Gnome Con 2

Last weekend was Gnome Con 2, the gaming convention we have here in Savannah. I wasn't able to go to the first one due to work and lack of money, so I was definitely going to this one. Any here are some of the pictures.

Day One:
On the first day I didn't play anything as I was trying to sell stuff at the flea market. While I didn't sell as much as I wanted to I did get rid of most of my Warhammer stuff, successfully getting out of that money pit.

There was lots of Warmachine being played.

The Dust Demo game.

The Gnome Wars game table.

A wild west game being set up.

 Day Two:
On day two I got to play some Shipwreck with Christan. By this time it was being there was a contest of endurance as I had been up since 1430 yesterday. Christan himself was still fighting over the effects of his sister's wedding the previous day. He played two games that day. The first game had the Soviets trying to resupply Syria during the 1980s. I played the Soviets while Christan played the capitalist pigs.

My Fleet for the first game, a Sovremenny DDG and Kravik II FF escorting 3 transports. In the distance you can see the Ka-27 from the Soverenny.



A Spruance DD and a Kidd DDG between me and where I need to be. He already launched two of his helicopters.

Soon I had detected all of his ships and aircraft

As our game was going on, people were playing Star Wars all around us.

War mongering Yankees fired first sending a total of 9 harpoon missiles at my transports. The air defenses on my ships was able to shot down several, however some still got through and the Kravik accidentally hit T-1.



Meanwhile I had retaliated firing every missile I had at the Americans. I sent 8 SS-N-22 missiles at the greatest threat on the table the Kidd DDG. They arrived just as the Kidd fire 3 more Harpoons at my ships. The Krivak also fired its 4 SS-N-14 missiles at the Spruance.

In the end three of my missiles hit the Kidd sending it straight to the bottom. All of the SS-N-14s were either shot down or missed. What can you expect from a missile that was designed to engage submarines. Only one of Christan's missiles hit resulting in heavy damage to T-2. Unfortunately gun hit from the Krivak also inflected heavy damage on T-1, both would have to towed to port. Spruance tried to fire 4 more harpoons at me, but they were shot down. With no more missiles, Christan surrendered as his Spruance was no match for the Sovremenny in close combat.

The second game was played between Christan and Ziggy. Christan played the Libyans with one ship and two submarines, while Ziggy played a mixed NATO fleet with two ships.

Ziggy detected one of the submarines right away. Once every one was detected, everyone fired their missiles.

The Libyan ship is destroyed while both Christan and Ziggy exchange torpedoes. The submarine is sunk, as is the Italian frigate. Ziggy then detected the second submarine.



Christan was able to call for air support. Unfortunately for him the two Mig-21s were driven off the the destroyer's ADA. Ziggy then sank the other sub ending the game.

 Overall it was a fun two days. Hopefully next year I'll setup my own game.

James

Evolution of my ship bases

   I haven't really done anything lately so I decided to talk about how I base my ships. I first got started in modern naval wargaming back in 1989. The first ships I got were 1/2400 scale Superior models. At the time that was what was available at the local game store and GHQ had just started its modern harpoon range. My first ship models used this as a base.

NNOOOTTHHIIIINNG!!!

   Yes, I just plopped the minis on the table. After seeing a few games at a convention however I decided that my ships did in fact need bases. So I used evergreen plastic tile sheets to make my first bases. I like the tile plastic as it was easy to make a base custom sized for the ship but also somewhat uniformed. I painted bases sky blue with a simple wave pattern. I also wrote the ship class on the stand.

On sale at Gnomecon.

   Then for about ten years I didn't do any naval wargaming. Part of this was due to lack of players, but also 1/2400 was starting to look like a dead end in modern naval miniatures. (GHQ is only just now updating its Harpoon line) Then in 2005 I went to Iraq. While there I decided to spend my two week leave in England. One of the places I went to was the Navwar store. There, in addition to crapload of 1/300 aircraft, I decided to switch over to 1/3000 scale, buying several fleet packs. Once again I started basing them on tile sheets with the ship class on the stand. I tried using a darker blue and also a more dramatic wave pattern for my combat ships.

Some specialized units did get their own name.

 

   I wasn't really happy with the dark blue as it didn't match up with my Seascape mat. Thus I changed over to the aqua blue I use now. I also decided to add the ship's name to the stand.

   After a while I also started to add the ship's national flag or naval ensign.

   I then noticed that my ship stands were getting crowded with too many names. Also with the demise of most hobby shops plastic tile sheets were getting harder to come by. I was really impressed with wayswatcher's use of tongue depressors as ship bases, so I decided to use them. They come in a verity of sizes and take paint better than the plastic does. I also removed the ship class to reduce clutter. The ship class is now written on the bottom of the base. Thus this is how I base my ship miniatures for now.

I use the simple wave pattern for slow moving ships like this merchant.

By the way; as you might have noticed in the captions, I'll be selling my 1/2400 scale ships this weekend at the Gnomcon flea market.

See ya, James