My Pound Store Naval Convoy

My convoy of Merchant Shipping

The Wolf Pack

It might be stretching it a bit to call Flying Tiger a pound store, although these two packs of eraser ships cost £4 in total.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/hms-flying-tiger-eraser-battleship

It’s come quite a way since picking up these in Flying Tiger a few weeks ago.

Two stubby cruise ships joined together to make a hospital or troop ship maybe? 

I now look forward this autumn to working out some kind of (solo) convoy gaming simulation, once I have puzzled  out what to do for escorts. I might have to raid the card ships from our old family copy of the Dover Patrol game for now.

Thanks to many of you for all the excellent suggestions regarding simple naval wargames rules. I have now ordered a paperback copy from Lulu of the Bob Cordery’s new Gridded Naval Wargames which received most recommendations, as well as a £2 bashed up, ex-library copy of Donald Featherstone’s Naval Wargames.

If these rules don’t suit an old infantry skirmish gamer, there were other helpful suggestions. Thank you all.

It will be interesting moving out into new territory or terrain, a whole new language of ships and naval warfare, a world or ocean apart from H. G. Wells type Little Wars or the small infantry skirmish game of Featherstone’s Close Wars.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/dipping-my-little-toe-in-the-big-ocean-of-naval-wargaming

What next for my Merchant Shipping Convoy? 

Two tone grey camouflage makes it difficult to identify individual ships, which is the point of the dark grey lower and light grey upper sections. However it makes identifying individual cargo ships in any future naval game a problem, so a few pre-war coloured funnels might return as they did in WW2.

Paints used are several coats of Revell Aquacolor Acrylics, Gunship Grey and Stone Grey for the ships and  painting separate layers of Ultramarine Blue and Mossy Green onto the black card bases made from scrap art framing or mounting card. What colour the sea?

Big ships don’t leave such a wide angle wake as a small river craft. Getting some kind of bow wave and wake was more tricky, a blob of off-white paint on the bow brushed along the side of the ship and its aftermath seemed to do the trick in most cases.

I also have to name and label my convoy ships, probably with some Bronte inspired Angria, Gondal and Gaaldine names: Angrian Princess, Gondal Queen, that sort of thing that suits possible  Imagi-Nation naval campaigns.

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 19 August 2018

Dipping my Little Toe in the Big Ocean of Naval Wargaming?

 

Out of the packet …

 

Grey painted undercoated merchant shipping with matchstick funnels where needed. Simple bases need painting. 

I am not by nature a naval gamer. Some of my school friends were but it didn’t immediately ring any bells for me as someone who likes Simple 1:1 figure gaming, none of this 1 figure equals so many men. You could argue even more so, that one ship represents even more men.

Buying HMS Flying Tiger eraser battleships as recruits for a Pound store navy?

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/hms-flying-tiger-eraser-battleships

The next question – What simple rules to use? Track down Featherstone’s Naval Wargaming?

What scale or range would a few cheap metal escorts be for a convoy game?

Hmmm …

 

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, August 2018.

Flying Tiger Palm Trees

The heat, the sand, the endless sand. Need shade and a cool drink.

We must March or Die …

The Lost Oasis –  Tiger.com palm tree decorations on Heroscape desert hex scenery on my board with Peter Laing 15mm French Foreign Legion figures for scale.

I realise that I have spent lots of time recently repairing Broken Britain’s 54mm toy soldier size figures and somewhat neglected my smaller 15mm Peter Laing figures.

Tiger.com palm tree (cake?) decorations

Painted resin palm  tree decs £1 each.

On my travels “upcountry” (everything above my rural Southwest part of England / the U.K. is “upcountry”) I recently  visited a Flying Tiger store. Fortunately they do not yet do mail order.

https://uk.flyingtiger.com

Flying Tiger  of Copenhagen are European (and worldwide) stores selling strange and wonderful things.

A small six by six by five inch high Opbevaringsbokse or stackable storage box. Useful for storing spare heads and arms etc.  Cost £2.

Three layers of sorting. 

Three blurry Flying Tiger shelfies of things I did not buy but could be useful for gaming:

Shelfie 1: Resisted buying these fake grass toothbrush holders or soap dishes – or fake grass clumps for gaming. £3 each.

Shelfie 2 and 3: A kid’s thick card cottage lunchbox with front down flap. Or a Q-Cottage? Excellent for concealing a Home Guard field gun? £7.

Resisted the roll of fake grass AstroTurf table runner £4

Resisted the wooden plant holder in the shape of 54mm+ picket fences – cheaper than making?

Things I did buy

Magnetic boards £2 each A4 paper size, thin enough to cut and use in reverse as tray bases. It could be mounted on card or wood or tray as an A4 magnetic board to hold figures in place.

Mixing palette £1 each, a fraction of the cost in an art supplies shop.

The rest of the (Naval) gaming related purchases will follow in future blogposts.

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 5 August 2018.

Below are pictured my testing out of my magnetic sheets – not strong enough for metal 54mm figures mounted on tuppenny and penny pieces (which are slightly magnetic after 1992). A few of my plastic pound store figures I discovered to my surprise that I had based on pre-1992 tuppennies – whoops!

The heady lure of inexpensive things …

The heady lure of Pound Store or inexpensive things …