Something a Little Different

After a busy summer, I've been trying to get back in the swing of putting things together and painting models. I've also been thinking about new ways to mount my 1/300 scale aircraft, which led me into the first post-summer project. I decided to start off with some of the Galactic Knights spaceships I picked up at Enfilade. I chose to do the Terran ships seemed pretty basic and I wasn't planning an elaborate paint scheme and they were part of my experiment with new stands. You can see the results of my paint job below.

The Terran Fleet Approaching for a Pass in Review

The Destroyer Leaders (or Light Cruisers if you prefer)

A Battlecruiser, the Heavy Cruisers, Armored Pursuit Ships (escorts) and Destroyers

The Fleet departing for more interesting duty

The ships are mounted on Litko 1.375" Flight Stands with magnets mounted on the stand (and on the ships).

Litko flight stand with magnets

I got 25 of the stands and used cylinder magnets on the top of the stands. This allows me to used the stands with the spaceships or aircraft. I'm not working on changing my modern jets over the use magnets. You can see some planes in progress for some Vietnam scenarios below.

aircraft in progress

A closer view of the aircraft: A-1 Skyraider, F-4 Phantom, and MiG-19

I'm not sure if I will remount my WWII aircraft. I'm using the Air War C21 rules for my jets, so they don't need to show the altitude differences, but I'm still using our modified Mustangs rules for WWII and altitude plays a big role there and I'm not sure if I want to make different altitude stands for them.

I'm also in the planning stages for DANG 2012 and I expect to announce this year's game shortly.

Finally, I've added a new blog to the list on the right. It is called Beighton's Shipyard and covers the authors work at scratchbuilding 1/300 scale (6mm) Napoleonic sailing ships. He just started the blog, but already has one ship done and another on the ways. If you are interested in Age of Sail ships and/or scratchbuilding, it is worth a look.

Moving Pictures

Last month I did a post about seeing NASA's Super Guppy plane at the Museum of Flight. During that visit my wife decided to try out the video feature on our camera to film the Super Guppy crew as they opened up the forward fuselage.

I didn't notice that she had taken the video vertically (she takes a lot of vertical photos of plants and since the Super Guppy is so tall, it seemed like a good idea). When we got home we realized that our photo editing software didn't have the ability to rotate the video, so the video sat on the hard drive until I could find a way to rotate.

Finding (free) software to rotate the video wasn't a high priority for me (you probably guessed that since it has been over a month since we took the video). I finally got around to finding some software and below is the video. The video is a little more than one minute long and doesn't really have any sound, so don't worry about turning up your volume.



After figuring out that is isn't a good idea to take vertical videos, we were shown this video by one of our nieces.



Speaking of the Museum of Flight, the NHMGS Game Day at the museum is set for November 3, 2012. I'll post more information about the event as it gets closer, but I wanted to get some game related information into this post.

August Update

During the last week of July/beginning of August my nephew from Iowa, Connor, came out to Seattle for a visit. It was a good week for a visit since it was SeaFair Week in the Seattle area, which meant there was a lot going on, including a port call by a number of U.S. Navy ships and performances by the Blue Angels.

Navy tugs push USS Halsey (DDG-97) up to the pier in downtown Seattle.

I won't cover all the stuff we did with Connor, but I will touch on a few things we did that might be of interest to those of you that read the blog. With the Blue Angels in town, we decided to take a trip to the Museum of Flight. We arrived as the team was landing after a practice run and didn't get any good photos of their F-18s. But we did get a good shot of the Blue Angels "Fat Albert" C-130 as it was moving along the taxiway and an Air Force A-10 was landing.

'Fat Albert' taxis while an A-10 lands

I also got a few shots of the new Indian Navy P-8I maritime patrol aircraft as it was coming back from some test flights. This was pretty much a bonus, since the P-8 wasn't part of the air show. This was the first time I've seen the P-8 up close and it was fun to see the test Harpoon missiles mounted under the wings.

An Indian Navy P-8 taxis by (note the Harpoon missiles under the wing)

A good profile view of the P-8 (although that guy in the pick-up truck is in the way)

A good view of the insignia and Sanskrit writing (the other side of the plane says Indian Navy in English)

We also went over to Bremerton to tour the old destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951).

