Post Captain Conventions Modifications

Post Captain (slight) Modifications:

As stated before, I really like these rules, and one can read my review HERE.  And as I say in that review the only thing that annoys me is the crew management aspect.  Not that you have to manage the crew, that part I like, it's that the crew assignments use fractions, and everyone hates doing math with lots of fractions. Even simple math like addition and subtraction gets complicated when you throw in a .75 here and a  .50 there.  Plus, I want to run this game at a convention sometime, so imagine the math being done by over-caffeinated, perhaps slightly drunk, definitely hopped up on sugar, sleep deprived gamers.   Actually that description can apply to me nearly all the time....

Also I want a gamer to run 2 ships at a time, to minimize the effect of a lucky shot taking out a ship early in the game and leaving the player with not much to do.

Now usually I am not much of a tinkerer with rules, I tend to just play them as written and use common sense when needed, but in this case I see a need to be filled and felt inspired, so here goes:

Two 3rd rate ships square off!
The French ship Scipion and the British ship Spencer

Fractions fractions everywhere:

(I know that this will only be of interest to a very small audience (those that have PC and those that hate fractions, imagine the Venn diagram! ), though still, read along if you wish for fun nautical terms.)

in PC. a 32lbs gun box requires 1.75 crew factors; which makes sense in that each crew factor is 24 men, it took 14 men to work a 32lbs cannon, each gun box is 3 cannons, so 3 x 14 = 42 men / 24 = 1.75 crew factors.  A lower deck, where the heaviest guns would be,  is typically 5 gun boxes, so what's 5 x 1.75?  can you do that in your head easily?  I can't.  It's 8.75.  how many for 4 gun boxes?  4 x 1.75 = 7.  (I can't do that in my head either).  To work 3 gun boxes needs 5.25 crew factors, 2 gun boxes needs 3.5 crew factors, and of course 1 gun box needs 1.75 crew factors.  This sort of fractional math is repeated on all the gun decks, and it all becomes rather messy.   Lets take an example and examine the crew requirements for a 74 gun third rate ship the HMS Spencer (because I really like the name Spencer, because it sounds terrible!).  If you have the rules you can look at the ship card and follow along..  The Spencer has a lower deck of 32lbs, a middle deck of 18lbs, and an upper (or weather) deck with one 18lbs, one 18lbs cannonade, and two 32lbs cannonades.  It has 21 crew factors (504 men).  So to work and fight the ship the basic crew layout is:

8.75 - Lower Deck (32lbs)
6.25 - Middle deck (18lbs)
1.25 - Upper deck 18lbs long cannon
1.50 - Upper deck cannonades (both of the 32lbs and the 18lbs)
2 - To sail the ship at battle sail
1.25 - surplus crew members
21 total.


That's 5 fractions to keep track of; which is a lot.  Maybe you think I'm making too big deal of this and you're right; I'm not in a state of nerd rage or anything.  The rules are also specific in that the intention is NOT for the player to keep track of every crew factor every turn, but only when it's important.  However I've found through playing that it's important more times than you think.  There are some critical times when you have to decide; how many crew to work the guns (and which guns), how many to sail the ship, what are the marines doing (working guns or firing volleys), how many crew for repairs, boarding parties (though that is rare), complicated by subtracting losses of crew, marines, and gun boxes.  Yet there are several times when a ship will take a crew casualty in the Red phase, and the player must decide from which deck / task the loss come from, (the effect of the loss is applied immediately), which then will effect the blue and white phases and perhaps the rigging / repair and this needs to be apparent.

A solo game of PC, that I did because I was BORED at home and wanted to test stuff out.
The ships are in their starting positions, the wind is from the right.

This pic gives an idea of how far ships move in one turn.  Close to a foot.

Rounding is Easy

So step one is easy and just round everything to it's whole number (you can fudge it a bit if ya want).  I also just combine the Upper / weather deck into one category as well to make it easier to track and this deck is filled with the lightest guns anyway.  And now have:

9 - Lower Deck (32lbs)
6 - Middle deck (18lbs)
3 - Upper deck (18lbs long cannons, and the 32lbs and the 18lbs cannonades)
2 - To sail the ship at battle sail
1 - surplus crew members
21 total.

