the "yay me" for achieving the goal
and for my self discipline.

Aftermath and Future Seeing.

Unlike my usual habit of being focuses on a few projects, lately I've been doing a little bit on several fronts at once.  This has left me feeling a little scattered and disorganized, and the current state of the hobby desk reflects this...

What a mess! 

Time to organize!  Recent purchases have to found a home, paints put in the rack, game supplies back on the shelves, vacuum the floor to get all the little bits and pieces that have fallen like snowflakes before Son #2 (now almost a year old) finds them and puts them in his mouth.  Maybe a little soap and water to combat the smell. 

As always, thanks for taking the time to read this blog.  Be back soon. 

Battle of Cape Ortegal; a Post Captain Scenario

While I'm busy casting little bricks out of plaster and handling some family business; here is a scenario I've been working on with the assistance of invaluable BW..

Battle of Cape Ortegal

The battle of Cape Ortegal was the last act of the Trafalgar campaign in 1805; in which 4 French ships of the line that managed to escape that battle are pounced on 4 British ships of the line and 4 frigates while they were trying to sail back to a French port.  the French stopped trying to run away and decided to fight and it went very poorly for them: it was a complete British victory with all four French ships damaged and taken and the British only took light damages.  You can go and read more about the actual battle yourself if you like...

However, this is a great historical scenario for Post Captain for the low number of ships involved and the potential for a great convention game.  While discussing it with BW he loaned me some info from his book "The Trafalgar companion" which is now on my Christmas list, and together we came up with the scenario.  There are minor differences between his and mine (down to personal style and tastes) but overall they are basically the same.  I'm posting it because 1) just to share and 2) so the blog acts as my on-line storage.  I'm hoping to run this sometime next year and get some play tests in before then.  

Overall Picture of the scenario

Most of the scenarios information can be gleaned from the set up pic.  It shows 4 French SOLs in line ahead being attacked by 4 British SOLs in a staggered line abreast.  I removed the British frigates that were there historically in order to simplify the scenario.  Also historically, some of the French ships were damaged by a storm and I've restored them to full health.

This might seem like a straight up fight and it kinda is; but actually the French are at a distinct disadvantage; as they were historically.  At this time the British navy is just better than the French Navy and this is reflected well in the PC rules.  SO, in order to give the French a chance of 'winning' the scenario the victory conditions have to cunningly crafted:

British Victory: All 4 French ships strike with no British ships struck.
French Victory: 2 British ships strike. It also doesn't matter how many French ships strike; if 2 British ships strike then the French win as they have achieved considerably more than their historical counter parts.
Any other result can be considered a draw.
NOTE: for the above, it's not withdraw (a possible result of failing a moral check), but strike.  If a French ship withdraws it's basically making a run for home which is what they wanted to do anyway.  If a British ship withdraws it's utterly shameful but not enough to lose the scenario, but will make it harder for the British to win due to dwindling resources.  Also note that a British ship would have to be very damaged or extremely unlucky to strike in the first place. 

For anyone familiar with PC, here are some notes about the set up for the ships (again mainly for me to refer to at some later time).

All French ships have Crack captains and Regular crew
The HMS Caesar and the HMS Hero have Crack Captains and Crack crew
the HMS Courageoux and the HMS Namur have Elite captains and Elite crew.

• HMS Namur uses the Thunderer ship card
• HMS Courageoux uses the Defense Ship card
• Duguay Trouin uses the Ulm ship card
• To represent the British closing in on the French: for the first turn all British ships have a Gust and all French have an Eddy.

These cards were selected more for 'balance' than for rigid historical accuracy.  For example, British elite crews shoot so extremely well that giving them really well armed ships is stacking the deck too much in their favor, so the British elite crews are placed in ships with average amounts of cannons. 

Scenario Play Through

Lot's of people are familiar with Norm's blog and he always has the great kindness that when he presents a scenario he also does a play through, which I think is an excellent way to do things.

However, I find myself really short on time and ships and did I mention that BW helped me with the scenario?  So I'm going to cheat and direct you to BW's blog where he has not one, but TWO write ups of the Battle of Cape Ortegal.  Please find NUMBER ONE and NUMBER TWO.  

and if for some reason you didn't know about those blogs, you were missing out...

Hopefully I'll be able to do my own play through soon enough...

Till next time! 

Dry dock repairs complete! Adventures in ship repairs.

slight delay in posting fun hobby stuff as I've had absolutely nill time for hobbies due to family crisises...crisisi?  whatever the plural form of crisis is.... but onward and upward!

That took awhile.

As discussed earlier; during my journeys over Labor day weekend to Pacificon and back my sailing fleet was damaged by a near car accident and an attack from a ferocious house cat.  At the end of the weekend they looked like this:

Ouch!

