Stingray Heads to IPMS Thornbury

In a sudden change of plan last night I'm now running my Stingray parti game at the IPMS show at Thornbury Leisure Centre this coming Sunday. As its a late breaking booking I'm short of players so if anyone reading this would like to come along and help run the game please let me know. This will be the first run out for the new control sheets which replace the damage cards that I tried at Gosport.

Hope to see some of you there :)

One Hour Wargames

Like a few others in the wargaming blogosphere I've got a copy of Neil Thomas' "One Hour Wargames". At first glance there's not much here for the established wargamer. That first glance would be wrong. Some delightfully simple yet effective sets of rules covering ancients to WW2 which deliver enjoyable games of an hour or less that are actually very satisfying. As a wargamer of long standing I have inevitably tinkered with them and added a few bells and whistles to some of the sets presented here, but they all play just fine "out of the box". And of course this book makes the perfect introduction to ab initio wargamers. In true Bruce Quarrie or Donald Featherstone style a copy of the book, a few boxes of Airfix soldiers and you are away!

Anyway, I have been mostly trying these out with my 15mm English Civil War collection, all based up in a semi-WRG sense (as I got into 15mm ECW via one of Peter Colbeck's campaign weekends where we were using a DBA variant). A few fun games led to some "enhancements" so I now have some additional troop types in shock cavalry (Lobsters) and artillery, allowances for fortifications and options to withdraw from melee (which is a risky thing to try), minimal changes written in the style and level of complexity of the standard rules so they add (IMHO) to the experience without slowing the game down or making it too complex. Alas no piccies as yet since I can't find my green cloth and so the battles are being fought out over a dramatic sea scape adorned with terrain features (looks a bit like Somerset during the floods!) 

Lord of the Sea

After four years of development and a year of bashing through the last stages of playtesting and formatting I am happy to announce the publication of "Lord of the Sea", my second set of self-published naval rules which has just become available through Wargame Vault.

As those who have followed the development of these rules through occasional insights in this blog, "Lord of the Sea" is a collection of fast play rules covering individual ship actions, major battles and featuring an extended campaign system , and is centred primarily on naval actions in Northern European waters in the 13th to 15th centuries.

The rules have been written with 1/1200 scale models in mind, their inspiration originally being the models designed by Outpost Wargaming Services, but growing with the availability of other models from Ral Partha and Navwar.

On sale now and a snip at what I hope is a very reasonable $5 a copy :)

http://www.wargamevault.com/product/154102/Lord-of-the-Sea

Naval Wargames Weekend 2015

The 2015 Naval Wargames Weekendtook place a couple of weekends back, over July 11th and 12th, The venue as in previous years was the Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower in Gosport. I've been on holiday in the meantime so I've only just had a chance now to do a brief writeup.

Nine different games were on display over the two days, with six in action on Saturday and seven on the Sunday. This year's games organisers and their offerings were:

• Peter Colbeck - Mediterranean actions in WW2 using GQ1/2

• David Giles and the Portsmouth and Allied Wargamers - Famous WW2 surface actions using GQ3

• Mark Backhouse - Ancient naval using Hail Agrippa

• Derek Stone and the Solent Wargames Group - First battle of Port Arthur

• David Manley - Stingray participation game

• Mark Barker and the Inshore Squadron - Napoleonic Frigate Action

• George Street - Hector Bywater's "Battle of Yap"

• David Fleck - 1/1200 Anglo Dutch action using "Blood, Bilge and Iron Balls"

• Simon Stokes - WW1 Battle of Dogger Bank (the NWS articipation game from Salute this year)

This year's event was slightly smaller than in previous years in terms of numbers of games, but the games there filled the hall nicely and we even expanded in to the boardroom on the second day.

In previous years I've managed to get photos of all the games but this year I seem to have concentrated too much on event organising and running my own game so I'm afraid I've been woefully inadequate and totally failed to do so this year, however NWS members will undoubtedly see a decent selection in the NWS newsletter next month and I will see if I can grab some images for here. In the meantime though some shots from my Stingray game.

