I'm back - Shiver me timbers !

 Afternoon All - following some technical difficulties I have been unable to access my blog for some weeks but the good news is I am back and have a load of new posts and news to share.

I'll update you on the progress of the house build in a future post but suffice to say that my hands have been rather full over the autumn months. The good news is that the work has started.

Lets get onto the most important business - the gaming and hobby projects. Monday night saw regulars of the Shed crew get together for a spot of piracy on our ficticious Pirate Island. Its been several years since this period saw some action and we were all raring to go.

The table was approximately 6ft x 9ft with three zones, the mountainous jungle area featuring Skull mountain and the lair of Ben Gunn, and in the valley some old lost ruins. The terrain is a bit of a mash up from my jungle, peninsular and desert set ups. I think it all works well together.

The village of St James sat across the seafront and backed onto the jungle

and down on the coast a full third of the table was occupied by the sea, port and a coastal castle

The two ships moored off the coast were just for terrain purposes and could be boarded by the players but not sailed away. Scattered across the coast were a number of rowing boats. We house ruled that a boat needed a minimum of two players to move, it would move at the same pace of a walking man..If for any reason only one or no person could man the boat it would drift three inches per turn towards the castle and founder on the rocks with all treasure and lives lost. 

We used the excellent Fist Full of Lead rules for our game and with five players each commanding seven figures its was a full on experience. At the bottom of the post is a roster sheet of the crews created in advance for the players. In essence three groups of Pirates were raiding the island for treasure and other valuable goods. The goods themselves were marked up with values/points ranging from 1 to 10. 

The players did not know the value of the goods until; they were picked up. The goods themselves would then have to be transported to the Pirates lair (each Pirate had a ship off the coast, or in the case of Redbeard an old tomb at the end of the Island. Facing the pirates were the local garrison of British Redcoats and a marauding unit of French marines. The government forces got points for killing Pirates. At the end of the game the player with the most points was declared the winner. In the event that one player lost all his forces he would be given control of the towns militia and these only acrtivated/appeared if one player was knocked out.

The following are a few photos from the game - with a short narrative.

I commanded the British, Tony the French and Mark , Vince and Sven the Pirates. Sven pirates started in the jungle with the tomb as their lair. As it turned out both the British and French turned their attention towards Redbeard (Sven) believing the other two would do the damnedest to scupper each other plans.

The coastal Pirates (Mark & Vince) seemed to strike up a cordial relationship and began to plunder the town with a view that there were enough spoils to share around.

Poor Old Sven's pirates were coming under significant fire from the French Marines sitting in the higher ground with only the temple ruins as cover.

Perched on their high advantage point the Marines poured fire into the helpless pirates.

Elsewhere Mark and Vice were happily rowing their boats taking treasure back to their ships....

Fortunately for Sven he was somewhat helped out by the marooned pirate Ben Gunn sitting in his camp on Skull mountain. Gunn was an NPC (up until someone could rescue him) and given he was mad he would open fire on the nearest target when possible. Ben's unerring accuracy put paid to two of my redcoats before the third could overcome him and convince him to join the Kings cause. 

By now the French were in the jungle and mopping up the remaining members of Redbeards (Sven) crew.

Sadly for Redbeard his force was eliminated and so Sven switched to command the militia. The shot below of two pirates on the rope bridge was not from the game but I just wanted to share that this resin bridge is fish tank ornament but works so well for this 28mm scale.

With Redbeard dealt with the French turned their attention onto the remaining redcoats now heading back into the town. Seargeant Croissant took up a high vantage point in the church and soon scored a kill on the Redcoat commander.

A firefight on the beach broke out between the militia and the coastal pirates who had now cleaned the town out of valuable (without coming to blows I should add)

The last Pirates soon made their escape and with the clock marching on a halt to the game was called

Our winner was Mark who had quietly amassed a total of 56 points of treasure, in second place Tony and Sven shared the honour with 40 points, with Vince one point behind on 39. Sadly the poor old redcoats came last with 26 points.

It should be added that if Vince had counted carefully he would have noticed the nine units should have been eight - (private joke !!)

An honourable mention should go to Roger the Cabin boy who from the walls of a villa in the town managed to take down one redcoat with his blunderbus. Despite being hunted down for the rest of the game he managed to flee the scene intact. 

The crew rosters

Hope this was of interest and there is more to come soon...what does 1000 x painted 28mm Hoplites look like ??