CMB9

One of the latest warships to be restored and displayed in the UK is the diminutive CMB9. At 40' in length she was one of the first of the many short Coastal Motor Boats that were operated by the Royal Navy in the Great War. For the last 5 years she has been under restoration in Avonmouth, In the Summer she headed to Plymouth, but this weekend she headed inland to Bristol to take part in the city's Remembrance Day events. 

I've been keeping tabs on CMB9 via Facebook and hearing that she was coming to the city I was up at sparrows for a trip to Cumberland Basin to see her arrive. She was a lovely sight as she came through the lock and tied up in Cumberland Basin.

However, things didn't end there. After chatting to Robert Morley, the owner, and hearing that they were heading deeper into the harbour and tying up at the Cottage Inn which was where my car was parked I thumbed a lift and was rewarded with a short trip on board. Its not every day one gets to set sail on a WW1 warship, and I feel deeply honoured and indeed very lucky to have had the chance.

More Engaging

It was Star Trek night again at the Berkeley Vale club last night. We played through a couple of scenarios. In the first a Federation task group was dispatched to rescue a team of research scientists on a disabled science vessel, whilst the Klingons sought to grab them for themselves. A short battle this one, with the Feds beaming off one team only to have the rescuing ship destroyed, then the second team nabbed by the Klingons - only for Alan to blast the Klingon ship that carried them to atoms (his special orders were to ensure that no scientists were left in Klingon hands, and in this he was ruthlessly effective!)

The second battle was a slugfest with the simple aim to give the other side a darned good kicking, and to practice more with the rules. Great fun, and interesting to see tactics developing (especially the use of warp drive for hit and run attacks), as well as a growing appreciation for why damage control and shifting power is something to think about.

I'm really enjoying "Engage". its such a simple set of rules to play, but its simplicity belies a finesse that allows many variations in play and ship design, and it really captures the Star Trek feel very nicely As usual we've identified a few modifications and house rules that we think will make it work even better for us and which better reflect some of the aspects of the TV and film episodes, including changes to the rules for teleports and transporters (both ships should have shields lowered), restricted firing arcs for torpedoes, allowing rear firing weapons and tighter arcs needed to gain the shooting bonus for firing at the targets rear. With luck we'll give those mods a spin in a couple of weeks.

Engage!

Just back from the Berkeley Vale club at the local pub where we've been giving "Engage" from Red Wyvern games a run through. I picked up a copy at Blast Tastic earlier in the month after having a quick play against the designers. Tonight's game was the first proper outing with the club

My original plan was to break out my old collection of FASA Star Trek models but unfortunately the upheaval caused by various bouts of building and other works at home meant I couldn't extract the models I needed, so instead we used a whole heap of Star Trek micro machines.

There was no particular scenario, just a "training exercise" featuring a collection of Federation and Klingon ships, the Feds eventually claiming a narrow victory as the last Klingon Vor'Cha blew up. being typical wargamers the emphasis was on "shoot, shoot and shoot", whereas sometimes reallocating power to reinforce the shields, or conducting damage control might have been a good idea, but to be honest that was no surprise :)

We found the rules to be quite a bit of fun, very simple and straightforward to play but with plenty of scope for added detail with the various optional and extra rules, and also simple enough to be house-ruled if necessary (for example the chaps didn't like the initiative rules so we may use a random draw to determine the order of ship activations). the best bit of feedback though was a resounding "more please", so I'll be looking to put together some more interesting scenarios in the coming weeks. All in all a very nice set of rules.

Blast-Tastic

I've just returned from a grand day out at the Blast-Tastic sci fi wargames show in Bristol. This is the first time the show has been run and I do hope it isn't the last. Starting small for an event like this is always a good thing and Mike from Angel barracks did a great job in organising a starter event that felt just right. There were eight games and demonstrations, including Ashley Pollard demonstrating OGRE, Lincombe Barn with Alien Squad Leader and our own Berkeley Vale club with Shaun's Star Wars Pod Racer game. I've managed to miss this at the club so far so it was great to be able to play - its a real blast, loads of fun and has the feel of the "original". we scoped out a few ideas on how to adapt the rules to other settings, maybe more on this in future posts. The game I played was going fine up until I suffered  a fuel leak which then caused my pod to explode, but not before i'd sideswiped Alan's pod into the ground. Shaun went on to a well earned victory. The next game was a real close affarir with two brothers and their three friends duking it out, and victory only decided on the last corner. Great stuff.

The traders, of whom there were thirteen, seemed to be doing OK. I added to their OKness with a few purchases. Brigade Models were there so I took the opportunity to pick up some 1/1200 Napoleonic naval forts (not what you'd expect to get at a sci fi show, but they are lovely models and I've been toying with the idea of getting some for ages). I played  a quick game of "Engage" from Red Wyvern; a quick play sci fi set with a very obvious Star Trek vibe. I enjoyed the game, the extras over and above the basic rules looked good and so I bought a copy. I think we'll be seeing this plus my old Micro Machines down the club in the next few weeks. Next stop - The Scene, where i got a few packs of not-terminators for my 15mm SF collection, and then over to Armies Army to pick up a couple of their lovely near-future Russian BTR APCs. Finally Craig Austin had a box crammed with sci fi terrain pieces for a tenner and as I'd been looking for stuff like this for a while that was a no-brainer.