As far as the event was concerned another success, with everyone I spoke to enjoying themselves and the opportunity to gather with like-minded naval wargames for 2 days of games and swapping ideas. For my own part running the Stingray game was a blast, the game working well, some new models and sea creatures making an appearance (and some further improvements being identified). I also got to play the British at Denmark Strait in David Giles' game and, despite losing Hood (to a succession of hits rather than a magazine hit) my Prince of Wales sank both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen before returning home for tea and medals - in this case literally as the museum cafe did a very nice cream tea with clotted cream!

The event moved from its usual June date  due to some administrative changes at the museum, so we will probably be back to June next year.

Rest in Peace Ole

Our Norwegian Forest Cat, Ole, was found dead this morning. A very sad day for us all.

Not a mark on him, he looked so peacful on the verge outside the house.

We will miss him

First Run Out

After a few playtest sessions at home the Stingray game had its first "public" run out at the Berkeley Vale club. We played  a couple of games, both of which I would say were good "learning experiences".

In the first the Aquaphibians scored an easy victory. On reflection I think they scored an early lucky hit on one of the Stingrays and that skewed the result. But in any case it did point to a need to make the combat a bit more interactive, so we introduced the idea of an "evade" roll when a torpedo or missile enters the same hex as a target. We gave this a go in the second game, which turned into an easy WASP victory - the Stingrays becoming rather too adept at evading.

We didn't have time for a third game but I picked up enough ideas form the two games we did play to plot a happy medium in terms of an evasion rule (and an idea that a successful evade results in a proximity hit rather than a clean miss).

Other good thoughts on clarifying the order of play, improving damage control, simple record keeping, adding a few bits of "chrome" in terms of  heroic commanders, special effects, etc. oh, and a better way to keep track of who launched what missile!

Tune in next week** for another thrilling episode!

** weekly updates not guaranteed!

Quite a Few Things Happened....

.. in the last half hour :)

My crazy life continued to be as crazy as ever over the last week but I did grab a spare hour to playtest the developments that I made to my Stingray rules after the first game. The rules as I had them first worked OK, but some inevitable tweaking was needed, not least because I was finding the Terror Fish too resistant to damage, and certainly no one shot kills as one so frequently sees in the source material (in fact I think Sting Missiles ALWAYS kill a TTF in one shot, but that would make for a less than interesting game I think).

So, after some minor mods to the damage table and a few updates notes regarding when damage takes effect, number of weapons that can be launched and other minor things we were off for another undersea bash. This time I also introduced "Spiny Norman", a giant anenome with stings that could damage a sub. As it happened Spiny dang near won the game.

The "standard" scenario that I'm working with has two Stingray class subs covering the withdrawl of a civilian research submarine form the palying area, with six TTFs in pursuit. This time the TTFs blew up quite nicely but one of their missiles scored a close proximity hit on the civilian sub which jammed its rudder (only one turn per game turn allowed), which meant it was forced to enter Spiny Norman's "zone of control" in its next movement phase; Norman's stings ripped open the hull (three sixes rolled for damage, taking out all of the sub's reserve of buoyancy) and she sank like  astone to the bottom.

Meanwhile Tigershark had taken a couple of lucky hits which left her dead in the water and ripe for destruction, and a near miss on Stingray damaged her sonar and fire control, leaving her unable to launch missiles. With the civilians stck on the bottom, one supersub ko'd and the other out of bullets and two TTFs still active the World Aquanaut Security Patrol were forced to withdraw.

The whole game lasted about half an hour (handy!)

I made a few more tweaks and set up for another game, this time a rescue attempt to save the crew of a downed World Navy submarine. This was also to have been the debut for "Tangles" the wonder jelly fish. And it was all going very well until two furry denizens of the deep pitched up and flattened the playing area.

Scottie and Ole did a good job reminding me it was supper time and so the game came to a close. I think the main rules are just about there now, now I need to work on the extras and the various "biologicals" "Spiny and Tangles have some big friends!), and a few scenarios, as well as some extra terrain pieces. But all coming along nicely I think.