Connor and I on the gangway to see Turner Joy

The group running the museum has kept the ship in pretty good shape. You can tour a lot of the ship, including a gun turret, one of the engine rooms, the bridge and a peek into the CiC.

Overall we had a good time with Connor and I even got him to play some boardgames with us. He really liked the old Ace of Aces dogfighting books and I gave him a copy of the Powerhouse series. So, I might turn one of my nephews into a gamer.

As summer winds down, I'm hoping to get back into painting and gaming.

Back to Lake Ontario

Saturday was my turn to run a game for the Truants Group, although anyone could show up and join in the game. I ended up with six players, which was prefect the for scenario I had created since it had 12 ships and each player could take a couple ships. I used the modified Sail and Steam Navies rules for this game.

USS Madison sailing on Lake Ontario

The game was an 1813 battle on Lake Ontario and I decided to go with a hypothetical scenario instead of a historical battle. In the scenario, an American supply convoy, carrying guns and naval stores, is on its way from Fort Oswego to Sackett's Harbor. These supplies are needed to complete the sloop of war General Pike. The British have decided to try to intercept the convoy to capture or destroy the supplies. During the night, the American escorts became separated from the rest of the convoy and are making their way back to the convoy when the British strike.

The British had four ships: Royal George (20-gun corvette), Earl of Moira (18-gun brig), Beresford (12-gun schooner), and Sir Sidney Smith (12-gun schooner). Almost all of the British guns were carronades.

The Royal Navy forces move to intercept the American convoy

The American escort was two ships: Madison (24-gun corvette) and Oneida (18-gun brig). The American escorts carried some small long guns, but were primarily armed with carronades.

Madison and Oneida trying to get back to the convoy

The convoy was made up of six smaller schooners: Hamilton (9-guns), Scourge (10-guns), Conquest (3-guns), Ontario (2-guns), Fair American (2-guns), and Asp (2-guns). The guns on the smaller 2 and 3 gun schooners were heavy ling guns (32 or 24 pounders), while the ships with more guns carried a mix of smaller (18 pound and less) long guns and carronades.

The American schooner convoy

The British could enter anywhere on the north map edge, while the convoy started on the west edge and the escort on the east. The Americans were trying to get the convoy off the east map edge.

At the start of the game, the British players decided to charge directly at the convoy and load double-shot in their guns. While this seemed to be a good idea at the time, the combination of these choices would prove to be too limiting in the game.

The American convoy initially decided to try to hug the shore on the south edge of the playing area to stay as far away as possible from the British, while the escort just hoped to interfere with British plans. In the early part of the game the British followed their plans moving directly toward the convoy, but they couldn't fire because they were out of range for their double-shot guns. The American convoy tried to move as fast as they could to avoid the British and the trailing ships decided to turn north to get on the other side of the British instead of just pushing ahead.

Trailing schooners turn northeast to avoid the British

Early on, some lucky shooting by the American escorts holed Beresford and the schooner began to slowly sink. Beresford would eventually fail morale and beach itself. Additionally, the American long guns on the schooners were doing damage to the other British ships. This was a potent of how things would go for the British all day.

The British finally got into range to use some of their double-shotted guns against some of the convoy ships. The blasts damaged two schooners, but the ships were still out of range. Meanwhile, American gunnery heavily damaged Sir Sidney Smith, forcing the schooner to break off action (it also ended up beaching itself). This left the British with only two effective fighting ships.

The British ships (center) close for the attack as two American schooners (right) turn to cut through the British line

After having its rudder damaged, one damaged schooner collided with and fouled the Royal George, forcing the British ship to slow to cut-away the schooner. The American schooner would eventually be sunk, but slowing down the British corvette made it so the corvette could get back into the battle and could not escape.

Ontario fouls Royal George

With Royal George out of action for a few turns, Earl of Moira found itself  alone and surrounded by American ships. Madison was behind the Earl in a prefect position to rake the brig at close range, while other American ships blasted the brig from the front.

Madison rakes Earl of Moira from the stern, while other American ships blast it from the bow

The American's heavy carronades decimated the smaller brig, destroying the brig's remaining hull and starting it on a trip to the bottom of the lake.With Royal George being the only remaining British ship, we deiced to call the game.

It was a fun game (well, maybe the British didn't has as much fun) and a decisive American win. The British players felt their decision to double-shot their guns at the start of the game was a big factor in the loss. The players were more familiar with playing with larger ships (74 gun SoLs) and didn't realize that it wouldn't take a lot of hull hits to take out the smaller American ships. I expect the next game we play will go a little differently.

