The Battle of the Nile , Battleground Show and more

Well another busy week on the hobby front. First up I have been searching out a suitable set of rules for my 1/3000 sailing ships. Many I have looked at involve record keeping for damage for each ship and a level of complexity which isn’t really appropriate for my little ships. I have looked at quite a few rules and  having played many of the ‘Osprey’ rulesets thought these were worth a try.

Turns out they are pretty much exactly what I was after, they still have the fun of potentially changing weather and wind conditions, gunnery and discipline favouring the British but are fairly quick to pick up and importantly you can manage without any record keeping even at my tiny 1/3000 scale, all the damage etc been marked on the table. So after a couple of mini test battles and with the table in the dungeon clear I  set up the Battle of the Nile to see how Nelson would fair.

As one of Nelson’s famous victories there is plenty of info on the battle and maps etc.

Also lots of elegant paintings of the battle to give it a heroic feel ?

Brace the mainsail and all that !

One of the benefits of the scale is it fits pretty neatly onto a 6x4 seascape, the French are ‘anchored’ in the bay the rules have a convenient way of representing this. The British fleet is tracking in the distance to pass around the headland and catch the French by surprise. I was playing solo for a change which allowed me to fiddle the scenario as I went along. The french would be unable to move until they could see the first British ship around the headland. The wind at the start is coming across the British in the distance putting the French at a real disadvantage.

But the British get a little ragged in their haste to get at the French

And just as they turn the corner the wind drops, changes in the wind are governed by the initiative roll each turn. This really broke up the British fleet just at the point the French can start to get underway.

The French open up at long range but to no effect

But soon the British fleet drives forward into the french 

The first french ship is blown to pieces immediately. Blue markers indicate destruction, yellow markers are actual damage, you can remove these but if you get more than 4 you strike your colours or sink.

The two fleets get stuck into each other and the French have some lucky rolls ! Pretty soon a couple of British ships are burning too.

The wind changed again but both fleets are desperately trying to get into the best firing position. The victory goes to the fleet which can drive the enemy’s morale rating to zero. This neatly balances the fact that fleets may not be quite the same size, although at the Nile they were pretty close. Initially the french get the better of the fighting and the British morale drops quite quickly. But thanks to some fortunate initiative rolls when they were needed the British slowly pull the battle back, in the end it was remarkably close with both fleets within a couple of ‘ships’ of their morale failure.

But the British held out, their slightly better gunnery winning through. Nelson wins another victory, hoorah ! Although I think they lost roughly half their fleet. A very enjoyable battle played out over a couple of days, the benefit of having it setup I could play through a turn then come back to it later etc. I will certainly be playing some more. For larger battles I have bases to allow the fleet to be combined into groups or divisions to bring the number of active elements to a manageable number.

Next up some painting ….

A couple more ECW cavalry regiments. These are Peter Pig castings, helpfully some of which are single casts so less fiddly. Nice figures although it is hard to look at them and not think cowboys ? On closer inspection they are definitely ECW cavaliers.

As mentioned previously we visited Battleground show at the weekend. A very enjoyable days, catching up with a few folk, checking out some excellent games and squandering my retirement fund ! First some of the battles which caught my eye

Martin was putting on a  lovely Barbarossa battle in 10mm all Pendraken figures

A Sicily Bolt action game, well I was bound to have a close look at this one. I like the vineyards the hills are nice but challenging for storage.

I was particularly taken by this Waterloo battle ( there were a couple) using preprinted 6mm figures etc, it looked excellent to my eye and something to think about for the future, very nicely done

Another small scale C17th  battle. Do I need one of these forts I wonder ?

Teddy bear fur in abundance on this Little Round top battle, I did feel the setup here slightly odd as the battle effectively is only in about 1/4 of the table ?

A modern Afghan battlefield very nicely turned out, another interesting idea for the future as I wouldn’t need any terrain and only limited numbers of figures ?

An air battle which I have seen at a couple of shows I think, the main draw being the map/mat, I would like something similar for my 6mm WW2 planes but in a different scale I guess as these were much bigger.

Finally a massive flats battle, I think SYW , old school but still looks very effective.

The shopping was excellent with a very busy and active bring and buy. I had a taken a list of things to look out for and nearly all of them came up. Dash it I couldn’t help myself  !!!

Lots of ECW stuff but mainly because it was all being sold in job lots, a harbour for Cruel seas, tanks for the railway, some kit to build better wound markers and I couldn’t resist the castle. I came back so excited  I’ve already been working on some of this stuff 

By popular demand I have been trying to take some photographs of the railway but it is proving very difficult due to adequate access and lighting. Anyway here is a shot of a GWR Dean goods 0-6-0 pulling a small mix freight load.

I have also tried with perhaps only moderate success to take a couple of videos of action on the track, if you are interested in railways click the link, if not just go back and look at the lovely Wargames above.

Once gain thats it for now, sadly my game with George has had to be postponed , but I should be gaming at the weekend.

Thanks as always for checking in, please let me know if people are interested in more train photos it is a whole interesting new challenge for me?

Thanks again Matt ♥️