Straight at her Mr. Mowatt

Interesting day yesterday. On my way to Ron's for a game I was annoyed to be greeted by a flat. Part of life's version of friction and as with the most of the military sort I handled it by being alert, trained and equipped and was delayed but not critically so nor prevented from accomplishing my mission.

Sails of Glory, Game 1. HMS Somethingorother uses her superior seamanship to rake her French opponent. Unfortunately she only had 2 working guns left and was shortly forced to strike her colors having suffered so many crew casualties as to be unable to work what was left of the ship.

While trying to replace the flat with the spare,  in the teeth of a -21C wind, alternating woolen mittens which kept my fingers warm with a pair of workgloves which allowed me to grasp smallish things like lugnuts and which didn't snag on the jack, my mind wandered, as it would, to  wargaming the Russian Civil War.

Despite the fact that Russia in 1918 was a big place and had more than 1 season, inevitably one seems to think of snow. So it was that my first order for this collection included a lot of guys in great coats and fur caps and my intention was to do finish the bases white and do a winter board to play on. A snow board one might say since it seems fitting to acknowedge the winter games.

However, as I crouched there muttering sweet nothings to reluctant nuts I had a moment of clarity. I'm not trying to do a serious re-creation or a study of the RCW or of the many ways people suffered, I'm playing an heroic fantasy and part of me, if only a subconscious part,  is picturing me down there mounted on a dashing steed (hopefully not the big  black brute Piggy who was my charger when I took riding classes while in college) . I don't have any real urge to imagine my self freezing various appendages in the midst of a battle so why should I want to put my toy soldiers through it?

Time to paint some Cossacks and Hussars in summer dress and at last more of those marvelous Zvezda infantry in their summer dress. My RCW will take place in summer!

Sails of Glory Game 2. Having found two new ships to replace the ones sunk or taken in the first engagement, the brave, bold but disciplined Royal Navy sails on in line ahead towards a gaggle of Frenchmen.

Once I got to Ron's he had his latest acquisition laid out, Sails-of-glory, a Naploleonic Naval game inspired by Wings of War. Pure genius.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/109291/sails-of-glory

While the frigate draws the enemy fire, my ship swings across the enemy's bows, raking her once again. So far so good but alas we were playing the introductory game where there is no bonus for raking and the 5 chits I drew were underwhelming in effect while Ron pulled a tremendous load of 4 and 5 points hits for his 7 shots and my poor frigate rolled over and sank. I battled on for an hour and came within a chit of taking or sinking both his ships but again, in the end, I ran out of crew and had to strike.

Took me 3 or 4 turns, about 15 minutes, to get my sea legs but if you have even a slight sense of or any experience of sailing and any slight knowledge of naval warfare in the age of sail ( as in have read Hornblower or some of Obrien's novels etc let alone actual history) the game is dead easy to pick up and you are soon thinking seamanship and tactics not rules and mechanisms. We only played the simple, introductory game but I'd happily play that level again even though  I'm looking forward to trying some of the standard and advanced rules as well. Five very enjoyable hours,

A closer look at these little 1:1000 gems, straight out of the box. Alongside is the wind marker used to determine the attitude of tge dhip, running, reaching, beating ir taken aback, based on the particular model.