Been a gamer and a hobbyist since I was a wee lad. Can't remember a time in my life when it hasn't been present one way or another.
Getting Back to Things That Have Sat Idle.
Posted by Jeff Hiatt on Sunday, November 29, 2009
Over this last weekend I have gotten back into two projects that I have let sit for a bit. One of them is of my only own doing and the other I had help on.
The British Airborne
In March, I got a bunch of British Airborne from my family for my birthday. I had fiddled with them and done a few things with them but for the most part, I really didn't get anything finished.
I thought about it for a bit and to me it seemed silly that I had done nothing with these. I have been making a push at doing larger scale 28mm WW2 games. My Germans, American and Soviets had all received a lot more attention than my poor Brits. I guess the final straw what when I started doing American Airborne. I looked at them and thought to myself that I wanted to do more of them. It didn't seem right to start another airborne force when my Brit Paras were still bare. Then I popped in "A Bridge Too Far" into the DVD player. Whenever there is a doubt in working on the Brit Paras a watch of that will put me back in the mood to work on them again. So over the Thanksgiving weekend I got a little over a squad of them done. It is not close to all the unpainted Paras that I have but it made a dent.
There is one part that didn't work out for these guys though. I have been really excited about Disposable Heroes and Coffin for Seven Brothers by Iron Ivan. Over the last few weeks I have picked up a lot of their books, army lists, and scenario books. But the one that is never in stock is the British one (the book that I need to play my paras). It is on back order so hopefully I will have it soon.
Uncharted Seas / Trafalger / Man Of War
Another thing that I have been meaning to do is try out Trafalger the Historical port from Man of War from GW. That is currently one of the games that Corey has been tinkering with. So, we got to play on Friday. It has been a long time since I have played Man of War so I really didn't remember any of those rules. I had a fun time with it. It was a nice beer and pretzels sort of game.
So then Corey breaks out his port for using Uncharted Seas with these rules. But before I get into that a little background When Uncharted Seas came out about a year ago there were a lot of us that picked it up. For the most part, we played the rules as they were in the book and sure there were a few things that were irksome and poorly worded but most of us could get through them. Personally I felt that that the rules should have more blind playtesting. The issue that I had with the rules was that they seemed to be writing by people that played the rules a lot. There would be a lot of things that people that played this a lot with the creators would assume but for somebody new to the system wouldn't know. One example was how do you sink a ship. It would seem pretty obvious but that was something that was not spelled out in the rules. But as I said before I think that there should have been more blind play testing and a lot of this could have been sorted out before hand.
But getting back to the original part of the story one of the things that I tell people when they try to convince me to get into a new game is that I have an Uncharted Seas fleet gather dust next to my Infinity Haquislam Force. As it had stood, they had been sitting there for a while and I had really done nothing with them. Dan had been talking about getting together for a game of Uncharted Seas but it had been an issue of finding the time to do it.
With all of that being said, We got in a game using Corey's port and while there are some holes in it seems to work fine in my eyes.
In the end the thing that I find funny about this port is that Trafalger is a historical port of a fantasy game (Man of War) and Corey is doing a Fantasy port of a historical port of a Fantasy game.
The British Airborne
In March, I got a bunch of British Airborne from my family for my birthday. I had fiddled with them and done a few things with them but for the most part, I really didn't get anything finished.
I thought about it for a bit and to me it seemed silly that I had done nothing with these. I have been making a push at doing larger scale 28mm WW2 games. My Germans, American and Soviets had all received a lot more attention than my poor Brits. I guess the final straw what when I started doing American Airborne. I looked at them and thought to myself that I wanted to do more of them. It didn't seem right to start another airborne force when my Brit Paras were still bare. Then I popped in "A Bridge Too Far" into the DVD player. Whenever there is a doubt in working on the Brit Paras a watch of that will put me back in the mood to work on them again. So over the Thanksgiving weekend I got a little over a squad of them done. It is not close to all the unpainted Paras that I have but it made a dent.
There is one part that didn't work out for these guys though. I have been really excited about Disposable Heroes and Coffin for Seven Brothers by Iron Ivan. Over the last few weeks I have picked up a lot of their books, army lists, and scenario books. But the one that is never in stock is the British one (the book that I need to play my paras). It is on back order so hopefully I will have it soon.
Uncharted Seas / Trafalger / Man Of War
Another thing that I have been meaning to do is try out Trafalger the Historical port from Man of War from GW. That is currently one of the games that Corey has been tinkering with. So, we got to play on Friday. It has been a long time since I have played Man of War so I really didn't remember any of those rules. I had a fun time with it. It was a nice beer and pretzels sort of game.
So then Corey breaks out his port for using Uncharted Seas with these rules. But before I get into that a little background When Uncharted Seas came out about a year ago there were a lot of us that picked it up. For the most part, we played the rules as they were in the book and sure there were a few things that were irksome and poorly worded but most of us could get through them. Personally I felt that that the rules should have more blind playtesting. The issue that I had with the rules was that they seemed to be writing by people that played the rules a lot. There would be a lot of things that people that played this a lot with the creators would assume but for somebody new to the system wouldn't know. One example was how do you sink a ship. It would seem pretty obvious but that was something that was not spelled out in the rules. But as I said before I think that there should have been more blind play testing and a lot of this could have been sorted out before hand.
But getting back to the original part of the story one of the things that I tell people when they try to convince me to get into a new game is that I have an Uncharted Seas fleet gather dust next to my Infinity Haquislam Force. As it had stood, they had been sitting there for a while and I had really done nothing with them. Dan had been talking about getting together for a game of Uncharted Seas but it had been an issue of finding the time to do it.
With all of that being said, We got in a game using Corey's port and while there are some holes in it seems to work fine in my eyes.
In the end the thing that I find funny about this port is that Trafalger is a historical port of a fantasy game (Man of War) and Corey is doing a Fantasy port of a historical port of a Fantasy game.