Ironclads and Aircraft Carriers

Carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and hordes of aircraft - what's not to love?

It has been a weekend of frenzied activity on Ebay and I am delighted to report that I have managed to secure an unpunched copy of the Avalon Hill version of the classic boardgame Flat Top. This is a great 'Cecil B. DeMille' gargantuan counter-fest of a game and one of which I have played and enjoyed an enormous number of times (albeit many years ago). It will seem a little strange but I doubt if I will actually get to play this again - it is too large for a solo game and getting an opponent lined up that would spend the time would probably be too tall an order - so the main reason I have acquired this is for the material enclosed. The map boards and the plot maps are really useful for any number of naval campaign ideas and the aircraft counters will provide everything I need in respect of air support for use with the 1/4800th Pacific set up - when I get it that is!

For counters and hex maps read models and Hexon

Europe, the Pacific and those ACW ships missing from the base game.

The other addition to the collection is one of complete, nostalgic indulgence that I would probably struggle to  justify or stand any chance of using in the form it was designed. I am talking about the Yaquinto game of tactical ACW naval combat - Ironclads and the expansion kit that covered the European and Pacific fleets of the period. The game is an uber-detailed ship level game of naval combat and to be frank, is not really anything like the type of game I would want to play these days but, it is a piece of gaming history and also provides me, like Flat Top above, with an awful lot of raw material to use with those game that I do want to play. The data cards, ship counters and everything else contained therein will be useful for any number of ideas and so I am looking at this as a kind of  'gaming tool kit'.

The reverse side of the coin is that I have the wherewithal to use the rules with models if the need arises - which I suppose is essentially what I have been doing with the whole block/hexon thing so is not really a new idea, just a variation on a theme.