Overall, the rule modifications to Sail and Steam Navies seem to work really well for this scale (this game was better than the one I ran last year with a different set of rules). I think I will make a few more changes to the critical hit rules to give them a little more period flavor, but I'm pretty happy with the general flow of the game. After the game we talked about using these rules to fight other 1812 actions, such as the naval Battle of Plattsburgh and action by Barney's gunboat flotilla in the Chesapeake.

I still need to formally write up the rule modifications for the Sail and Steam Navies Yahoo group. But no one has been asking me for the changes, so I will probably take my time putting them together.

Catching Up

I've been keeping pretty busy since my last blog post. Unfortunately, it was mostly with non-hobby stuff. But I did sneak away for a few hours on July 1 to see the Super Guppy at the Museum of Flight. The plane was in Seattle to deliver the crew cabin portion of the space shuttle trainer (the museum missed out on the opportunity to get a real shuttle, but the full-sized flight trainer isn't a bad consolation prize). The Super Guppy is a very unusual aircraft; it was built to transport over-size objects (like parts for the international space station) and the one we saw is the last one still flying.

Here I am with the Super Guppy in the background

It was pretty cool to see and we arrived early enough to watch them crack open the plane and rotate the forward part of the fuselage, which was doubly-cool.

Super Guppy open for a closer look. We we able to go up the stairs to the platform for a better view.

We got a short close-up view of the Super Guppy and the opportunity to speak with some of the flight crew. Most people asked the crew questions about what it was like flying the plane, while my wife and I were asking about the process for reattaching the forward fuselage, how they make sure the cargo doesn't shift, and what they were going to do with the specially made cargo rack for shuttle trainer (we were told they are looking to buy a portion of it for use with other cargo). After that, we made our way over to the museum's space gallery where the crew cabin had been placed.

The space shuttle trainer crew cabin at the Museum of Flight

The museum had some floor plans up showing the final layout of the space gallery and it looks like it will be another good place to visit. There are still four more sections of the trainer to come. So, the display won't be done for a while and the Super Guppy will be bringing some more of the sections and we might get another chance to see the plane. Overall, it was fun to see this plane up-close.

On the gaming front, I'll be running an War of 1812 naval game for the truants group on Saturday. I'm trying to come up with a good, fun scenario for the group. I was thinking about doing a bigger battle from 1813, but now I'm considering making up a scenario.

I'm planning on using the Sail and Steam Navies rules, with my modifications for 1812. I really like how the modifications have come together and how they played during my Enfilade game. I'm still tweaking them a little (I haven't decided the bonus for and how to measure rakes, and I'd like to add some more critical hit types), but overall I think they stand up pretty well and will be easy for newbies and land-lubbers to pick up on.

I'll be sure to get (and post) some photos from the game.

Enfilade Goodies and Summer Plans

After a couple busy weeks, I'm finally posting about the stuff I picked up at Enfilade and my plans for this summer.

I didn't have many planned purchases for Enfilade. Last year Kevin and I decided we would get some Galactic Knights ships to mess around with, so I wanted to stop off at the Monday Knight Productions tables to pick up a 3 ft x 3 ft star map and some spaceships. There wasn't anything else I knew I wanted to get, I just thought I'd see what else was available.

Monday Knight always has a deal at Enfilade where you can buy miniatures by weight and I ended up with around a pound of ships (about 20 smaller sized ships) for around $50. Overall it seemed like a good deal.

I also checked out the Bring-and-Buy tables for some deals (you really have to go by those tables several times a day, since the stuff on sale changes as people come and go). There was a lot of interesting stuff there, but initially I didn't see anything that I thought I really needed. But on Saturday someone showed up with a bunch of 25mm sailing ships. Most of them were already painted up as pirate ships, but there were a few that were unpainted and unassembled. My friend Mark found one of those, pointed it out to me, and I decided I couldn't pass it up.

My new ship

Profile view

The ship is about 14 inches long and while it was made for 28mm figures, I think it will fit in fine with my 15mm figures. In addition to the hull, it came with masts, guns, and a bunch of fittings. Overall, it was a steal at $25.

