Victory at Sea Campaign

 

It was great to get up to the club yesterday after an enforced absence of more than six months! There are lots of new faces and some old ones too, so it was good to catch up and meet the new players. I also discovered, having been out of the loop, that the long awaited VAS campaign is about to kick off, which is fantastic news as I'll be able to deploy the French fleet that I assembled last year.

 

The campaign rules also make it possible for me to upgrade my otherwise bog standard warships with shiny new radar, AP shells and all sorts of other fancy kit, which should give them more of a fighting chance against the opposition. I'm also hoping to get at least one practice game in before the campaign starts, as I have only used the rules a couple of times. This should be a lot of fun!

Galleys and Galleons Playtest

This went really well and everyone enjoyed the first two scenarios from the rules that we played, Pursuit and Blockade Runner. In the first game the two schooners fought a pretty decisive skirmish, with Gary coming off the worse for wear and striking his colours. However, on victory points, Gary's pirates actually managed to scrape a very slight edge which gave them the game.

In the second game, Mike got his revenge when Gary's captured pirate East Indiaman went aground at full tilt, but only after he had blasted one of Mikes Royal Navy sloops with a raking broadside at medium range. This led to the inevitable Critical Damage rolls, a raging fire and a spectacular explosion, all of which meant that Mike's tactical plan was well and truly scuppered.

The rules worked smoothly and with only a few queries popping up, which we worked out ourselves in most cases. I'll shoot off some feedback to the writer tomorrow but first impressions are a big thumbs up! I'll now get started on the paintwork for the pirate ships, ready for another game next month up at the club. I'm hoping it might catch on!

Rolf Krake

I couldn't resist adding a model of the Rolf Krake to my Danish fleet for the Second Schleswig War even if she didn't take part in any of the actions in the Baltic. The Tumbling Dice range doesn't feature any of the ships for the 1864 conflict, which is a bit of a shame, so I turned to the Figurehead 1/2400th scale range instead. 

This includes all the warships for the Battle of Lissa and a few extra ones to cover the Battle of Heligoland, although most of the wooden steam warship models for the latter are generic. They're really good models but suffer from very fragile and bendy masts, which makes them less than ideal for ham-fisted wargamers like me! However, as the Rolf Krake has a minimal for and aft rig, I'm sure I can work around this problem.

The Rolf Krake could be a potential game changer if I deployed it for coastal bombardment along the Baltic shoreline, perhaps against one of the Prussian naval anchorages. This would be entirely feasible and would probably have been far more effective than her actual role as floating heavy artillery in support of Danish troops. I imagine the Prussians would have been distinctly worried if she steamed over the horizon!

Here's a brief description from the excellent Danish Military History site:

ROLF KRAKE was a prototype “turret ship” design, for a coast defense role. The first operational “gun turret” warship in Europe – a major advancement and historical precedent not only in Denmark, but also in world naval construction. Also the first warship to employ the patented “Cole” gun-turret, named after its British designer.

The “armored battery” ship ROLF KRAKE was employed, during the German War of 1864 against Denmark, in a historically-significant, precedent-setting naval role in providing mobile, heavy, seaborne gunfire support to assist the Danish army against the invading German armies’ seaward flank.

http://milhist.dk/slaget/panserbatteriet-rolf-krake-og-krigen-i-1864/ 

Prussian Baltic Flotilla 1864 Part Two

I've decided to pick up the Second Schleswig War naval project where I left off back in November when the meltdown at work stopped play. The plan is to get the Prussian and Danish flotillas assembled and based, along with some merchant blockade runners and some shore forts, ready for painting in June. Here's the last of the Prussians, which I prepared and undercoated today, also re-basing the original ships in the flotilla.

The big screw corvette at the front is SMS Vineta, which had only just been completed and saw limited action from Danzig against the Danish Skjold on April  30th 1864. The two 1st class gunboats are the Cyclop and the Habsicht, which sortied alongside the four 2nd class gunboats Jager, Sperber, Salamander and Wolf of the 3rd gunboat division, against the Danish Tordenskjold and Geyser on April 14th.

Grille

This gives me at least two more scenarios to re-enact, although neither resulted in any tactical or strategic outcome in real life, except to re-enforce the Danish naval blockade of the Baltic coast. I still have one more Prussian vessel to add, the screw aviso and royal yacht Grille, but I have been unable to track down a suitable model in the Tumbling Dice or Figurehead range, so may have to scratchbuild something instead. If you know of something suitable in 1/2400th scale, I'd be very interested!

