More Boat News and an ECW Wargame.

    Besides starting work on more small sailboats, I did manage to get a couple of wargames in. The games made me pull out some old Practical Wargamer magazines.

    This week we had some strong storms move through, with strong winds from the south-east for two days. On Friday the wind died down and the day turned out to be a beautiful fall day. I went down to the pond to look for Odin, hoping that the winds had carried her back towards the beach. Alas, there was no sign of Odin.

    While building the new boats, I looked up Napoleonic gunboats. In one picture, there were Royal Marines sitting in the midsection of the boat. Somewhere I had seen some Peter Laing sitting Marines. I wish I had some of them; they would look good in my boats.

     I used my 2mm blocks to fight a quick battle based on Edgehill. I used The Wargame, by Peter Young as the guide. The board main feature was the ridge line the Royalists set up on. Forces were picked based on 1 stand for every 1000 men, rounded up or down. This gave the Royalists 4 stands of cavalry, 10 of infantry, and the Parliamentarians 3 cavalry and 12 infantry; Dragoons counted as cavalry.

    The Royalist cavalry charged the Parliamentarian cavalry and drove it back. They pursued and the rest of the game were occupied trying to eliminate the remains of the cavalry. The Royalists charged downhill, and at first drove back the Parliamentarian infantry. Eventually the Royalists were driven back up the hill and the Parliamentarians took the ridge and won the battle. From my limited knowledge of the English Civil War, it seemed the game played out much like the actual battle.

  The game turned out to be rather enjoyable, and I am now thinking of using a similar system to fight other historical games. In Practical Wargamer, there was an illustrator by the name of John Parke, who did illustrated battle maps. His maps has me thinking of using them for games based on his battle maps.

Two new "Odin" gunboats being built.

My battle of "Edgehill".  The Parliamentarians (grey) have taken the ridge. A unit of Royalists cavalry is attacking the Parliamentarian right flank belatedly. The Royalists have lost too many units and cannot  recover.  I had no intention of reporting on this game, so only have this one photo of the end of the game.

 

Real World Sailing

      As I mentioned recently, I have been spending time working on model boats. I have been stalled in repairing my RC sailboat, not having the money to buy some necessary parts.  I did come across a small model sailboat that I bought years ago. I test sailed it in the birdbath on a rather blustery day. After testing it, it road at anchor all day in the birdbath. At the end of the day when I retrieved it, I thought of an article in an old model boat magazine; the article was titled "Real World Sailing", where the author built several model sailing ships and sailed them on one of the Great Lakes, with the intention of having it sail across to Canada. His last model was sailing in the right direction; wither it reached Canada is another matter. However, this article encouraged me to try to send a free sailing model across one of the many local ponds in my area.

   I used the original model as a guide to build another sailing ship. The original was based on a Viking ship. I used stuff laying around the house to build my model. I was going to have it crewed by a Peter Laing sailor, as can be seen in the first photograph. If I end more models out, perhaps I'll make a home cast of Peter Laing Viking to man it.

  Today the model sailed. I launched the boat on the eastern end of the pond, the wind seemed to be coming from the west, so I didn't think it would go too far. (By the way, before sending her on her voyage, it was named 'Odin'). At the last second I removed the Peter Laing captain; perhaps next model I won't chicken out!  She started sailing along the shore, then suddenly turned towards the open sea and went some 20 yards out, then started running down the coast. Eventually, the westerly winds caught her and she disappeared behind some bushes, where I could not retrieve her. Hopefully some day  someone will find her.

The 'Odin'

The Odin sets out on it's mission of Exploration.

Odin turns towards the open sea.

Odin looks like she is going to run ashore...

..but once again heads out to sea.

The Odin at her farthest progress (the white dot in the left center of the picture).

The Odin disappeared behind the trees on the right of the picture. While it has nothing to do with wargaming, a Peter Laing figure was involved so.... I also think that this model looks like a 18th century gunboat, and I'm thinking that if I build more I might add a cannon to the bow.

Downsizing

      I have come to the conclusion that I am a packrat and must start clearing away stuff I have collected over the last 30 some odd years.  I have already started going through my model boat magazines, cutting out articles I want and throwing away the rest. I have to start thinking if I will do the same with my wargaming magazines; although I have decided to leave my Practical Wargamer magazines intact.

    I also have decided to get rid of most of my plastic toy soldiers, along with many of my toy soldier molds. I haven't quite decided how to go about disposing of them. I would like to find people who would put them to good use; preferably for postage only.  Right now I'm concentrating on getting rid of books and magazines that I haven't looked at for many years.

Some of the molds I want to go through.

Just some of the plastics that I am going to get rid of.

SAE 30mm Napoleonics

While I haven't done much lately with wargaming, I did come across a nice lot of SAE 30mm Napoleonics. The main reason I bought them was for the British general figure, one figure I hadn't seen before. Perhaps in the future he will lead my SAE Guards into battle.

My new lot of SAE cavalry and general figure.

Perhaps the cavalrymen in bicorns will find themselves promoted to generals.e