People just grasp whole numbers easier, and one can honestly say that while the layout with fractions is more accurate, the one with whole numbers is much easier and faster to understand.
Added bonus! using whole numbers make it easy track when you use Marines to sub for crew.  (2 marines equal 1 crew for manning the guns in PC).

Here's a table for the actual crew numbers rounded to whole numbers for the most common cannons lbs.

crew numbers for 5 gun boxes of 32 lbs, 24 lbs, ad 18 lbs cannons.
(12lbs cannons are the same as 18lbs cannons BTW)

But One Change Produces Others...

SO this means we have to change (slightly) the way that we track crew assigned to guns, as the standard rules still require fractions.  This again is easy enough:  the first loss of 1 crew should reduce 1 gun box from being worked (reloaded)  and and then at a ratio going down keeping as close to the original numbers as possible.  sounds more complicated than it is.  let's continue with the Spencer and the lower deck:

9 crew = 5 gun boxes  (fully manned)
8 and 7 crew = 4 gun boxes
6 crew = 3 gun boxes
5 and 4 crew = 2 gun boxes
3 and 2 crew = 1 gun box.

--This creates a minimum number of crew factors per number of working gun boxes.  I then figured it out for ALL types of cannons for all decks on ships.  this makes it very easy for the player to know how much crew is needed to fire which guns.  I then put this info into a table for each type and you can see it here....

For example: to reload 5 gun boxes of 24lbs, you need at least 7 crew factors.
 if one has only 5 crew factors working the 24s, it's 3 gun boxes.  

For the weather deck, which usually has the carronades and the lightest guns which require 1 or .5  crew each, just add it up and round as appropriate.

It's really just the same info as above, but in this way a player can immediately see how many gun boxes can be worked by looking at how many crew factors the player has assigned to the deck.  I'll provide a better example below....

Putting it all Together

The deck log that comes with PC is pretty good as is, but as I'm messing about with the crew numbers and providing additional information / tables regarding how the crew and guns interact; I also made a table laying out all the crew assignments.  This is essentially the same as the deck log:

The initial crew assignments of the Spencer in whole numbers.
Multiple columns to the right are there to provide space to do new assignments.  

Now, using power point (power point is your friend, you can do cool wargame stuff with it), I took an image of the ship card, my gun tables, my crew assignment table, and any other info I think is important to be handy (like when to take a command check) and put it all on one sheet.    Here is the Spencer in all her glory:

 

This ship goes to the Captain

I also added little numbers next to the gun box rows so players can more easily ID which is which.

Overall what this does is make the math easy, and put all the info in one place.  Now when a crew factor is lost, a player can cross it off the ship card, and remove it from the crew assignments, and easily know just how much man power is remaining to sail and work the ship and when a ship needs a morale test.  

Fire!
(This is NOT close range.) 

You still need the standard deck log to track MFs, reloading, and repairs.  But since a deck log can track two ships, a player only needs to have a deck log and 2 enhanced ship cards to play.  Which is the same sheets of paper one would likely need to play anyway without modifications.  

Here are a few other examples:

You get the idea..

An Example:

So here is the enhanced Spencer Ship card with some damage marked off...

Add caption

So over game play Spencer here has taken 2 hull damage, 3 crew losses, 2 rigging, and a marine loss (Just enough damage to be worrisome).  The crew assignments table clearly shows that the Lower deck has 8 crew, the middle 5, the weather 1, sail 2, 2 assigned to repairs (these are in hash marks  and probably assigned to repair the rigging and the hull, that's what I would do), and with the 3 losses.  The idea with the crew table is that as one column gets messy, just move over to the next.

using the tables on the bottom of the sheet, the player instantly knows that:
8 crew on the lower deck will work 4 gun boxes.
5 crew on the middle deck will work 4 gun boxes
and 1 on the weather deck will work 2 gun boxes (probably the 32lbs carronades).

And since Spencer still has 5 gun boxes on the lower and middle deck (good for it!), the player uses 2 marines each to work the gun boxes (as 2 marine factors equate to 1 crew factor).  The player notes this by drawing a line under the marine factors and just writing M or L under it to mark their assignments.  If the Marines move (or die), then these can be erased.

Other Small Game Play changes:

BUT wait!  there's more!  after doing all this work to avoid fractions it make sense to modify the instances in the game when damage is halved, just to continue to have whole numbers.  Fortunately, there's only 2 instances where a ship would receive half damages:  Bow rake and Volley Fire.  

