Royal Navy Loses Out

Miserable day again as I walked down to Kevin's for a shot at some naval warfare, it was a quick-play game of Napoleonic period combat entitled Master and Commander, of course it was. The game was fairly simple, a few hex sheets and some nice thick card counters, the only drawback with these is the colours chosen to represent both sides, they look quite similar if you haven't been to Specsavers and the ships can easily be confused. I don't bother much with 'quick-play' as I like to take my time with my games, however I do see the point, this game is very quick and the mechanics are fine if you are not too bothered about reality. The only real bug bear with both of us was that if you wanted to stop your ship instead of having a collision you simply let slip the anchor, but, if you are a naval veteran like me you know that does not bring you to a shuddering, instant halt. Perhaps we got that wrong, there were a few other things but in the interests of fast play you have to ignore them.

In the first conflict I was the Americans and had to escape the clutches of a British squadron, being an old tar I instead tried to engage the enemy, shades of Nelson there, but I failed miserably, you have to be very lucky to get a hit in this game, even if you can see the whites of their eyes. One down to the RN. In the second game I took command of a weak French squadron against a much better British one, we both thought the result would be a foregone conclusion but almost at once I captured one of the Brits and within a short time I had captured the rest of them apart from one I sent to the bottom. Despite having to half some of my crews to take over the captured vessels this had no detrimental effect on the parent ship nor the captive. We tried one more scenario but gave up as the British had no chance of catching the French before they escaped off the 'table'. This left the final action, we both had a decent little fleet and this time it was a fight to the death, the British had to wipe out the French and the Frogs had to counter this by causing more damage to the British. This was a grand little game and I pulled a victory out of the hat for the French.

So there we are, an afternoons fun once again, Kevin now has some 1/4800 ships and this will make the game look a lot better, it is a fine little game for a rainy afternoon but we might have to sort that emergency stop. He is getting a well recommended game for the war on the Eastern Front in WWII, a command and colours block type game, we may have that for next Monday.

I have just completed my two skirmish units, slingers and archers for the new army, I have put them on 25mm bases this time rather than 20mm as the latter slip on slopes, they are not only more stable but they look better. I am once again racing ahead rather than taking my time, I cannot help it, I started a lovely unit of Thorakitai yesterday and expect to finish them by the weekend. These are troops midway between Hoplites and Phalangites, they have armour and carry a long spear as well as javelins and have a large shield, they have not long been released by Aventine and they are lovely, especially the command figures, beautiful.

I am not going to the club tonight, I have some stuff to complete map wise and want to get it off the drawing board and away, I do have a game on Thursday afternoon, this time the Twelfth will be fighting Hannibal rather than the Greeks, I look forward to it.