Month: June 2022

A disappointing game

On Friday 2nd June three of us attempted a naval wargame with my rules set in the mid 18th century. The scenario was that a Spanish squadron carrying gold to Spain was to be intercepted by pirates while a British squadron had been sent to wipe out pirate activity.

We were all defeated by the weather. A storm arose and the British squadron was scattered while trying to navigate reefs. Both Spanish and pirate ships were driven inexorably towards the western edge of the board.

Rather than try to reset the game area by “scrolling” the world, we re-rolled for a new weather situation, but with the new wind setting it was clear that the pirates had been defeated, the British could do no more and the Spanish had a clear run for home. The Spanish player was declared the winner and we abandoned the game after two hours of frustrating play for all concerned.

We learned a lot of lessons about how poor my rules operated in adverse situations. One player pointed out that in a storm it would take him 5 turns to effectively stsy where he was.

Mea Culpa. Back to the drawing board. Since then I have been looking at the “Black Seas” rules and those from @SKTWargamesRules and have created a new set of rules. After thorough playtesting I intend to send a copy to Steve to add to his library, if he approves.

A new beginning

Followers of this blog will have learned that I have many stalled and “temporarily delayed” wargaming projects. This has all come to an end.

Why? Because within the last three weeks my iPad and my main laptop computer have both given up the ghost. Most of my gaming notes, documents, rules, maps, etc. were on one or other of these machines.

I do have a back-up drive, so all is not lost – or it would not be if the new PC that I am using to write this would recognise the back-up drive as valid, It won’t.

Thus I am freed from all the encumbrances of the past and can start another batch of fruitless wargaming projects to see me into my dotage.

The only problem is: what to do with all those stored toys for the past projects? No doubt some inspiration will turn up. Maybe if I trawl through all the old SD cards and memory sticks (Follow the Eagle for DOS 3.1 anyone?) I will recover some of the lost stuff.

The only file that I would particularly like to retrieve is the Visual Basic programme that I wrote to automate the mechanics of a Napoleonic Campaign in an Excel workbook. If I say it myself, that was a masterpiece which I was in slow progress of adapting for the “Hundred Days” campaign.

Never mind. Tomorrow we have a three-handed naval wargame scheduled. Pirates attack a Spanish treasure flotilla and coincidentally a British force arrives to suppress Pirate activity. Watch this space.