Bow rake produces an effect of  EDR (damage rolls)  x 1.5.  so 2 EDRs would produce 3, and 3 would produce 4.5.  Easy, just round  round up or down to the nearest whole number depending if you want more carnage or less.  Rakes are pretty rare anyway...

Volley Fire:  the table has some instances with 1/2crew or 1/2 marine.  just modify these to be misses or 1 damage as you see fit.



AND:

The Cannon CRT table has sections of "1/2 PRG"  In a convention setting,  I would have players ignore this option; ie, don't roll, it;s not a shot.  It's kinda long odds anyway that the shot would result in significant damage, and I think taking the shots will ultimately result in players just watching each other miss.

The Star of our examples, the Spencer.

The French 74:  the Scipion

TADDAAA

That's it.  I hope that was useful to someone.  PC is a great AoS game for small actions.  These mods are not at all necessary to play, but I think are good tweeks / streamlines for a wargame convention to make the game more accessible.

Make like a tree Part II: Completion

Make Like Many Trees

I finished up the remaining 5 CD bases along with a batch of 7 or so singly based trees to add to the collection.  I added some rock piles to these CDs just to vary up the terrain some.  The single trees are based on a large washers to make them bottom heavy, just like me.  Came out looking like this:

unfortunately, I forgot to take pics with figure in for scale.  I am lame.  I owe Lasgunpacker one awesome pic in the future....

Stick to the Plan man!

As discussed in the previous post (see HERE), the idea is in future 15mm games to shake out some Woodland Scenic Earth Blend onto the wargame mat to make the area for the the woods, and put the trees on top.  The bigger idea being that I could then make woods in any size/shape that I want.  I tried the plan out on my old GW wargame mat.  I don't use this much anymore because I have homemade wargame mats that I prefer that I use for my gaming because they are 5x7.5 or 6x10. (If interested in that process you may look HERE )   But those were all-the-way-in-the-garage and I was feeling lazy.
So the mat goes on the table and I laid down a layer of the earth blend and placed some CDs on top.  Looked like this:

The ground cover in these photos is off it color.  In real life the color is much more brown than it is yellow in this pics...

Meh, it looks alright but I was not over awed by the effect.  Somewhat disappointing, but close to what I am thinking.  Maybe it'll look better on my actual wargame mats which are a darker green than the bright green this mat is....  time will tell.

However, I'm not saying it's wasted effort because one can never have enough trees. 

and everything together; the whole collection:

Which lead me to think, "how many trees do I actually have anyway?"  And as the night progressed and I found that I strangely had access to a clean kitchen table while other family members were engaged (daughter #1 in bed, Wife in the bath) I decided to put out all the trees for 15/18mm gaming to see what I had.  This meant I had to walk to the garage after all.  OH the constant toil...

Gonna need another 10 CDs...

The table is just shy of 3x3 feet, so I'll say I have 9ft square of trees.  NOT BAD, if I do say so myself, which I just did.  I do like the way that the CDs seem to cover more area than if I had just based all the trees individually.

Side discussion: Pine trees:

Dai asked about some conifers and I answered I had the problem already solved (well 'problem' is a strong word for anything in a wargame blog) in that a looooong while ago I invested in some of the  Battlefield in a Box Pine woods  during my Flames of War days.  In fact, I bought these so long ago it was before they reduced the amount you got in the box (it's less now, the sneaky devils, I think when I bought it you got 4 bases versus 2).  I still use the bases on occasion but since they are large and rigid don't get out a lot.  But with those I have a modest assortment of lone tall pine trees and small ones grouped together that go well with 15mm figures, and these trees are really durable and have stood up well over time.

Put that wood away...

And because I am super-nerd-wargamer-genius, how to store the things was always part of the plan, so each has it's own tub from Target...

Individual trees in their own box...

and a tub for the CDs

This completes the Tree project.  Thanks for reading and comments appreciated.  

Make like a tree...: Part 1

So in a continued effort to put off painting anything miniature related  I decided to emBARK (hehehe) on another terrain project now that the fences are done; Woods / trees.  Because just like fences, you can never have enough trees.