On a closer inspection; 1 of the ships got off pretty light but the rest had some moderate to significant damage.  I also learned, for the second time, that when you start pulling off damaged rigging this often leads to needing to pull out another thread of rigging..
and another
and another
and another.

This is because a lot of the threads are glued in the same places.

So in addition to repairing masts and sails, I had to do much more re-rigging than I initially thought.
For some of these ships it's the third time I had to do this, and to be quite honest it's not as much fun the third time around.


But never mind all that, because I persevered and began to enjoy the process of rigging once more as each ship started to look ship shape again.  These ships continue to be some of my favorite models even if they are delicate little flowers.

Ze French fleet iz readz for battle onze more

We look good again!

Da British are also ready for a-battle

This is one of my favorite ships, just came out looking good.

Though I should break my ships more often...

Because it seems like whenever I do someone nice sends me a package in the mail.  In this case, Mr. PC who is my friend and the owner of the ship chewing cat; told me that he sent me a little something in the mail and to let me know if it arrived.  Because he was (I'm assuming) wracked with guilt.  Even though I told him it wasn't a big deal and the ships were already damaged anyway.

Anyway, his little something turned out to be a small lead lead pile of it's own from Waterloo Minis; consisting of no less than:

The famous HMS Victory (at quarters)

a 74 gun ship (at quarters)

The also famous USS Constitution
The not as famous USS Congress
and some sea bases and assorted ratlines. 


Quite, the gift.  Once again Mr. PC, you are too generous. 




(Wasn't I just bragging about how small my AoS leadpile was?  LOL)

The search for Better Storage Solutions

Each ship is based on a magnet.  I think the magnet is sufficiently strong to hold the ships in place.


see here; Ships on the fridge..

I was tempted to open the fridge door and test just how strong the magnet was...
but I resisted.

So I think my problem is that in their little storage box, I don't have enough metal for the magnet to really grip.  So it's off to either find an all metal storage box, some sort of metal sheet, or maybe some metal paper or some such.  I've searched before for a metal sheet that I could cut but could not find one at all the craft and DIY stores, so I don't think that's a good option right now.  I'll probably end up going the easy route and ordering a sheet of metal paper from Litko because it'll ship to me and I won't have to spend time wandering around stores because I seem to be very low on free time these days.

Hopefully I'll get back to more regular posting again soon.  I start to feel a little ashamed when other blogs that I enjoy following post 2 or 3 times in-between my posts.  I know we all must go at our own pace and sometimes life interferes with hobby time, and time one can spend sitting in front of the computer writing pithy captions under photos of toy ships sticking to the fridge. 

I did however have time for a marathon session of boardgaming madness...

That's right: Disney Princess Candy Land with Daughter #1. 
Played 10 games in a row.
EPIC.

 Thanks for reading! 

Pacificon Game Convention AAR!

Been awhile since I posted due to Blah blah blah - who really cares - ON WITH THE GAME CONTENT!

Pacificon AAR

Pacificon is a game convention in the SF Bay Area over Labor day weekend.  It's a good sized convention; it's not as big as Kubla but bigger than the local Sacramento cons.  I was able to shuck my hundreds of responsibilities for 4 days of gaming with only little ol' me to worry about.   😃

I had the games that I was running all prepared, armies organized, and early Friday morning I gathered all my stuff together and headed off on the 2.5 hour drive.  

everything needed for 2 games of ACW, plus a bonus look at daughter number 1's artwork.

I stopped to see some friends and have a late breakfast in Fremont, and in the last 20 mins of the drive managed to NARROWLY miss being in car accident... I had to preform like a split S maneuver in order to save myself and the car; this resulted in the all my carefully packed plastic tubs full of miniatures and terrain careening all over the car...damaging some.  

so after the first sense of relief that myself and the car were unscathed, there was a big feeling of annoyance that my stuff got damaged and disorganized. 

what a mess!  my nicely organized units all...disorganized.

fixed!  that's more like it.
Now let's go see how the CSA looks

CRAP!

Age of Sail

Friday afternoon through the evening I played in an Age of Sail game hosted by Steve M. using his 1/1200 ships (mostly GHQ) and rules he wrote called "74."  The situation: 6 British Ships of the Line (SOLs) versus 12 Spanish SOLS in a battle loosely modeled on the Battle of Saint Vincent.  