1864 on BBC4

The first two episodes of the Danish TV drama 1864 are on this evening, although I'll have to wait until tomorrow to watch them on i-Player, as the kids have a sleepover and have bagged the telly to watch a DVD. This reminded me that I haven't posted the photos that I took in the Danish Army Museum last year, so here they are, with an emphasis on artillery of the period including some very dusty Espignols. 

 

 

 

 

Knights in Miniature

I made the habitual trip into town this afternoon, this time for the kids to get a haircut and to buy a birthday present for one of their friends. As usual, I popped into the Oxfam second hand bookshop and was pleasantly surprised to find this in the hobbies and crafts section. It's aimed at 54mm and above figure painting but has lots of ideas and techniques that could easily be used for 28mm and even smaller scales. It may not improve my medicocre figure painting efforts but, at the very least, will give me some medieval inspiration. Not bad for £1.99.

Galleys and Galleons [19]

I got home late this afternoon, so didn't have time for painting, but I have re-designed, printed and laminated some ship record sheets for the playtests game on Tuesday. The final versions will have picture of the model ships instead of the generic illustration. I'm not sure how useful they'll be or even if they're necessary but at least there will be something to write things down on!

Galleys and Galleons [18]

 

I finished off the bulk of the terrain for the playtest game of Galleys and Galleons at the club next week, so can now move on to painting some of the ships at last. I have a couple of rocky shoals left to paint up, along with the fort and harbour sections but these can wait to a later date, as they're not essential for the playtest. I have a busy weekend ahead but should be able to get a couple of the ships painted up in time for the game, if all goes according to plan?

Dragon Rampant Barbarica

I've been thinking about the fortchcoming Dragon Rampant fantasy skirmish rules which, while a long way off as yet, will now doubt feature as a future workbench project. With that in mind, I remembered that I have two pack of 15mm 'Picts' from the Copplestone Barbarica range, which I was going to use as cavemen in the Lost World:

http://jimswargamesworkbench.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/adventures-in-jimland-cavemen.html

The figures are expensive but are just like smaller versions of the 28mm Copplestone figures, with superb sculpting and bags of character, especially the Barbarians and the Northlanders. They also come in nifty twelve figure foot and six figure mounted sets, which makes them ideal for Lion Rampant sized units, assuming the fantasy version of the rules will adopt the same basic unit sizes.

I'm now pondering the inevitable and may yet take the plunge, with a six pack of Barbarians or Northlanders as a retinue for Dragon Rampant, including a giant or two and some heroes, shamen and other character figures. The new(ish) dwarves are also really good, although they need some missile troops to be a viable army.

In the meantime, the 'Picts' will do as a couple of units of trolls in the same Nordic style as the rest of the range. They can either form the nucleus of a retinue or be deployed as back up unit for the human forces, which means I can potentially save about £15 and get some use out of the figures, which would otherwise be gathering dust in a box.

I'm quite excited about this idea but there are plenty of other things to do in the meantime including a couple of historical retinues for Lion Rampant at some point before the end of the year, so there's no rush but no excuse for not giving it some serious consideration. If only that nice Mr Copplestone would do one of his infrequent special offer discounts???

En Garde!

Right Cover, Wrong Title!

I had a look on Amazon today for the new Fighting Sails rules from Osprey, which I duly ordered with the last of my birthday vouchers, only to find a number of future publications in the wargames series up for pre-order. The one that grabbed my attention is En Garde!, which looks like it could have a lot of potential, based as it is on the Ronin rules system (that reminds me...I really should get that buntai done). 

Anyway, here's the sales blurb:

En Garde! is a small-scale skirmish game based on the successful Ronin rules, in which small groups of warriors fight each other for honour or riches. Rather than just rolling a few dice, the rules allow players to make tactical decisions about how the models that they control will fight - offensively, defensively, or by applying special skills and abilities. En Garde! covers the conflicts of the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, when black-powder weapons started to become common in battle but martial prowess still determined the outcome.

Play as Border Reivers, Conquistadors, Landsknechts, Aztecs, French Musketeers, Caribbean Pirates and many more, in scenarios that evoke classic engagements of the genre. Sub-plots (secondary objectives for each side) have also been introduced, making gameplay even more varied and exciting. Simple campaign rules allow multiple scenarios to be played in sequence and permit warbands to develop over time. An appendix is also included to provide brief rules for supernatural creatures of the period - monsters, demons, revenants and witches - and new abilities and equipment to fight them, making En Garde! the perfect ruleset for gamers who want something a bit different from the norm.

Published in January 2016...so you'll have to wait a bit longer!