RSS FeedAngus Konstam is an author and historian - visit his website at
www.anguskonstam.com or e-mail him at anguskonstam@aol.com
He's a member of the Orkney Wargames Club, which meets in Kirkwall on Thursday evenings.
See their Facebook page for more info.
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale This was the evening of the wargame club’s AGM. Usually that involves a lot of dull bureaucratic stuff, dreary reports by office bearers and a loss of valuable wargaming time. . This time though, the dull but necessary bit was over by 8pm. That still left
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale This week we planned to play a Back of Beyond game, but for various reasons that got postponed for a month. So, we fell back on Post Captain, the rules we use to fight single ship actions. This time, we based the game on a historical
The Age of Fighting Sail, Kiss Me Hardy, 1/1200 scale Concluding what seemed like a very nautical nine days of games, we come to the biggie. Last year the guys at the Edinburgh club decided to stage a refight of Trafalgar. it was a success, so we decided to do it all again this year.
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale This game began simply enough. Bart and I agreed to fight a single-ship action using Post Captain, each of us bringing along a frigate. I chose a historical action – the duel between HMS Sybille (38 guns) and the French La Forte (50 guns). It was fought
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale I rarely game the same thing two weeks in a row. However, as most of my wargaming crowd were doing other things (storming compounds in Sangin, fighting tank v tank actions in Normandy or slogging it out in Dark Age Mercia), only Peter was left, and
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale We hadn’t played these rules before, so this game was really about learning the system. Four of us took part, so we fielded four ships – two French 40 gun frigates (Bart’s Cornelie and Campbell’s Hortense) and two British frigates, Peter’s Aeolus (32) and my Naiad
The Age of Fighting Sail, Kiss Me Hardy, 1/1200 scale In honour of it being the anniversary of Trafalgar, we decided to refight the battle. We hired a local bowling club for the Sunday, set out our 16×6 foot table, and set to. The flagpole outside was even adorned with the three nations’ naval ensigns for
The Age of Fighting Sail, Kiss Me Hardy, 1/1200 scale This Saturday was Deep Fried Lard, the annual celebration of all things Too Fat Lardy north of the border. It was held in Musselburgh, a rather soulless seaside suburb of Edinburgh, and during the day several Lardy games were available for us to take part
Napoleonic Naval, Kiss Me Hardy, 1/1200 scale Its often said that sailing is a very expensive hobby, and rather than owning your own boat, the real secret is to have friends who do. Well, this worked out very well for me when I was invited to take part in this little game. The guys at
I really love this period thanks to the novels of Patrick O’Brian, but the thought of all that rigging always put me off it. Then, along came a new club project. One day, someone suggested refighting Trafalgar using 1/1200 scale ships, and the guys all thought this was a great idea. Better still, some people