British in the middle

It's a small fleet game set of rules, so I commanded 4 ships of the Spanish including the Flag ship the Santisima Trinidad; which while having a monster of a broadside (she did have 4 decks after-all) was absolutely terrible at everything else.  Slow, hard to maneuver, low morale, and a crew of untrained farmers.  My other 3 ships included 1 good one (fast, good crew, good broadside), 1 decent one, and 1 more SOL that was really just there to take hits.  

my flag ship

The game rules use preplotted orders for movement (writing down # of inches forward, turns and such) which is fun.  Sometimes your opponent will  Zig when you thought they were gonna Zag so you steered yourself out of position.  But when you guess right and line up a good shot it's very rewarding.  

And get this-- we Spanish WON!  3 British ships struck to 1 Spanish ship struck.  Talk about history rewriting itself.  I chalk it up to my born with natural superior seamanship skills (only recently discovered) and some extremely lucky dice.  The Santisima managed to pass every moral check she had to make and she had to make many because after the first scratch to her bulwark she needed a morale check if a British ship even looked at her meanly.

A giant mess in the middle of the table

It was a fun game, the people in it were nice, good attitudes, laughs, and some fun talk about AoS Miniatures and games.  Most were of the opinion that the best ship miniatures were made from GHQ hulls with Langton masts and sails, bc GHQ masts were brittle and Langton hulls were ridiculously big (but..but... my ships are all Langton hulls and sails (and I like them just fine.)

AWI

Saturday morning I played in an AWI scenario; BUNKER HILL, put on by Matt H.   Always a fun scenario is Bunker Hill.  This game was also GOR-geous with really well painted 28mm miniatures and terrain.  Extra fun: whenever a figure was removed Matt provided a casualty figure to lay on the table, so eventually the table got strewn with wounded soldiers which I just thought looked cool. The rules were Brother Against Brother which I haven't played before but gave a good game.  

my troops!

facing off against Bunker Hill

side discussion: Aggressiveness (no I don't mean between the actual players) and Convention games.

Let me tell you something about my wargaming self; I am not a particularly brilliant strategist, nor am I particularly lucky with dice, and I'm not all that good looking but:  if you need a player to aggressively attack an objective in a miniature wargame then I AM YOUR MAN!   How many convention wargames have you played where you were the defending player but the attacking players never really got the attack going so you just sat there the whole time with not much to do?  It's not a problem with me because I like to attack, and attacking drives the action of the game.  You want me on the attacking side because if there is anything consistent about me is that I will attack the objective!

So when it came time to pick sides I immediately volunteered to play the British.  Now there were supposed to be 8 players in this game but 4 never showed up so I got to play all  of the 8 units of regular Grenadiers who were to assault the hill.  PERFECT!

The hill is mine!

It was another fun game, good people and good GM.  At the end of turn 8 my British had decidedly taken Bunker Hill with 3 units in the trench.  Victory for the British!

ACW

Saturday night from 6 to 11, I ran one of my ACW games of Regimental Fire and Fury, the Barlow's Knoll scenario.  You can read about a previous play test HERE.

The game went faster this time with the CSA making an all out assault up the hill and driving the Union back.  I chalk this up to the minor changes I made on the CSA flank where I took away one element of broken ground, released the brigades on turn 1 versus turn 2, and tweeked where the units set up just slightly.  I also gave the CSA players a small pep talk about needing to attack though they needed no encouragement! The game worked well with 5 players (3 CSA and 2 USA), though in the future I will make it a 6 hour game instead of 5 as I think the extra hour will work better.  We did manage to play through to a good result though and the players were happy.

The CSA flank attack

View from the Union side

More thoughts about GMing later.
I am very attentive to the players when I run a game which is why I don't get many pictures during it.

More Age of Sail

Saturday morning found me at another AoS game, this time with the rules  Form on Admirals Wake with GM Robert B.  Now, it was this very same GM and rules that was my first AoS game ever about a year ago, so it was fun to see Rob face to face again and tll him how he started a whole new wargaming genre for me, how it's HIS FAULT that I now have 6 ships and plans to continue to grow the fleet.  Rob B uses Sails of Glory ships for his game, and mentioned that he had close to 80 of them.  But he doesn't really play SoG because he doesn't like the rules.

The situation; 2 British and 2 french squadrons that are basically the same face off  to see whose Broadsides and sailing is superior (2 3rd rates and 1 2nd rate per squadron).  I took the British this time in the lead squadron with the plan to beat up wind and then drive down onto the French which worked out really well.  In the end I had 1 ship that was crippled, while my opposite number had lost 2 ships and had the last running for it's life.  All in all, i think 4 French struck their colors to no British for another resounding British victory.  For the Con this makes me 3 and 0, not that anyone keeps track of these things (except that I do secretly on a score board that I keep under my bed).   I was also voted best British captain and received a SoG ship of the line for a prize!  most unexpected!  Rob was also very generous in that he gave us all a copy of the rules and the QRS which will come in handy when I start running my own Form on Admirals Wake games.  I already have the rules but lack a hex sea mat, plus you really need about a 6-10 ships per side in order to give players enough to do.

