Flashing Steel



A few months ago I was fortunate enough to take part in an excellent game of Songs of Drums and Shakos, set somewhere in Spain during the Peninsular Campaign and umpired by one of the chaps at the local club. I really enjoyed the game, even though my patrol of Voltigeurs was soundly thrashed by the superior tactics of the 95th Rifles.



As I was impressed by the rules, I thought it would be a good idea to have another look at the Ganesha Games swashbuckling version, which covers the Three Musketeers and also the whole Pirates of the Spanish Main genre as well. The rules are elegant in their simplicity and have a really intuative turn sequence, which makes for a very good flow during each game.

The pirate rules have a lot of potential and I could easily set up a basic skirmish using my existing 28mm pirate collection, originally painted up for Legends of the High Seas. I could easily add some more figures to make a larger scale game feasible, especially as I have plenty of the ex-Copplestone 1672 figures to choose from as 'government' opposition.

This is another one of those projects for the not too immediate future but, combined with my Peter Pig pirate ships for naval games, I could have a very straightforward but enjoyable mini-project. I need to think more about re-cycling some of my old projects rather than starting new things that struggle to get off the ground, so this one is a great opportunity to do just that.