"Fayre Winds and Foul Tides" now out!

As you'll recall (maybe) from March, I was playtesting a supplement for Ganesha Games' great Galleys & Galleons age of sail/pirate rules by Nic Wright, and those rules are now out!

And available here: http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?cPath=1_25&products_id=308

The blurb covers what's in the book at a high level, I'll mainly be using it to make my voodoo and ghost pirate factions more spooky, and give the good guys some options to fight them.

It also comes with a ton (or tonne) of newly rated ships as well (don't think the blurb mentions that) - over 20 pages worth!  It gets the game into some new periods or genres too, so all those unpainted Uncharted Seas ships I have sitting in a box could be used with these rules, though Wessex's Strange Tydes was originally slated for them.  I think you could even do fast and furious ACW Ironclads rules with them, though the purists will probably freak out.

3 & 6mm Paintjobs in Progress

Hehehe, I said "paintjobs".  Here are some of the things currently on painting table #2 now that the big German factory is finished (pictures to come).  First up are some 3mm wood churches for Terrible Sharp Sword ACW gaming, the miniatures are from Bay Area Dockyards:

 Most of the painting is don, now I'm in the touch-up cycle, correcting all my mistakes from the first pass!  The pieces are ok, these ones didn't need any fixing, I have a lot of other Bay Area Dockyards that need sanding after I patched some pitting in the resin.  Not tragic problems, but two extra steps in the process.

Next up is a 6mm bridge from what used to be Simply Six - I think Picoarmor carries the range in the US (at least he carries the 3mm stuff from Simply Six).  This is actually DONE!  Yes, believe it folks!  It just needs sealing:

It's a really nice piece, none of the Simply Six stuff ever needed fixing, just a wash and straight to painting.

These 6mm ruins are also from Simply Six:

These are still a work in progress, I usually dabble with them when I paint left over from one of the other pieces, I add a bit to the rubble piles, and now just need to focus on finishing them with some grays and browns.

Finally, here's the Stalingrad Grain Elevators in 6mm from JR Miniatures:

The bulk of the painting is done, just have to do the gravel on the roof, drybrush the green and blue roofing, and do the metal tanks and pipes (and latticework on the one side). 

ACW Naval Action at Hotlead - Union Triumphant!

Real-life work has dampened my ability to post often, plus, as I think I've mentioned before, Blogger's stupid interface has dampened my enthusiasm to load picture-heavy posts. But anyway, here's my Saturday afternoon battle from Hotlead back in March. It was a 1/600 ACW river action, four Union ships vs. three damn Rebel ships and three shore batteries.

The battle started with the Union fleet set up in the middle of the stretch of river, not knowing which (or both) ends of the river the Rebs would show up in, nor knowing where the shore batteries were. So we (Union) started in the naval equivalent of a square, facing off every which way. Turns out (lesson learned) that doesn't really work for ships. Once we started peeling off to engage the Rebels, we were a bit disorganized for a while - it was sort of like that fire drill you aren't allowed to mention in polite company any more. I won't mentioned that I accidently rammed a fellow Union ship in the process - luckily it was bigger and ironclad, so I didn't do any serious damage.

So here's the Union at game start:

I'm the USS Switzerland (the "all brown" ship), we also had the Benton (my ironclad friend), the General Price, and one other ship I can't remember - but it was the "one that sank".

Once we got sorted out, I started heading upriver, only to find the CSS Webb, with a lovely spar torpedo on its bow, aiming for me. The game ("Steam and Sail", I think) is broken into two movement phases (part of the reason I rammed the Benton was because I hadn't quite figured that out), so with the initiative, I begged our CinC to go first so I could dodge the danger.

I did escape the Webb, and then found on the second movement phase that I had a lovely shot at the CSS Indianola, and I took it! She sank like a rock (I rolled a crazy number of criticals) and I was the hero of the moment.

Here's the fast-sinking wreck of the Indianola, and me stuck (and gloating) beside her, with zero movement.

And now the Webb is coming back for me, angry over missing me the first time, angrier for me having sunk the Indianola, and not sated after sinking a Union ship along the way (the "can't remember").

Luckily the Webb was also slowed by sinking a ship, so I was able to get my speed back up and started roaring around in circles to avoid her, while looking for another target - the rest of the action had been going on downstream, where a Union and Rebel ram had been taking potshots at each other. The Rebel ship had also been avoiding our slow but deadly Benton as well. The Rebel shore batteries were taking pot-shots whenever they could.

Our other ram, the General Price, finally got to nail the CSS Queen of the West, but wasn't able to sink her - and you can see the Webb lurking and waiting to get its shot in.

And so after the Price rams the Queen, and gets turned sideways, in comes the Webb with another spar torpedo!

But the Webb misses! The torpedo doesn't hit and the Webb glances off the Price.

After some more maneuvering, the badly damaged Queen of the West gets nailed again by the Price, and finally sinks. At this time the game gets called - the Rebels were down to one ship, we had three (two of us in good shape).

One more shot of the game at the end:

This was a fun game, the rules were relatively easy to pick up, and we were helped a lot by our host, Glen B. I'm not sure I'd use the rules for my own ACW gaming, as I have a couple sets I think will work, and these ones were heavy on damage tracking, but for real rivet-heads, they'd be the cat's meow.

As a result, I promptly spent about another $300 on 1/1200 ACW ships to add to my collection, although I'm sure it will be 2019 before I get to painting them!

Let's Walla-Walla Down By The Rubber Trees

Thanks to the movie Meatballs for the title.  This is way late, but here's how I am putting together some rubber trees for rubber plantations in 3mm Vietnam-land.  They'll also work for peach orchards and the like in Terrible Sharp Sword (ACW) and Sharp Practice (Nap) games.

First up is the parts - dollar store (on left) and craft store (on right) mini pom-poms, the cheap dollar store ones are actually better in the long run - easier to paint and some of the colours can be used without any painting.  I also use 13mm pins, inserted through the pom-poms, as in the three examples out of the bag in the pic, and some craft store wood sticks.  I used an awl to poke some holes in the wood sticks, for sticking in the trees later.

As I said, some of the pom-poms didn't need any paint touch ups, but a lot did, so I used some basic green craft paint (Hunter Green) to touch them up.  The pic below isn't the finished pick, but "in progress".  The pom-poms absorb a lot of paint, so it's a bit of a bugger, but it worked in the end.

Below are pics of the trees once I glued them into the craft sticks.  There isn't much depth to the holes, so it took a bit of work, but it came together.  Now I just need to add sand and paint the sticks, and the trunks.