During the last two years or so, naval wargaming has become one of my main interest when it comes to miniature games. I really like that the investment in time and money is rather limited, as usually a few ships are sufficient for a game and ships can be painted quickly, especially in the small scales I’m gaming with. I have already written about my taste when it comes to naval wargames rules in general. During the course of this year, I’d like to present a couple of rules in depth and compare some of them. I want to start with two World War 2 rules that have a similar scope, namely Find, Fix ..read more

So, as I’ve already mentioned, I’ve recently had a first game of Xenos Rampant, the new sci-fi skirmish rules by Dan Mersey and Richard Cowen. They follow the successful “rampant” format, which I like, so I had some hopes that they might rekindle my interest in sci-fi gaming. I dug out my 15mm collection, set up a small colony settlement and off we went. It really was a fun game, with the consequence that I plunged into my 15mm sci-fi lead pile and fished out some stuff I wanted to paint up for a very long time. The first was this little spacecraft: Someone on Facebook told me it’s a craf ..read more

Another year ended, another end of the year report. The first thing that comes to mind is that I didn’t blog as much as I would have liked, but this is about my gaming year, not my blogging year. So what have I played? Let’s have a look at the Boardgamegeek statistic. Top of the list is Traveller with 21 plays. The remote RPG group has become a real mainstay of my gaming. We meet pretty regularly, which means that we could finish the sci-fi campaign this year. We did a number of one-shots with other systems and will now start a new campaign, with Martin as GM running Call of Cthulhu. I’ve alr ..read more

For some time now, I’ve been working on a set of American Civil War naval wargaming rules (more and that some other time). This naturally led me to thinking about naval wargaming in general and what I like or dislike about it specifically. Which, in turn, led me to think about games and game design in general. The result was a bit of a muddle, but prodded by David Manley, I decided to write it down, in the hope that it might serve as a basis for discussion. Playtesting the Battle of Memphis. When I started to get into naval miniature wargaming a couple of years ago, the first thing that struck ..read more

Today, I playtested the Sabine Pass scenario for a second time. This time, my wife K. took the Confederates, who tried to break the Union blockade and capture the Union blockading vessels with two cottonclads on 21 January 1863. The Union only had two sailing ships, the USS Morning Light (in our game represented by the USS Vincennes, as I haven’t finished Morning Light yet) and the USS Velocity, which, contrary to its name, was “a miserable little craft badly found, and scarcely able to keep sea” according to a Union officer. My objective was to either flee the table – a difficult task as win ..read more

Summer is here, but despite the heat, I had quite a full week of gaming. It started on Monday with the last of our remote Traveller games before everyone heads on holidays and we take a summer break. Our space-faring party had infiltrated a pirate base and developed an intricate plan to free some people and capture the pirate boss on the way. However, as plans do in RPGs, the whole thing started to unravel soon… this is what one of the players posted during the session in the group’s chat: The session ended on a cliffhanger. In autumn, we will finish it and, by extension, this story arc. We a ..read more

Well, another two months have gone by without blogging. To my excuse, they have been busy months, as I had to stay in hospital for a (planned) operation and then needed some time to recover. But thankfully, everything went well and I’m slowly getting back to gaming activities. I still managed to get some games in. I started a remote What a Cowboy! campaign with Stephan, who lives in Sweden, and Martin. My gang met Stephan and Martin’s gang at a surveyor’s camp and, after a hard fight, finally skedaddled. A bit of an inglorious start, but it was great fun and I’m looking forward to the next gam ..read more

What a Cowboy! has arrived – well, the pdf has, I’m still waiting for the paper copy and the cards. But this was enough to stage a simple first game with my mate Stephan. As he lives in Sweden, we did it remotely, using my table and figures. Now I was pretty hyped about What a Cowboy!, which is somewhat unexpected, as I wouldn’t consider the Old West to be one of my main interests, gaming or otherwise. I know almost nothing about the historical American West, but I always had a soft spot for the cinematic West – in fact, I had a bit of a Western phase when I was around 30 and watched quite a n ..read more

As is by now tradition, I invited Sigur, Virago and Martin over to have a big game of Sharp Practice for my birthday. This time, we played a historical scenario from the 1809 campaign. At the beginning of May, the French were in pursuit of the Austrian VI Corps. Marshal Masséna had sent one of his aides, Adjutant-Commandant Trenquayle (played by Martin), to take command of the advance guard of General Carra Saint-Cyr’s division. West of the small town of Eferding, they ran into an Austrian rearguard composed of Grenzinfanterie-Regiment Nr. 13 (Wallachisch-Illyrische) under Oberst Franz von Gra ..read more

It is well known that during the War of the Fifth Coalition, the British subsidised the Austrian war effort with huge sums. But how did the money get to Austria? Part of it was transported in silver and bills via Hamburg and Breslau to Vienna, using bankers as intermediaries. Another part was landed in the Adriatic. It seems that there were two separate deliveries, although the literature is in disagreement about the exact dates and the ships involved. It is pretty certain that in the middle of June, British frigate HMS Mercury broke through the French blockade of the Adriatic coast and lande ..read more