Naval Gazing: January 2013

Monday, January 21, 2013

Drumbeat 2013

Drumbeat 2013 was held last Saturday at the Lake City Community Center (LCCC). I think this was the third year at LCCC and I think this one probably had the highest attendance (at least it seemed like more people to me). As usual, there were two gaming sessions during the day, with around seven or eight games in each session. The game slots had filled up pretty early this year, so I didn’t run anything. But that gave me the chance to play some games instead of worrying about running them.

One thing I did notice this year was a lot of the games using rules from Warlord Games, including Black Powder, Hail Caesar and Bolt Action.

In the morning, I played in David Sullivan’s Row Well and Live game. This is a home-brew set of galley rules. I had played a game with an earlier version of the rules, but David made a few changes to the rules since then. It was a fun game (I got to ram another ship and was only set on fire once) and it is always a plus to be able to play with the nice Xyston 1/600 scale galleys.

Galleys ready for action

Time to break out the marshmallows as my ship catches on fire

But at least I wasn't the only one

In the afternoon (after a nice lunch and beer at the Elliott Bay Brew Pub), I played in Ed B’s Supremacy at Sea game. I was going to skip the afternoon session, but Ed did make the trip all the way from Vancouver, so I thought I would try out his rules. The scenario, called Jutland +1, was a ‘what-if’ Jutland had happened a year later and American ships were involved in the action. I ran a British squadron (with Glorious and Courageous in their traditional form and the new battlecruisers Renown and Repulse) and hit the Germans pretty well with my 15” guns. The only problem was I apparently forgot to properly fuse my shells, so most were duds (Ed had figured the problems with early war British shells into the rules and I ran afoul them).