RSS FeedAngus Konstam is an author and historian - visit his website at
www.anguskonstam.com or e-mail him at anguskonstam@aol.com
He's a member of the Orkney Wargames Club, which meets in Kirkwall on Thursday evenings.
See their Facebook page for more info.
Ironclads, Bill’s Ironclad Rules, big toy variant, 1/50 scale This week Thursday was om a Tuesday. Rather, we usually meet on a Thursday, but this week Edinburgh’s Navy Club is being used as a polling station, so we switched days. We also swapped games. the plan was to play Napoleonic single ship actions using Post
WWII Naval, General Quarters, 1/2400 scale This week, with a few of the regulars away, we wanted a small and fairly straightforward game. So, as we hadn’t played a WWII naval game for ages, we decided on it. I came up with a scenario where I could scale the forces up or down depending on how many
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale I rarely game the same thing two weeks in a row. However, as most of my wargaming crowd were doing other things (storming compounds in Sangin, fighting tank v tank actions in Normandy or slogging it out in Dark Age Mercia), only Peter was left, and
The Age of Fighting Sail, Post Captain, 1/1200 scale We hadn’t played these rules before, so this game was really about learning the system. Four of us took part, so we fielded four ships – two French 40 gun frigates (Bart’s Cornelie and Campbell’s Hortense) and two British frigates, Peter’s Aeolus (32) and my Naiad
WWII Coastal Forces, Attack with Torpedoes! 1/600 scale If you look on the period link, you’ll see we haven’t played a Coastal Forces game for quite a few years. There’s no real reason for it – this just seemed to be a naval period that slipped between the cracks. So, when Bart said he wanted
Renaissance Galleys, Galleys, Guns and Glory, 1/300 scale Usually between Christmas and New Year we play something fairly fun and frivolous at the Edinburgh club. Past years have seen us piloting helicopters around Vietnam in Low Level Hell, or using Japanese anime schoolgirls to shoot at monsters in Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. This time round, we took
Pre-Dreadnought, Perfidious Albion, 1/1000 scale You’ll look in vain to find any account of this battle, save for the Venetian-Genoese scrap of 1380. Sometimes you just need to invent things in order to justify why six nations turned up with battleships, eager to blow each other out of the water. The rather fast and loose
The Age of Fighting Sail, Kiss Me Hardy, 1/1200 scale In honour of it being the anniversary of Trafalgar, we decided to refight the battle. We hired a local bowling club for the Sunday, set out our 16×6 foot table, and set to. The flagpole outside was even adorned with the three nations’ naval ensigns for
Great War Naval, Fleet Action Imminent, 1/2400 scale This little game was something a bit different – a game where none of the ships had big guns, and none of them had gun turrets. The war began late in the evening of 4th August, and the following morning, shortly after dawn, the German minelayer Königin Luise
The (Third) Cod War, There’s Something Wrong with our Bloody Fish Today!,1/200-scale This really was a game with a difference. I wasn’t in the army, but I did serve on HMS Falmouth, which plays a key role in this game. Thirty years ago, the Icelanders arbitrarily extended their fishing limits to 200 miles – a
