A Work in Progress

While I was preparing for Huzzah a call went out for volunteers to run a "pirate game" at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in late June. Having read too many GA Henty novels when I was a kid, I volunteered first then began to find out what the occasion was and what was needed. After various discussions it seemed that an historical game with a nautical connection that members of the public could try was what was called for. Not having a naval game in my pocket i turned to what I did have, 40mm AWI. So here I am preparing a portable sort of game of an American Privateer raid on a small Nova Scotia town during the American Rebellion.

Lots of work left to do this week.

After reading up on several privateer raids I decided to take a suitable piece of canvas and paint up a generic small Nova Scotian port. I was still short of ships so I turned to my shelves. Some time spent sprucing up an old toy Pirate ship (seen in last post) was promising but it doesn't look quite right on the map. So, I turned to two souvenir fishing dories that have served off and on for a decade. They are a little long for my usual table now and even more so on the small mat so with heart in throat I have begun a long delayed project to shorten them and add mast and bowsprit to produce some small sloops. One at a time.

That left the town. The original idea was to use my usual ceramic clapboard houses but I don't have enough to make a town without resorting to inappropriate brick and stone houses and in any case only 3 or 4 would be able to fit on the small mat.

The big house alternative.

Ever since I staged my first HG Wells Hook's Farm game (see ) I have been intrigued by the idea of a town of wooden houses and am getting ever more attached to increasingly under scale buildings. A slide towards elements vs single figures again has only reinforced this choice so I started scrounging for some blocks of wood and some of the triangular bits of orange crate that I used in the mockup siege game. A little while later I had the makings of a nice little town with the right sort of flavour. It soon became obvious that more prep work would have helped improve the finish (Wells recommended painting the details on paper and gluing this to the wood.)

None the less, with 2 buildings now done,  I like the way the town is shaping up and look forward to seeing it in action in an Atlantica game this summer.

One done, a bunch to go.

So I've got 5 days to finish the houses and other terrain before a test game. Oh, and I need to add the grid which will be irregularly shaped areas, and then write a set of rules suitable for walk up, never played a wargame before, kids of all ages that someone else can teach because it looks like I won't be able to be there at least not all day. What could go wrong?