Wednesday, February 16, 2022

In Which Rabbitman Sounds "General Quarters!"

 


I have found a hopefully easy and low cost distraction from the endless Russian and Prussian musketeers, which I hope will also scratch my winter itch to buy all the things!

Naval warfare in the Pacific during WW2.

Yes, you heard me. Tiny ships. 

It will be very different, so I hope it will be the palate cleanser that 1940 French or Middle Earth Dwarves would not be. I have also caught myself looking at WW1, and Epic 40k. So the itch is bad.

Ever since I read this book last year to get some context for my Bag the Hun project 

I've been tempted by the destroyer and cruiser battles in the Solomon islands from 1942 to '43. I have ordered the companion volume Blazing Star, Setting Sun which covers the campaign from November 1942 to March 1943, and an Osprey on IJN and USN destroyers (the volume IJN vs USN cruisers was sold out). I could easily incur Mrs. Rabbitman's disapproval and buy the 5 or 6 titles going into more detail on both navies destroyers but I shan't. 

My goal is to do this with some economy. An Australian Twitter friend has shared a pdf of the out of print, pre-Warlord edition of, Victory at Sea and he pointed me to a designer of .stl files for 1:1800 scale models. Printing at 75% will produce 1:2400 scale ships. $3 for a file and I can get as many Fletcher class DDs as I need is better then spending $18 at GHQ for a pack of 5, which I'd still have to assemble. GHQ are very nice, but awfully fiddly. This period isn't my main focus, so buying Gold Standard models is overkill. The Mad Padre has volunteered to do the printing for me.

It's just some destroyers and cruisers for each side. Won't even take that long to paint. Right?

I wonder which direction project creep will take me?



2 comments:

  1. The club I was in back in BC was heavily into 20th C naval battles. I enjoyed them but not to the same extent. I would look for alternatives every once and a while.

    They used a set of rules called Steel Fleets. I'm not sure if they were home brew or not. It had some good points (gunnery worked reasonably well but I think it overemphasized the number of barrels) but the torpedo rules were beyond fiddly.

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    1. many years ago I remember playing at our our local club a set that tracked the torpedo movement every turn. Fortunately we were using bare wooden tables so just used rulers and pencils!

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