Actually this is something I've been meaning to do for awhile.  Many ACW battlefields have large areas dedicated to woods, and I just don't have enough trees prepared for the gaming table.  Also, I want something besides a whole TRUNK-load of individually based trees (hehehe, I did it again) because I don't want to have to place down or pick up the 30+ trees I would need.

Do Thy research and Make Thy Plan 

I really like the way MadMac (see his blog in the blog roll) did his large forest area in this Pickett's Charge Bat Rep, I like his method of using some sort of ground cover to define the boundaries of the wooded area, because then the woods can be placed anywhere and in any shape that I want just by putting down the ground cover, and the trees within it can be moved as needed.  Theoretically at least I could model any battlefield I want without having to tailor make bases with pieces of felt or whatever.  I still might go that route eventually, but for the mean time the more generic and applicable to all settings the better.  With that in mind I went to the internet to do some more research  to steal more good ideas from others and discovered these:

Terrain Tutor LINK

This Other Tutorial

As you can see; these gentlemen used CDs to make a large base holding a number of trees, and it looks pretty.  This seems to be a good idea, as then I can place down 10 CD bases with 3 trees each to make wooded areas rather than 30 separate trees.

SO the plan:  Find a ground cover material, use that to define the area / mark the boundaries of the woods, and place large bases of 3 trees and the singly based trees I already have to make it look pretty.

Gather Thy Materials

For the ground cover, I grabbed a tube of the Woodland Scenics ground cover "Earth Blend "  because it looked to be the right color for woods I was going for:  a sort of brown-green different enough from the wargame mat mostly-green color.  The I gathered some old computer CDs that I've had for years and years and gathered my tree pile into one place.  WHAT?  I can't be the only one who had both a tree pile and a lead pile?  These are all Woodland Scenic premade trees around 3-5" high, as this looks right to me for 15mm.  I considered going through my old music CDs and using those, but then I thought it would be too embarrassing to show what music I listened too.  

Not pictured: white foam board and the concrete patch that I use for basing.  I've used concrete patch instead of plaster because I like it's weight (it's heavy like, you know, concrete) and that it has a texture already so I can skip the step of gluing something like sand to the plaster to make texture.

Make Thy Tree Bases

let's begin:  I will LEAF nothing out (Ha!  the lame jokes continue). 

1) I took a hobby knife and cut out pieces of white board (or foam board, whatever you want to call it) to the size I wanted, and used the knife to angle to edges to 45 degress.  I'm using foam board to create the undulating ground as I think it's the right size for small elevations for 15/18mm figures.  It's also what I already had lying around AND I hate styrofoam.  

2) I took the knife and also cut cross hatch patterns into the surface of the CDs just to give the glue and concrete patch something more to grip.  Not sure this step was necessary but I'm used to doing it all the time.

3) Using just normal PVA glue (elmer's white glue) I then glued the pieces of foam board and the tree bases (WS trees come in two parts, the truck, branches, leaves, and the small little base) to the CDs.  I put 3 tree bases per CD.

This picture is at a weird angle in order to increase the artistic expression of the blog...

Be careful with knives, they can cut you...

4) You know what's next, I put the concrete patch on the CDs.  Now, this took a little more effort / time than I thought it would.  Maybe because this CD is technically the biggest base I've ever used and wasn't completely level.

Side discussion: Follow thy own advice...

SO, I spread the concrete patch on 2 of the CDs and was reaching for a third when I remembered something important:  when doing a new project like this, It's a good idea to go through all the steps and make 1 or 2 prototypes before going into mass production.  That way, if something comes up / doesn't quite work in the process you can modify it easily on later items instead of being stuck.  I did the same thing when I made the corn bases and was glad as I was able to get the colors right. 

So I stopped adding the concrete patch and went forward with just these 2 bases till completion.  

Moving on:

5) Let the bases dry, then one day when there is a 30min break in the rainy weather, prime black with spray paint primer.  let dry. 

6) paint and dry brush with whatever basing colors you use.  My basing paint scheme is usually Vallejo Flat Earth and dry brushed with Iraqi Sand.  

7) I mixed some of the ground cover flock with some of the wargame mat flock to (hopefully) create a mid tone... and add where you want, especially in places where you messed up dry brushing...

8) add the trees

Completed CD!

close up!  