My final gaming purchase (I made lots of other purchases of beer and food) was a boardgame called Flash Point Fire Rescue.

I had been looking at this game for a while and finally decided to go ahead and buy it. The game is a cooperative game where you play firemen putting out a house fire. It seems like a game I can get my wife and other people to play, but I think it could also be converted into a miniatures game too. That would be a little side project.

Summer Plans 
With summer here, my gaming/painting time will become more limited as my wife appropriates more of my free time for yard work and other tasks. I also have agreed to do some design work for a new boardgame, which will take more time away from gaming/painting. I also have some relatives visiting in July and August, and, finally, I offered to give a presentation on first generation Soviet nuclear submarines to my submarine veterans group this month.

As you can see, a lot of my free time is already committed. But I'm hoping to get some work done on my various projects and get in some gaming. I did offer to put on a War of 1812 Lake Ontario game for the Truants gaming group in July. So I've at least got some gaming planned. Hopefully, I'll be able to join them for some other games too.

Overall, it looks like I've got a busy summer.

Enfilade 2012 Recap: Part 2 - My Games

I ran two games at Enfilade 2012, one on Friday night and the other on Saturday morning. Friday night, Kevin and I ran the "Tripwire" Strait of Hormuz game using David Manley's "Bulldogs Away!" rules. Saturday morning I ran "Action on Lake Ontario" using a slightly modified Sail & Steam Navies rules.

The Friday night game was full with six players, 2 US/Allies and 4 Iranian. The basic premise of the scenario was that western sanctions against Iran has caused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy (IRGN) to declare that they are closing the Strait of Hormuz and only ships they escort are allowed through. Additionally, the IRGN had secretly mined the strait and a British merchant hit a mine, which caused a stoppage in traffic through the strait. The US Navy has decided to clear the mines and capture the ships that are laying the mines.

The IRGN was tasked with maintaining Iranian sovereignty in the strait and escorting ships that request an escort through the strait. The IRGN players selected two small boat groups (each with four Boghammer patrol boats armed with machine guns, RPGs, and recoilles rifles and a Zafar rocket boat with a salvo rocket launcher) to escort ships through the strait, one torpedo boat group (with four Tir class stealth torpedo boats), and one missile boat group (with three C-14 "China Cat" missile boats). Additionally, the IRGN players had to decide which mine markers on the board were real and which were dummies. The center of the board had mine markers placed about every 12 inches that stretched across the board. The IRGN could basically set up anywhere on the board, but there were some restrictions for the escort groups. The small boat groups were assigned to escort two ships through the strait; a fishing vessel that had requested escort and a merchant that was really an IRGN auxiliary that had been laying mines.

One Boghammer group escorting the fishing vessel

The other Boghammer group escorting the merchant auxiliary

IRGN C-14 "China Cat" missile boats set up near the minefields

The US Navy/Allied side was tasked with clearing a path through the mines and/or capturing one of the ships laying mines. They didn't have to take both missions, but decided to try it. The US Navy/Allied players selected an anti-mine group (an LCS-1 class ship with an anti-mine mission package a Sea Cobra and anti-mine MH-53 helicopter) to clear the mines and a boarding group (with two US Cyclone class patrol boats, two Mk V SEAL boats, and two United Arab Emirates missile boats). The anti-mine group entered from the eastern board edge, while the boarding group was allowed circumvent the mines and enter on the southwest board edge. (An interesting side note, the US Navy/Allied players really wanted to avoid the LCS-2 class ships, even though we had two of them available. I was really hoping to get one of them into the game).

When the LCS-1 moved into radar range, the IRGN players sent several Boghammers to investigate (and harass) the ship.

LCS-1 with the MH-53 anti-mine helicopter and approaching Boghammers in the background

Over on the other side of the board, the boarding group split up with the Cyclone and Mk V boats moving to intercept the merchant, while the UAE missile boats moved north to intercept the fishing vessel (the US players did not know if either of the ships was involved in the mining, but they were supposed to board them to find out). Additionally, there was a small boat, with a big CNN flag, that was filming the whole thing.

US Cyclone and Mk V boats with the CNN news boat nearby

As the IRGN boats closed with the US and UAE ships, they started hearing messages over their radios about maintaining a safe distance from the US/UAE ships. The IRGN players basically pretended they couldn't understand or didn't hear the messages. the US/UAE ships decided a stronger warning was needed and began firing shots across the bows of the IRGN boats. This caused some of the boats to turn away and almost caused an inadvertent collision between an UAE missile boat and IRGN C-14 missile boat.

