Girding One's Loins - NWASS 1

A nice way to ease myself back into the Great War at Sea after a surfeit of Ironclads!

Following on from our brief and rain soaked sojourn to the West Country last week, work has commenced in earnest on the new book. Currently the working title is "Naval Wargames in the Age of Steam and Steel" but this may not be the final word. It will however, suffice for now.

I have been busy going through my physical and digital archives to dig out any usable material for the book and was delighted to find several bits and pieces I had forgotten I had. To begin with there is a very nice table of Jane's Gun Ratings and which ships carried what. These came from a set of rules published by Skytrex back in the day and I have fond memories of using them with my 1:3000th French.

I also came across some of my earlier naval rule sets for the period 1890 to 1920 including one titles "The Naval Wargame 1890 - 1920" which contains some ideas that I may well bring up to date and include in the new set.

Another part of this process is that I have decided to type up the salient bits and pieces from various sources so that I have a digital version handy and also so that the information is all in one place. I have really enjoyed doing this and it has had the added advantage of limbering up my keyboard skills. It is also handy having a physical version for making notes on etc - I tend to do this and then retype the text.

The amended bases for my WoFun Russo Japanese collection will be on their way this Thursday which is really handy. This will means that the two fleets will be ready for action very shortly and the plan is to persuade Mr Huband to let me use them as part of his ongoing RJW project - naturally with pictures and after action reports! 

I also dug out the box of 1:2400th Tumbling Dice WW1 British and German ships that will need basing and painting. I may tackle this particular task sooner rather than later which will then mean that I will have all the ships required for the three sub periods - now referred to as Ironclads, Battleships and Dreadnoughts.

You may recall that I had flirted with the idea of a Madasahatta inspired WW1 naval campaign that included East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The models acquired reflected this and so the list is as follows:

ABB38 Bristol 1909 (CL) x 1

ABG2 Brandenburg 1896 (PB) x 2

ABG30 Magdeburg 1911 (CL) x 1

ABG24 Moltke 1910 (BC) x 1

ABB26 Apollo 1890 (CL) x 2

ABB9 Swiftsure 1903 (PB) x 2

ABB14 Cressy 1899 (AC) x 1

The fleet packs consisted of the following:

ASB MSP9 British China/Pacific Squadron 1905

ASB MSP12 British Falkland Islands 1914

ASB MSP11 German Pacific Squadron 1914

You can probably guess where two of the above packs are heading! In fact I plan to run Coronel/Falklands as the WW1 game in the book although the temptation to use the Goeben and the Breslau against the Russians in the Black Sea is also quite tempting....

At this stage I have no plans to add to the ACW collection so that is 'good to go' as they say. In the meantime though, I need to measure up the TD models for their bases as well as typing out the name labels. Luckily I already have the ensigns in stock.