The Naval Sitrep

A great doorstep of a tome - chock full of naval goodies!

Several pieces of news to report - some good and some bad unfortunately.

Tony Anderson, the owner of Navwar, specialist in 1:3000th and some 1:1200th model ships has passed away. I have no other details at this time. I have been acquainted with Tony via Navwar since the early 1980s and the visits to his shop in Seven Kings were always great fun. Tony was a veritable encyclopaedia of naval knowledge and by his own admission could talk at Olympic level for England. I am sure that many naval wargamers will miss him (I certainly will) and as to what will become of Navwar I have no idea. R.I.P Tony and grateful thanks for the wonderful models produced over the years.

David Manley, the prolific writer of rules, trainer of naval architects and all round good guy recently announced that his Long Face Games label is now ten years old. During this time his output of rules and more latterly STL files for 3D printing has been relentless. I am sure that many naval gamers are familiar with and have made use of his rules and I am sure that there will be a lot more to come. I would like to extend my own personal congratulations and best wishes to him and will look forward to the next ten years!

Way back in the early 1980s I used to play a lot of predreadnought era battles using 1:3000th scale models and a set of rules called Devil at the Helm. The navy I used was a French one that eventually expanded to include the Great War. It was great fun to use and I fought many actions against Mr Fox’s Austro Hungarians and Italians. 

I recently acquired a selection of 1:2400th scale British and German ships for 1914 (based on the German East Asia Squadron) and have had half an idea about using the maps from Flat Top as the basis for a naval campaign in the period. Either that or something spun off from Madasahatta - another idea I have flirted with off and on.

For reasons unknown the French never featured in Madasahatta so I am thinking of rectifying that and building up a small French squadron for 1914. It will be in 1:2400th and will feature a lot of Colonial style  second line ships - meaning lots of old scrap metal and trust me, the French had plenty of ships that qualified in that category!

The book you see above is an absolute goldmine of information on the warships of the French Navy over the period covered. As I scanned through the pages a lot of memories came back when I recognised some of the names. My original fleet (long gone) was in 1:3000th and consisted of Navwar models. The new version will be a lot smaller in terms of numbers for sure!