Ahoy me Hearties from Darkest Derbyshire.
I think that’s the traditional greeting when old salts meet and I would love to come on board and have a look around your vessel, sorry it’s taken me a while to introduce myself.
Firstly a bit of an admission, I’ve never been a naval wargamer, when I first started out on my wargaming life a few “mumbles into his beard” years ago I read Donald Featherstone’s book Naval Wargamming. I made the plaster of Paris Greek Galley’s like Tony Bath, was envious of anyone who could command a squadron of destroyers in a Ball Room using Fletcher Pratt’s rules and I bought a roll of lining paper to refight battles in the age of steam, plotting the movement on the paper.
Unfortunately I found the rules and battles quite boring, and I became an Ancients wargamer in the true tradition of WRG, crikey here was a rule system you could have a good argument with your opponent about. Bugger the game and history we had some glorious fights on the touch line. Eventually I grew tired of this and quit wargaming for many years and only came back about 7 years ago when I read a blog about zombie gaming.
I live out in the sticks and as my nearest club is a 2 hour round trip away and I was only home for 4 months in the depths of winter, I knew most of my gaming would be solo and so zombies seemed an ideal opponent for the bleak winter months in darkest Derbyshire.
The reason for the only being home in the winter is because the lovely Mrs Vagabond and I retired 10 years ago and went sailing, we have an old Nicholson 35 sail boat and sailed her down to Greece via Scotland over a period of 5 years and stayed there for 3 years and then went back to the south of France. Last year we decided time is marching on and we had other things that needed doing so had the boat shipped back to the UK by road and she’s on the hard in Totnes waiting to go onto a mooring later this year in sight of the Dartmouth Naval College. You probably won’t be surprised to hear she’s called Vagabond of Brixham.
2018 was the first time we’d spent more time in the UK than out of it since my wargaming renaissance and I’m hoping to be at home more in the future so it was very fortuitous when a year ago at the York show I came across Wings of War and I love it. The game system I think is brilliant in its basic format, I learned the rules from a short video and was able to play my first game almost without referring to the rule book. The game was great, fast and furious, loads of fun and I was hooked.
The other thing that happened a year ago was I started a wargaming blog, essentially it’s a series of stories that are derived from my games, I found I really enjoy re-telling the tales of daring do of my little lead men, all my games now involve a hand full of figures and small playing areas, they range from Westerns to 1930’s gangsters, Viking raids to the tales of Becky who’s in the mould of a female Indianna Jones only better looking, the latest game was set in the Sengoku period in Japan and involved the rescue of a previously captured Samurai Lord with ninja’s and all.
Sorry I digressed a bit, I was vaguely aware there was a sister game Sails of Glory but naval war games held no interest for me until recently I read through a few of Captain Bligh’s scenarios that he’s posted on here, they are immensely imaginative and I can see loads of potential there for some enjoyable games in the future. The Cutting Out one reminds me very much of Master and Commander Aubrey and HMS Surprise, I can’t remember the name of the Author but I read all his books back to back a couple of years ago and could see loads of potential games if I had been interested in the genre.
I’m hoping and assuming there are some solo rules similar to Wings and if they are anywhere as good, I expect to have some very enjoyable games in the future.
We have just moved house and things are quite frantic at the moment but the good news is that I will have a whole room for myself, the down side is it’s full of everything we haven’t found a home for yet but I’m working hard to change that.
The only thing I have unpacked from my wargaming things so far is the Sails of Glory starter set and I am determined to get a game sooner rather than later.
Well a long winded introduction but best greetings to you all.
Midshipman Vagabond