More ACW

Sunday night I hosted my other ACW game with Regimental Fire and Fury , a battle based on the battle of Port Republic but with the history changed some to allow for a more fair game.  The Fire and Fury website has this scenario as a free download that one can find HERE (look for 'Port Republic what if" scenario).  I made some changes to it like I sped up the reinforcement schedule and changed some of the deployment, all of which is boring to talk about so I won't go into it now.  At one point there were 6 players but settled into 5, with 3 CSA and 2 USA.  3:2 seems to be a good ratio for RFF with 3 being on the attacking side.  

CSA attacking from right to left

Now from left to right

The game was supposed to go from 4 to 10, but everyone was having enough fun and the game was close that we ended up playing past that, and I got to step in for a Union player and play a few turns even which was fun.  CSA victory as the union finally hit the "greater losses" negative modifier and began to melt away.  

Another good group of players for this game.  Special guest star of "Yellow Admiral" on TMP who played on the CSA.  It was nice to meet face to face!  

Other Games:

In some of my few spare moments I walked around and took pictures of other games that I wasn't involved in, because that seems to be the thing to do when you have a blog. : ) 

A Rank and File ACW game

Songs of Drums and Mohawks or some such similarly named.  

Big Battle Cry

What a Tanker, in the snow

A huge game of Bolt Action

Thoughts on GMing Games at a Con

So I ran two games, both ACW.  I had a really good time GMing at this con and was reminded why I do it in the first place.  And while it is nice when people compliment your toys (your game looks great!),  I do get extra warm fuzzy feelings when people compliment my GMing style, and tell me they had fun playing and that I did a good job explaining the rules and running the game overall.  When people tell me they had a good time during my game, I feel good knowing that I helped make their Con experience a good one because I want everyone to have as much fun as I am.  I consider both my GMed games to be big winners, which makes me 5-0 for the Con, what a streak! (i'll go mark my secret score board really quick).  

Overall: 

What a great time I had, even with the near car wreck.  While I might not be always lucky when it comes to dice, I have always been pretty consistency lucky when it comes to who is playing in the games that I am playing in or hosting.  While some people might be more boisterous (yelling out what numbers they need and having large reactions to the dice) and some more reserved (quietly looking over the QRS, rolls a die without fanfare, and nodding the head just once at the result) everyone I came into contact with were great players with good attitudes.  Hurrah for all of us.  

It's just too bad I couldn't sqeeze in one more Age of Sail game.... but wait!

Some More Age of Sail Games

  Monday morning I left the convention to head over to another friends house Mr PC.  Before I moved to the Sac area I used to live about 10 mins from him, which made it extra embarrassing when I got lost on the way over.

We planned on playing some AoS games so I brought my ships along to show him Post Captain.  We played a small scenario of 2 French 74s trying to capture an isolated British 1rst rate.  Turned out to be pretty fair fight.   We didn't finish it because I got there later than planned so about halfway through  we switched over to Sails of Glory, mainly for the reasons that I've never played it and he had it in the shrink wrap for the last 3 years.  I gave him my newly won SoG ship of the line.

I thought SoG was a fine game.  We kinda had to learn the rules while playing but I did like the way the ships moved around with the cards and thought that the ship management was simple enough with the deck board but still you had some choices.  Ship management is basically expected in any AoS game.

It's a Hard Life at Sea.

So as I mentioned earlier, I got into near car wreck on the way down, and the tub that held the ships went flying, resulting in some damage.  Real SOLs are sturdy machines of destruction but the miniature SOLs are dainty little girls.  

Anyway, while sitting at the kitchen table with P and examining the ships and talking about our plans and projects, we left left the ships out of the tub on the table and adjourned to his basement to look at wargaming stuff.  When we returned we were met by P's wife who told us that while we were down stairs the cat had jumped up on the table and knocked about the ships even more, even crashing one off the table onto the floor..

The 1 on the left is actually pretty unscathed, the rest have minor to major damage.
Total damages from engagements with a near car crash and a cat.

I don't have a cat, so I never saw it coming.  

I obviously have to find a better way to store and transport these things...

This is twice now that these ships have been destroyed.  ((shipping disaster)

(don't worry BW, I don't need another medal).  😃   (Special thanks BW)

But get this, the cat is named Tsunami.   

So all that damage is the result form the near car crash and then the cat / sea monster / tidal WAAAAVE!

Thanks for reading!  Comments appreciated as always.