Here's where I hit a snag...and glad that I've followed my own advice.  The first CD went together well enough but on the second, there was just no way that 3 trees were going to fit where I had the bases.  They were too close together.  Looking at the other 8 CDs I saw that this might be a consistent problem, so I went back with some wire cutters and took off the tree bases on the other CDs and re-glued them on again, this time with just 2 bases per CD.  This way there won't be an issue in the future, and it was a relatively easy fix because I hadn't put down the patch, paint, and flock yet.  Whew.

Just got to do something about that empty stump...

That ought to do, nothing hides a mistake like clump foliage!

So that's 2 CDs done.  8 more to go.  I also now have about 8 trees without a home, so I've decided that I'll base these singly.  This project is kinda large and takes up my hobby desk, so I think I'll need to focus on this until it's done before moving on to something else.

That's it for now.

"say hi to your mom for me"

Thanks for reading and appreciate comments!

How much snake rail fence...

do you need to game ACW?  Any game in the East American countryside whether ACW or AWI will require LOTS of fences.

Fence Me!

As seen in the last post, a lot of ACW stuff has shown up at my house so I've been diligently diving into the packs and decided that I'd first tackle the fences.  Because building fences is easy and quick.  Just cut up a piece to make spacers for the ends, and glue the 'logs' down in a zig zag pattern.

I've been using BTC fence kits for awhile now and I like the way they turn out.  I decided not to put them on any bases, so in theory they could be put down on any color terrain.  Now the kit says it can made about 5 feet worth of fence but I've never gotten that much out of them, though I probably build mine higher and more zig-zaggy than normal.  is Zig-zaggy a word?  Maybe something more intelligent sounding like 'mine are made with a more pronounced Zig-zag."

No pics of the building process, it'd be too boring.

I make mine in either a short section of about 3" and a long of about 5".  The idea being that a combination of those 2 sizes can be make any length I might need.

The two lengths of fences (3" on right, 5" on the left) with a small 6 base unit for comparison. 

Over the last week or so at night while watching TV I've been building fences and I rather quickly went through the two packs that I ordered.  I didn't think to keep the new fences separate so I don't know how much was made just from those two packs, I just threw the completed sections in with previous built ones.  I think in total that I've probably assembled 6 of these fence kits in bursts over time, buying 1 or 2 here and there.  By the end of  this burst I was curious about how many feet of fence I had total so I laid them out for measurement. Seems like a handy thing to know;

I pushed back the pile of ACW miniature packages and laid out the fences end to end on the hobby desk

I also threw in some 4ground fences that I got from Dai when I bought his ACW stuff; these don't really match but I'll probably use them anyway, or maybe to differentiate a normal fence from a 'stout fence' if needed.

each length across the green mat is 2 feet long at least.  13 rows plus a half = 27 feet total!  That seems like a lot to me, though maybe not enough to build any battlefield I might ever want to.


And because 15/18mm is the best scale ever, it all fits into a small storage box!

Maybe hard to tell in this picture: This container is 6" by 10.5", and little less than 3" deep.  

Of men and mountains (of lead).

Time to start off 2018 properly...

halfway through the month and I've finally made it to a place where hobbying can begin again.  It took awhile to deconstruct Christmas at our house; and somehow we couldn't but all the holiday decorations back in the same number of  tubs we started with...funny how those things multiply when you let them out of the garage.... and as previously documented, the hobbyroom was converted to a bedroom while company was here, and when putting it back together it was a good time to do some additional house improvement tasks like adding some shelves to the walls and reorganise the closet.

and then everyone in the family had to take turns being sick...

but no matter, we're all on the mend now and it's time to take a break from playing Disney Princess Candyland with daughter number 1 (which is somehow a simplified version of the original candyland, though how it could be more simple I am stumped) to write a post about proper wargaming.  

The Postman cometh, and the lead pile growth. 

So while there hasn't been a lot of proper gaming in the new year, there has been a lot of packages arriving in the mail for little ol' me.  The end and beginning of the year tend to be a harvest season for me, because I am one of those lucky people whose birthday is right after Christmas, so I tend to get double gifts.  And through the years, I have trained my family and inlaws well....

First to FINALLY arrive (I say finally because I got an email saying it shipped on December 5th and over a month later it showed up)  was the MW special on 1066.  

