A mate of mine, DC, mentioned that he had recently painted half a dozen pirates in anticipation of Cutlass. I was inspired to finish off 20 Old Glory sailors that had been floating around for a year or two since I had become disillusioned with Legends of the High Seas. I decided to teach him the Flashing Steel basics at Good Games Newcastle that opened in town yesterday (!).
There is already an excellent review of FS here.
I didn't get enough photos to show the entire game, but in essence it was a free-for-all to teach the basic game mechanics. I knocked up rosters of about 250-300 points per side. Swashbuckling rules were left out for simplicity. Shooting from both sides was barely effective, and things devolved into three or four brawls in the centre of the town. DC's pirate captain was isolated and surrounded by two sailors and my captain, but got lucky and killed my captain (he rolled a 6, I rolled a 1) resulting in the cascading morale failures are the signature of Ganesha's end-games.
- Captain Q3 C3 sword, pistol, Leader
- First Mate Q3 C3 two pistols, Dual Pistol skill, Second-in-Command
- 5 Pirates Q4 C2 with a mixture of swords, pistols and flintlocks
Bark's Royal Navy:
- Captain Q3 C3 sword, pistol, Leader
- Midshipman (Lord Sandford) Q3 C2 pistol, Eager, Second-in-Command
- 6 Sailors Q4 C2 with a mixture of swords and flintlocks
DC's figures are conversions of GW's Empire Militia, with planking made from ice-cream sticks.
My sailors are Old Glory's European Sailors, and the Captain and Midshipman are from Black Cat Bases. The Black Cat figures are in the 30-32mm range rather than the OG 25-28mm, but it doesn't really show on the tabletop.
The scattered crates are from Battle Works Studios.
Looks good! Welcome to the world of Flashing Steel.
ReplyDeleteThat's two blogs now that mention the disappointment of Legends of the High Seas. Maybe someone will write up a blog entry explaining their disappointment in detail...
I was just browsing the stats pages on Blogger that I have just discovered and saw you linked to my blog post about Flashing Steel. A big thank you for that!
ReplyDeleteIs that Comic Life you used to create the picture in this post? I have thought about using that more myself. I do note that blogger actually opens up the image in a smaller format when I click on it and am concerned it will put readers off... Do you have any thoughts on this?
Thanks
Chris
Thanks guys
ReplyDeleteDale, I can't quite put my finger on it, and I'm sure there are better qualified people than me out there to do that review.
Chris, no worries. I did use Comic Life- I'm not even scratching the surface of the potential of that program. I'll see what options I've got about making the pictures a better size when I use it next, hopefully not too long (I hadn't identified that issue myself, so thanks for pointing it out).
Barks: Well, the pictures themselves are a fine size, I think it is do do with how Blogger is set up to display them as a gallery of images. I don't know if that is a setting that can be changed somewhere. I certainly haven't found it!
ReplyDeleteDale: I'd love to write my views in full on the subject. Maybe I'll do that at some point when I have a little more time.