The show itself was fine. Not too big, not too small and a perfect start to what I hope will be a regular event. Sci fi wargaming in the UK used to be fairly well served with the SFSFW's Ragnarok show but that stopped some time ago and so Blast-Tastic seems like a natural successor. I hope the show has done well. Certainly the traders and players I spoke to on the day thought so.

Finally, it was good to see that the "friction" that exists between Angel Barracks and The Miniatures Page didn't dampen the show. In fact, far from it. A number of people I spoke to were there as a result of hearing about the fracas, thus proving once again that any publicity is good publicity. Anyway, I do hope that the rift sorts itself out soon because, to be quite frank, the regular deletion of threads about the show on TMP has been nothing short of disgraceful. I have no dog in this fight, I just think it reflects badly on the hobby as a whole. That is all.

Anyway, a fun day out - oh, and the food was good and reasonably priced, thus thckinga nother important wargamers box :)

Wings of Glory at Doncaster

This weekend I took part in the first of what will hopefully be the annual meeting of UK Wings of Glory Aerodrome members, held at the South Yorkshire Air Museum at Donnington. 30+ Wings of Glory players mainly from the UK, but also with vistors from Poland, Belgium, France and the US battled it out in the skies of WW1 and WW2 over three large tables in the museum. I ran one of the games on the Saturday afternoon, the latest development in my "Wings and Waves of Glory" game, with coastal Motor Boats, a motor launch and a U Boat duking it out with a variety of German, British, Italian and Austrian seaplanes (OK, the nationality mix was a bit random there, but I wanted to get a variety of these oddball aircraft in play).

I had a basic set of rules covering the motor boats already, but nothing for the ML or the sub; these were quickly invented, written up and implemented, and they worked just fine. A good time was had by all, with carnage in the skies and one CMB shot up and sunk before the second sneaked in and torpedoed the U Boat.

Alas I was thick with a bad cold all weekend which made the 5 (!) hour drive up from Bristol hellish, but which also fuddled my brain, causing me to forget to bring my phone (and its rather nice camera) so apologies for the poor pics, taken on my "alternative". I also managed to miss out taking pics of much of the rest of the event, although I did get some nice ones in the museum - which is lovely and well worth a visit if you are ever in the area, especially if you have an interest in the Falklands Conflict as they have a great collection of aircraft and other historic items, and a lovely memorial made in part from stones brought from various places in the islands.

Despite a head full of phug I must have been doing something right as I ended the event with the highest tally of kills (6) in the WW1 era games (which earned me a nice trophy) and I won the prize for the most successful WW1 player in terms of kills and mission objectives achieved. I also managed to go the whole weekend without being shot down in a game a first!!

So, loads of fun, looking forward to next year!

Cogs, Carracks and Galleys

Another element of the lead pile reduction exercise conducted last week was finishing off a few Navwar 1/1200 naval models. I'm getting quite  a collection of medieval models now, what with the ships I have from Outpost, Ral Partha Europe and Games Workshop. This latest batch were cogs, carracks (a bit outside my time period, but I was curious to know what they were like)  and some galleys.

All of these came up quite nicely, I think. The cogs and galleys  are quite a bit smaller than the similar ships from Outpost and (in the case of the cogs) Ral Partha, which IMHO is good and quite handy in allowing me to have sets of clearly different sizes and types, an important distinction in the rules I'm working on. I was quite pleased with these; its likely that the collection will be expanded with a few more of these in the not too distant future (I can then spend the next year waiting to paint them!!)

 

Another Weekend of Odds and Sods

Various plans for outings fell apart this weekend but that did mean I got a chance to catch up with some painting. A real mixed bag this time, details of which I'll post over the next week or so.

The main thrust was on finishing off the Tumbling Dice 1/600 Lake Tanganyika models I picked up at Devizes. These are nice models, resin and white metal for the Graf von Gotzen and the generic tramp steamer (which I thought would make a good Belgian lake steamer, perhaps a bit large), white metal for the Kingani, Hedwig von Wissmann, Mimi and Toutou (although interestingly you get three of the British motor boats - handy if you lose one I guess)

They are very nice models indeed. Not as nice (or accurate) as the Northhead models from Shapeways but well done, nicely detailed and quite rugged apart from the masts which are quite flimsy (some care needed here to avoid bending them, but they do at least straighten out easily if you do have a mishap.

TD also sell a variety of small craft, lifeboats, skiffs, liferafts and other useful bits and pieces that I also picked up. They should be quite handy for use as auxiliary vessels in my lake steamer collection.

All in all a very nice selection of craft, very reasonably priced and ideal for use with my Lake Steamer Wars rules (gratuitous plug, available from Wargame Vault)