Quick side note: I was very disappointed in this issue.  Previous Specials have been great, but I found this one to be BORING, and you would think with 'battle of hastings' on the cover there would be more about the actual battle and at least a halfway decent map... Maybe it's because I already know about this subject that it's typical readers digest history was unimpressive...I dunno.  BUT it did remind me that I love  Dark Age battles.  I've often thought about doing a scenario based on Hastings but I need some more Norman infantry completed before it can seriously get off the ground...not to mention all those other Normans, Vikings, and Saxons.  Now where'd did I put them...

oh here they are, hiding in the drawers of the hobbydesk...

a whole drawer of Gripping Beast Dark Ages Miniatures...

and a whole other drawer of mostly Conquest Miniatures Normans hiding in the garage....

I shudder to think how many miniatures there are in those 2 pics just lying around waiting to be done.  Maybe one day I'll show photos of what dark age miniatures are painted so it won't seem so terrible in comparison.  But this brings me to an important point:

this is all wasted money.  Some of those sprues have been waiting around for years for me to get to them.  Now they serve as a warning about buying large amounts of miniatures at once.  DON'T DO IT!  you'll never paint them all before you go off unto another period /genre and then it's a waste.  Always factor into the price of a miniature the time it will take to paint and store it.  It's one thing to have large armies of painted figures that you can pull out and play with whenever; it's another thing to have a mountain of plastic and lead and a backlog of projects that you might get to 'one day.'
and people will tell themselves "well if I just focus on that one genre for the year I'll get it all done!!!"  and then we all laugh because that never happens....

These days I try to stick to smaller purchases so that piles like this are less likely to happen.

but those are old lead hills and this is about the post is supposed to be about  new stuff:

Next to arrive was some ACW terrain from Battlefield Terrain Concepts:

If I'm ever gonna do an ACW scenario on the Cornfield at Antietam or maybe Little Round Top I need some Hasty Works / quick entrenchments; so I got x2 of their HastyWorks sets of logs and earth as I thought that would work for almost anything, and it's good generic terrain.   I also got x2 of the 15mm Snake Rail Fence kits.  You can never have enough snake rail fences....NEVER!  and I like to build the fence myself because I like it to be a particular height  that I think looks nice with my ACW infantry.  Building the fence is not hard and I can do it while watching TV.

So Never mind what I just said; Here's another mountain...

There are of course, exceptions to all rules and here's one: gift cards.  Then it's NOT your money your wasting if you buy something and never paint it; and the company already has the cash so you might as well spend EVERY LAST penny.  This year my family and in-laws polled together and for Christmas and my birthday all chipped in for a gift card to Old Glory Miniatures.  Didn't I say they were all well trained?  (I might of dropped some hints to the wife, "you know where I'm getting a bunch of miniatures from?  Old Glory Miniatures.  Old Glory like the flag you know, that's Old Glory."  "Oh look, I got a package from Old Glory Miniatures last month and I really like the ACW figures from Old Glory.."  

Anyway they all chipped in with an attitude of 'you're a sweet guy, go get yourself something nice..' and since I had an Old Glory Army Membership for an 40% off each pack I went ahead and just start putting my ACW wish list into the shopping cart until the total reached the gift card amount...and this is what arrived a little later

25 items in this order, the box was a little heavy.

All of my ACW collection are from the Blue Moon range, and this order will round it out with a  grand total of:

x2 limbers (with horses)
x2 Cassions
x2 Limbers (no horses)
x2 extra limber horses
        -basically enough stuff to make 16 limbers for the Artillery
x1 Union Officers
x2 Union Standard Bearers
x2 Union infantry advancing
x2 Union infantry firing line
x1 Haysacks
x2 Confederate infantry advancing
x2 Confederate infantry firing line
x1 Union dead and wounded
x1 Confederate dead and wounded
x1 dead horses (morbid!)
x2 2-wheeled ambulances

So the ACW lead pile has gotten way bigger; in total with what I already had I now have the stock to add 80 more bases of infantry, 20 more command bases, 16 limbers, and a ton of assorted markers.

I best get painting....

AoS game; Cannons in the Caribbean brief ARR

Last game of the year 2017!! 

on December 30th, the SHMWClub had an AoS game hosted by Mr. W, and I was actually able to attend!  I was very motivated to because 1) it's an AoS game and I love'em and 2) even though I've been a part of this club for like 6 months I've never attended any club function.  So I wanted to go and meet some new people and see and be seen by others so I'm not just a name on the email list....

