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.
Ironclads, Smoke on the Water, 1/600 scale Its been a good while since we last played an American Civil War naval game, and this was the first since we got our shiny new sea mat. OK, its not really suitable for the muddier waters of the Mississippi River – we’ll need a special mat for that
WWII Coastal Forces, Attack with Torpedoes, 1/600th scale We hadn’t brought out the MTBs and E-Boats for a while, so I decided to run a Coastal Forces game, set in the Mediterranean. Both sides ha convoys – a two ship resupply convoy for the Germans, and a battered tanker limping home for the British. Both
Pre-Dreadnought, Perfidious Albion, 1/1000 scale Thursday 19th October was the club night closest to Trafalgar Night, and appropriately enough I earmarked it as the day when I inaugurated my new pre-dreadnought fleets and cool-looking sea mat. The ships are 1/1000th scale, from Dale Kemper’s Houston’s Ships in the States, while the mat was made by
Coastal Forces, Attack with Torpedoes, 1/600 scale Next up was another naval game, a Coastal Forces scrap using Attack with Torpedoes. A heavily defended German coastal convoy was attacked by a three groups of Allied boats – a mixed bag of American PT Boats and British MTBs and supporting MGBs.All the torpedoes missed, and the
American Civil War Naval , Smoke on the Water, 1/600 scale Next up I played an American Civil War naval game, using Smoke on the Water rules. It was set on the Mississippi, and pitted the CSS Arkansas and a small cottonclad ram against two Cairo Classs river ironclads, backed up by the USS Queen
Second World War Naval, General Quarters, 1/2400 scale My last game of the month was a another naval affair. You don’t play one for ages and then, like buses, they all come along together! This was a refight of the First Battle of Guadalcanal (November 1942), a night action fought with my GHQ 1/2400 ships,
Edwardian Firepower & Krupp Steel I never really wanted to do another naval period. Three seemed more than enough. However, one day Colin Jack from the Edinburgh Club invited me to join him in a 1/3000 scale Pre-Dreadnought game, using a set of rules he developed – ones that later became Perfidious Albion. I’d used
Some of the ugliest ships known to man The mid-19th century was a real transition time for warship design – sail to steam, wood to iron, smoothbores to rifled guns, roundshot to shell – and the American Civil War landed plump in the middle of it all. While some wargamers dismiss this as a boring
Mare Nostrum While this naval period doesn’t get as much play as it should, the great little ship models (from GHQ) make it something of a treat when they do appear on the tabletop. Several years ago I was writing figure reviews for the now defunct Osprey Military Journal, and the guys at GHQ sent
Messing about in boats Many years ago I wrote a set of Second World War Coastal Forces rules for a participation game called Plywood, Petrol & Tracer. That still pretty much sums up what this is all about – small wooden boats filled with highly-explosive fuel firing tracer rounds at each other, or torpedoes at
