Friday, February 13, 2009

Getting My Feet Wet --

Riiiiiight . . . just what I need . . . a new wargaming project.

Well actually I've found over the years that it is a good thing to have a "change-of-pace" period to give the occasional break from your main period. So to "balance" the 18th century, I'm going to "get my feet wet" with a naval period.

Ever since I happened to come across Angus Konstam's "Pre-Dreadnought Naval" webpages (and the great photos there), I've been toying with the idea of getting some of the Houston 1/1000 scale ships.

Photo to left is from the Great Endeavors website and shows some American ships from a refight of a Spanish-American battle.

So anyway I emailed Dale at Great Endeavors and ordered some ships. I've got two Japanese BBs (Fuji & Shikishima) and a pair of Russian BBs (Retvizan & Petropavlovsk).

These pairs should be fairly even balanced . . . at least according to their points values in the rules I'm going to try. These are the ones that Angus uses, "Perfidious Albion". I got them and the "Fighting Fleets" books as electronic downloads from DriveThruRPG . . . but they are also available (as well as a lot of other naval rules) from A and A Game Engineering (follow the link at the bottom of the page).

So how will this project turn out? I don't know . . . but if I like it there are a lot more ships from the Russo-Japanese War that I can add . . . and there are other nations too.

I'd best be careful or I might get in too deep and drown.


-- Jeff

PS, Great Endeavors also sells the "true 25mm" Ral Partha Colonial line.

7 comments:

El Grego said...

Looks like a lot of fun, Jeff!

littlejohn said...

I do love those "side" projects and this one looks especially interesting. I once tried making my own dreadnoughts from wood and wire and they turned out pretty good if a bit cartoonish. Thanks for the link to Angus' site...his pics are very inspirational.

--Dave

tradgardmastare said...

I hope you really enjoy your new venture. It is good to ring the changes...
Alan

old-tidders said...

Looks like fun, I'm drawn to WWI ships, or perhaps earlier. I've been accumlating some reference books - no ships yet though.

-- Allan

Bluebear Jeff said...

Allan,

The sensible way to start would be to get some 1/2400 ships from Panzerschiffe . . . that's the next size down . . . and I might still do that . . . but I wanted to try these big boys first.


-- Jeff

A J said...

I do like the pre-Dreadnoughts. They have a certain air about them.

johnpreece said...

I think you always have to have at least one and preferably more 'side projects'.

I have never managed to get on very well with Naval Games - I can never achieve that wonderful line of battle effect you have there. I look much more like the sardine fleet setting out. Still at least with steam you can ignore the wind, hideously complicated stuff, wind.

John