Naval Stuff - Models, Rules and Future Ideas?

The eagle-eyed amongst you will note the progress on the middle two hulls…..

First the good news. My hexed rules for the Lake Tanganyika expedition (and gunboat actions in general) are finished and are currently with the original author for review etc. As yet they are untested but as soon as I have finished the models I shall be trying them out. 

Now the not so good news! Whilst the ship models for Lake Tanganyika are simple in terms of detail the scratchbuilding has presented a few challenges. As I am working with much smaller vessels compared to the American Civil War a lot of my standard building techniques are a little on the unsuitable side for such  models. Some of the materials I routinely work with are simply too large to use. After much trial and error I think I now have it ‘dialled in’ so progress should be more straightforward.

A closer look at the middle two models. The funnel will be placed between the two raised sections on the central ‘island’. Guns are fore and aft of the central island and I also need to place a mast and flagstaff. For the record the hull is 5cm long

In other news I irked up a copy of the book you see below at our local boot sale for the princely sum of 50p! Very useful for ‘Cold war turned hot” 1980s style games - think Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy as an example.

Just right for the “Dance of the Vampires”

It seems strange to refer to naval warfare set in the 1980s as “Modern” given the technological advances since then - but it will suffice especially as the whole “Cold War turned hot” period is one that I dabbled with “back in the day” and was a lot of fun to game. 

I would hazard a rather ill-informed opinion that this period would probably work best as a boardgame instead of using models and certainly that is an area I will look to explore.