Merry Christmas

 

My last exam are graded and the marks entered into the system.  So I’ve shifted from working from home to relaxing at home.  It’s a subtle shift!

The Angel is new this year. The starfish is a gift from my Grandmother from many years ago.

I’ve signed up for this year’s Painting Challenge and have already started work on various projects for it.  But no final results yet.

However, Christmas came  two days early with splendid chap Iain W gifting me his Curtgeld in the form on a wonderful Landschneckt commander for my Italian Wars project.  Now I have to dust off that project and see what needs to be added on it.

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2020/12/iain-w-landsknecht-command-30-points.html

War of the Pacific AAR pt 2

Continuing on from part one in my prior post....

Panorama view note the brightly coloured arcs of fire templates!

Jeremey's blockaders fire at my Peruvian torpedo boats and attempt evasive Hanover's

Getting down to business

Running through the QRS, the rule swerve very quick to pick up.

The tbs strike home while Curt's squadron comes near.  The near tb had a near miss with it's spar torpedo while the far one struck home for a kill!

Skipping ahead one of Jeremey's ships splits Curt's line

Things settle down to a general melee

At this point we wound things up with the following summary

• The Chileans sank one monitor, with Stacy nobly heaving too to save the crew.
• The wooden ships got bashed around with a Chilean sunk by spar torpedo and a Peruvian sunk by ramming.
• The sea going ironclads largely cancelled these serve out.  
• We reckoned that the Peruvians would sail into Iquiqui and be blockaded by the Chileans. 

Everyone had fun and enjoyed the game.  The rules worked well and were easy to pick up.  There was room for one or two tweaks but nothing major.  It was noted that the sequenced movement worked well and it was much easier to figure and execute orders than a recent GQIII game.

 

AAR War of the Pacific Pt 1

  A few weeks back, before we had more COVID restrictions in place, I GMed an actual naval game.  I took me a while to get my AAR together so I don't remember the turn by turn details but the basic situation is as follows.

• Ships are 1/2400 from Tumbling Dice painted by me during last year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge X.
• Rule were Dahlgren and Columbiad a fast play set by noted nail game David Manley available from Wargames Vault.  These were a new set to all of us.
• Curt hosted, so it's his sea mat (looks very spiffy), arid hills representing the coast of the Atacampa desert and a Spanish town masquerading as Iquiqui.
• Instead of a historical scenario I put everything on table but in a historical setting.  Basically I wanted to test the various ship types and the rules, and figure that this might be a one shot game using the toys.
• Jeremey had a squadron of Chilean cruising (unarmored) ships and was blockading the Peruvian port.  I took the local Peruvian forces, two ex-ACW monitors and two spar torpedo boats.
• Curt had a Peruvian relief force of two sea going Ironclads and a well armed but unarmoured corvette.  Stacy had a Chilean force also of two sea going ironclads and a well armed but unarmoured corvette.

Game set up.

The Peruvian relief force, Huascar, Indepencia and Union

Jeremy's blockaders, the sacrificial offerings.

Close up of Jeremy's ships.

I pretend to know what I'm doing.  Actually after a couple turns everyone had the rule mechanics down pat.

Long range shot.  Curt's ships in foreground.  My ships are attacking Jeremy in the middle distance and Stacy approaches in the distance.