The Loose Association of Wargamers

Each to his own, but too much fuzzy spanker and you'll have seamen all over the place.

There was a gunboat called HMS Grinder.
I don’t even have to drag this thread into the gutter.
It sails itself there with billowing sails and a hearty ‘huzzah’.

Norman D. Landings wrote: ↑Wed Mar 07, 2018 8:57 pm There was a gunboat called HMS Grinder.
I don’t even have to drag this thread into the gutter.
It sails itself there with billowing sails and a hearty ‘huzzah’.

That doesn't rhyme very well....

Norm is into free range poetry. And at your age, you might care to think twice before provoking him.

No.... it’s not a poem.
There really was an HMS Grinder.

I’ll have a go, though, if that’s what you’re after:

Old England had no better minder
than the terrible HMS Grinder
When you were in dock
It would come as a shock
To find Grinder creep up behind’ya.

And note, he's not at work - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

I did think that you could come up with a better rhyme for dock than shock though.

There was a ship, HMS Grinder
Whose Captain sometimes couldn't find her
His crew lost him too
But his location they knew
When he was tossed in the tender behind her

Moving on from killing the thread with my poetry

After searching everywhere in the house and garage I found my box of Langton ships on an almost clear wargames table and labelled 1/1200 Langton ships, in inch high writing!

I have quite a few, but nothing bigger than a frigate and a lot of coastal/shallow water vessels, does this fit into the semi-campaign proposed above or will I need some larger ships for the LAW meet?

I enjoyed your poem very much!

Those sound wonderful Paul.
Depending on how many of us there is and what we’ve got - we don’t really have to even do two sides... people could be running Privateers and all sorts. They could be hired or form alliances... the quickness of the actions and the fact that smaller ships can get lucky during engagements means we don’t have to worry about balanced sides or anything - and we could play all manner of campaign games on the day.
We could do something fab like a campaign around some stretch of sea with islands scattered about which some random objectives/prize money system...

I’m trying to attempt to get the girlfriend to play with Iron Balls with me later... they look well fun. Who can resist card phases, playing cards and dice!

The prize money system could be really fun...
It would give people reasons to attempt to board a ship and take what they are carrying!
We could use chocolate coins as treasure markers and have them hidden from other players so your individual ship could be loaded with treasure or have nothing...

You could have Spanish treasure ships who’s objective it is to sale between ports... Island fortifications with plentiful bounty if you can knock out the defences and capture it... and then the value of capturing a ship and successfully taking it to a friendly port...

We could even set the tables up in a grid that stay that way throughout the game. Players can each have a friendly port and decide there objectives. They could then navigate from table to table so really there is no table edges. Could even add blinds to add that vastness of the ocean.