(even then, it was a close run thing as Daughter #1 got invited to a bday party for that day and the wife started to cough / display symptoms of sickness a day or 2 before...)

Turns out that I knew 3 of the six other people there, was greeted warmly, and was immediately recruited onto the French team due to (i'm assuming), my daring-do, my panache, and my love of strong cheeses and pastries.

The Game set up:

I believe the rules were "close action; Serpent of the Seas" modified to NOT use hexes.  The ships were 1/2400 scale I believe; they were small.  

The Host of the game had a very historical situation set in the late 18 century during the Quasi-war that I will now distill down to the brass tacks and iron cannon balls: a French coastal city in the Caribbean has been taken over by the local dirty peasants who have over thrown their rightful French rulers AND to make things worse; taken over the shore batteries.  A squadron of American ships blockades the port to deter any glorious French reinforcements.  My mates and I played the part of the glorious French reinforcements.  The objectives: silence all the batteries in order to land boats full of stunning French Marines to secure the town.  the main Objective is to secure the town; sinking or getting the cowardly American ships to strike are of secondary importance.

All quiet in the harbor.  too quiet.  The Americans suspect nothing...

Sail on the Horizon!  Surprise!  here come the French!  My ships are circled in yellow.  

The French plan of attack shown in red.  The blue arrow is the direction of the wind.  

These were not Ships of the Line.  The French has mostly corvettes (smaller than frigates) and sloops (smaller than corvettes) and 2 or 3 light frigates.  I had 2 corvettes.  I'm not sure what the Americans had in total but they the did have the Constitution, a heavy frigate and the best in the world, able to outgun and out sail of our light frigates put together....

The rules used simultaneous movement, which is great for surprise maneuvers but hard for ships to sail in line ahead, so things became confused quickly!

The Game

Paying attention to what I was doing more than anyone else; and I basically followed the plan of attack because i can always be counted on to follow orders!

My first ship, the 'Diligente'  a small corvette in the lead of the leeward squadron tried to run behind some Americans but got caught by some surprise moves by the dastardly enemy and wound up heavily damaged.  It did carry out the plan and fired one broadside at the far battery before striking due to her damage.  I'm going to call that the 'learning curve' ship and highlights something I think is important in AoS games: give people 2 ships!  that way, when 1 is taken out of the fight either by big mistakes or (un)lucky damage rolls, then there's still one to play with.

My second ship (3rd in line in the windward squadron) the "Berceau" was more successful.  I ran down the coast keeping the weather gauge, and pulled off a neat move; the Americans trying to block the move couldn;t as they had to turn into the wind.  I was able to fire a raking broadside at the amateur Americans and fire at the coastal battery before continuing into the harbor.

How'd my ship end up out in front?  stellar seamanship is how.  : ) 

My first ship, circled in yellow, strikes after receiving a rake, but my second continues into the harbor and the objective.

The shore batteries, being manned by unskilled rebels, weren't much of a threat but were able to do minor damage with each shot. I stood off just outside the harbor and engaged the battery defending there before attempting to launch my boat full of glorious marines.  I was chased into the harbor by an American ship and it was an uneven match; he was doing about x2 the damage to me than I was to him; I tacked in the harbor and he followed...

and that was several hours of play and that's where we called the game as people had to leave.
French lose as we failed to take the town, but we did silence 2 batteries and the 3rd was juuuuuust about to be abandoned.  I'll give myself a morale victory for sticking to the objective AND actually making it into the bay.


Overall: a very enjoyable game and I picked the rules up enough to do better next time.  Thanks Mr. W. for hosting it and I was glad to make an official club meeting.  It was nice meeting the new people.  Hopefully it won't be another 6 months before I am able to again!  really made me want to put my ships out on the table soon!

Ending and Beginning Part II: 2018 GOOOAAAALLS

"It isn't a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream."

  -Benjamin Hays

Uuuuhhhh, what?     (Actually, Benjamin Hays is pretty cool guy, you should google him, he said all sorts of this stuff). 

alright, enough quoting people smarter than me in an effort to give the blog an air of sophistication, lets move on to...

Wargaming Goals for 2018!

