Pirate game on lovely portside terrain

 

I had a very enjoyable pirate game today, hosted by Scott Bowman, and using his impressive new port terrain.   It was a three-way battle: Scott, Brett Mudgway and myself, all out for ourselves (somewhat akin, though on a grander scale, to that scene in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, where the three main characters are all threatening each other on the sandy shoal).

The game didn’t start too well for me, with my quartermaster blasted to the ground by a cowardly grenade.  And it pretty well went downhill from there, with most of my crew fighting rather ineffectually and gradually being picked off one by one. 

One pirate remained worth her salt, though.  The Dread Lady Pirate Barbarella, fierce despite her Kate Perry-ish pink and sky blue costume, managed to scone two of Brett’s characters, including Squire Trelawny himself. 

The end of the battle was a major no-holds-barred fight between Brett’s and my crews, whilst Scott (our host, remember?) merely arranged his men into a firing line and peppered our fray with bullets, not caring which of our innocently-fighting sailors they hit. 

By the end of the game, six out of my eight crew had been wounded or otherwise incapacitated.  Fortunately only one of them was killed outright – poor Jean le Bonk was committed to the deep after his first-ever fight.  The rest of the crew eventually came to, stood up and brushed off their clothes, ready to fight again one day soon … revenge will be ours!

Great game, and very good company.  Wargaming just the way I like it – no rules lawyering nor historical detail fanaticism.  Wonderful and light-hearted. Many thanks to Scott for hosting the game, and for spending all week creating this amazing terrain to be ready for today’s bash. 

Here are a couple of the great photos Scott took.  He has posted tons more photos of the game on his wargaming blog. 

Big aftershocks hit Christchurch

Drat, Christchurch has had two more big aftershocks today.  I gather the heading photo in my previous posting is now inaccurate, as initial reports say the rose window was damaged more today. 

I so feel for you, Christchurch citizens, and also feel sad myself as Christchurch was my childhood home. 

Back home from poor old Christchurch

Edit – Monday 13 June:  I gather my heading photo above is now inaccurate, as initial reports say the rose window was damaged more in today’s big aftershocks. 

I’m back at home after an interesting fortnight-long work trip to Christchurch – the New Zealand city badly hit by an earthquake in February this year.

It was heart-breaking to see the damage to the city in which I spent most of my childhood. You don’t understand how bad it is till you see it in real life – much worse than the TV pictures. So many of the buildings from my old memories are now broken or destroyed (or ‘munted’ as the Christchurchians tend to say).   I used to love as a kid climbing the spiral staircase in the iconic Cathedral tower  - now gone.  And the old Canterbury Provincial Buildings were such a wonderful medieval edifice for a new country like New Zealand.

I experienced a 5.5 aftershock whilst I was down there. Apparently this was the sixth most powerful shock they’ve had – I hate to think what the five stronger ones were like, because this one was bad enough for me. I was in a school library, and sought shelter in a doorway as the roof moved and groaned rather alarmingly, while books fell from the shelves.

I was in Christchurch to deliver a training programme to police education officers. Normally we run all our training up here at the Police College in Porirua, but because of the earthquake, we were reluctant to force Christchurch police officers away from their families for two weeks, so I went down and delivered the course to them instead. We based the course in a local high school down there. As a side benefit to the training, having a dozen or so cops based permanently in school for two weeks was a great way of fostering youth/police relationships.

I did get the opportunity to do some wargaming during my fortnight in Christchurch, thanks to our pals in the Southern Strategists.

One game was a delightful 15mm Sikh Wars game using ‘Volley and Bayonet’. Besides the exotic and colourful period, it was my first time with these rules – I found them very easy to pick up.  The buildings were also little architectural gems.  See the pictures below taken by Rodger Wood (click to enlarge and see the amazing detail of these 15mm figures and buildings). 

The other game was a ‘Regimental Fire and Fury’ ACW game in 28mm. Lovely terrain and figures, and another simple but effective ruleset.  Again, the figures and terrain were exquisite (again, click on the photos to see them in all their enlarged glory).

No doubt you’ll be able to see many other pics of these games on the Strategists’ own blogs soon:

• Southern Strategists
• Rebel Barracks
• Dispatches from the Mess