Near collision in the strait

With CNN on hand, it seemed like both sides were a little reluctant to be the first side to open fire. But this changed as one of the Cyclone boats wandered into the mine zone and found a mine.

Oops! A Cyclone class boat runs into a mine

At this point the commander of the boarding group declared that he was under attack and opened fire on the nearest IRGN boats. This allowed everyone to start shooting. An IRGN Zafar class rocket boat fired off its rockets to finish off the Cyclone that had hit the mine and the C-14 missile boats fired missiles at the other Cyclone class and UAE missile boats. The remaining Cyclone and Mk V boats returned fire with the Hellfire missiles, while the UAE missile boats fired their Exocets. On the other side of the board, the LCS-1 class didn't have any missile and had to rely on her guns and the missiles on the Sea Cobra to attack the IRGN boats. Additionally, the IRGN Tir class torpedo boats made a torpedo run against the UAE ships and began moving toward the LCS-1.

Missiles Away!

When the smoke cleared, both US Cyclones were sinking and one of the Mk V boats was damaged. The IRGN had lost their missile boats and most of their Boghammers. As the game ended, we decided the US/UAE players had lost the propaganda war for firing first (the CNN footage couldn't confirm American claims that they were attacked first), but they controlled the battlefield and still had the capability to sweep the minefields.

Everybody seemed to have a good time and I distributed prize packs from Fight's On to the players (thanks to Rob at Fight's On for sending me the prizes).

The Saturday morning Action on Lake Ontario game didn't provide any order of battle options for the players, but the players did have several options in how the set up (which I hope made up for the lack of OOB options). There were 2 British and 4 American players for this game. In this scenario, the American Lake Ontario squadron has been pursuing the largest British ship on the lake, Royal George, for the past two days and is finally catching up with the ship as it is approaching the British harbor at Kingston.

The British players had 3 ships (Royal George - 20 guns, Prince Regent - 12 guns, and Earl of Moria - 14 guns) and 2 small shore batteries. The American squadron had 7 ships: Oneida - 18 guns, Hamilton - 11 guns, Gov Tompkins - 6 guns, Julia - 3 guns, Pert - 3 guns, Growler - 1 gun, and Conquest - 1 gun.

The British had the advantage of bigger ships, while the Americans had more ships and more long guns. Additionally, with only two players, the British had a little easier command and control challenge than the Americans. The American movement was a bit haphazard and there were a couple times I thought they were going to collide with each other.

Royal George watches the American squadron approach

The Americans took some long range shots, but no major damage was done. The British reinforcements (Prince Regent and Earl of Moria) moved out of Kingston harbor and interposed themselves between Royal George and the Americans.

The American squadron faces the British reinforcements

By this time both sides were starting to take damage and several smaller American ships were forced out of line. 

As the British reinforcements passed by (and before they could turn), the Americans made one last drive to catch Royal George. However, at a key moment the Americans lost movement initiative, which caused a minor collision between Oneida and Royal George. No damage was done in the collision, but the ships did foul each other. Initially, both sides were trying to clear the fouled lines, but then the British decided that this was a good opportunity to take out the largest American ship by grappling and boarding it.

Oneida and Royal George grappled together

Before the boarding action, both sides had one last chance to fire their close range carronades into the enemy, adding damage and crew suppression to both ships. During the boarding action, the Americans failed their morale check (the American captain had been wounded by earlier cannon fire) and surrendered.

With their largest ship captured, another sinking, and a third withdrawing due to a failed morale check, the Americans decided to break off the action giving the British control of the lake.

It seemed like everyone had a good time with the rules and we didn't run into any major issues. While the Sail & Steam Navies rules are really for later ships, I think the modifications made them work well for the smaller Age of Sail actions. I had to add rules for carronades, chain shot, make changes to the critical hits, and a few other items, but the movement rules were straight from the rulebook. You wouldn't want to play Trafalgar with these rules (in fact you probably wouldn't want to play games with ships that have more than 30-40 guns), but seem to work pretty well for the smaller action on the Great Lakes and Chesapeake during the War of 1812.

Overall, I had a good time with the Enfilade games and I hope that all the players enjoyed them too.