Folwing up from the previous post about what was accomplished in 2017 (precious little), Lets commit to the internet a bunch of goals for 2018, so that in a years time I can look back and see either stunning success or utter failure. 

Blogging:

1) Continue to blog as long as it's enjoyable and rewarding; probably re-evaluate every few months or so.  The plan is to post 2-3 times a month.  There's some self imposed pressure to "have something to say or show" for each blog post.  There definitely seems to be a link between being more productive at the hobbydesk and writing about it.  

2) Continue to promote the blog some; mainly by linking it on forums like TMP and such, and leaving comments on other's bogs.  I don't feel the need to promote every post, especially if it's just me saying "hey look, I painted something at a mediocre skill level!"  But if I am gonna put effort into writing and posting it follows that I want to increase readership. 

Did you follow a link from TMP to get here?  Then the plan is ALREADY working!  

Gaming:

I'm going to set a gaming goal of having 24 "gaming experiences" throughout the year, which averages to 2 games a month.  Some months will have more, some less.  Doesn't really matter what the games are, though I'll probably host games with my collections which reflect genre's that I like.  The idea is to just play enough games to feel like I actually have a hobby of wargaming.  I'll also plan to go to 2 conventions in 2018, which is my usual.  1 will be Conquest Sac (in March), because it is local, and one other that I will travel to.  Usually I go to Kublacon, but this May I'll be busy at that time so now I'm thinking Pacificon. (in September).  

However, I do foresee a bunch of ACW and AoS gaming in 2018.  As those 2 genre's have been dominating the hobby desk.

There's also some people who I want to game with More often.  These being Dai (see his damned and stunted blog over in the blog roll) and Mr. G, my most local wargame buddy, and Mr. L.  I might try and be more involved in the 2 clubs I am in as well, in an effort to expand my gaming circles.  

Production:

Side discussion: Rule of two:  

When it comes to painting, I have a rule that helps me organize and be productive; called the "rule of two."  I know, it sounds pretty cool right?  (note to future self, find a better name for 'rule of two.') 

It simply means that I only ever have 2 projects going at once.  I can jump back and forth between those 2 projects all I want, but cannot switch to another project until one of those two projects is complete.  'Projects' can be of any size and genre.  This keeps me from going unfocused and having too much stuff going on at once and nothing getting done; I don't end up with a desk having some plastic viking figures half assembled, some LOTR figures primed, some ACW figures half painted, this other terrain project three quarters  done... you get the idea.  Instead of minimal progress on a lot of fronts it's definite progress on 2.  

Having said that; there's some specific projects I have in mind:

ACW: Currently each army is around 120 bases strong, and I'd like to increase that to 150 each so slightly bigger games can be played; this will also mean that I'll need some more markers for things like being disordered, low on ammo, generals on horseback, command stands,  etc..., 

It also helps me to complete stuff if I plan a scenario that uses juuuust over the amount of stuff I have ...There's also an Antietam scenario I want to run eventually.  

Age of Sail:  I want at least 4 more ships, making 8 total.  Then that genre can be called "complete."  (for now)

Terrain: first comes the miniatures, then comes the terrain.  Really I want just to make the ACW battlefields POP, and I like a  good looking game.  And for any other 15/18mm mass battles that I want to take on in the future. No, not Naps, Naps is for INSANE, but maybe AWI.  but that's in the far off future.  (In the far off future, there will be games set  in the distant past).  So I have some ideas for 15mm roads, MORE snake rail fences, some bases with multiple trees on them for easy "Woods," more fields, and some houses / buildings.  

Generic casualty markers/trackers: I have several games that I like that instead of removing figures you add a casualty tracker, that counts up as the unit takes damage.  Games such as Hail Caesar, Sword and Spear, Picket's Charge, and Sharpe Practice 2.  I don't have a good way of doing it and just leave a dice behind the unit, and I want something prettier.  At first I was planning / attempting to have specific genre markers (like dead / wounded vikings and saxons for dark age battles, dead / wounded soldiers for ACW, etc.) but this turned out to be too hard / too much work.  considering that a decent game has about 15 units per side, so that's 30 ish each.  I made about 6 dark age markers before calling that idea ridiculous; I need markers that can go across genres.  I do have a plan....

Any of these can be done in the order I want. Though with a convention looming in March I feel like the ACW terrain will get priority. 

Thanks for Reading!