Pirate skirmish footnotes

The story itself is posted on the Schultze-Böhnstadt blog. As a matter of fact, I'm out of painted figures at the moment, so I thought I could indulge on the technical parts of the skirmish game.

The rules were Flashing Steel, IMHO the best set from Ganesha Games. It has the usual dice activation, but what makes it shine is you can completely customize your figures, starting with deciding a combat and quality score, and then buying them various weapons and special abilities. I have other similar games in my library but prefer this one.

It allowed me to create a balanced strike force of five figures, worth almost 600 points, against the sixteen defenders of a similar value. (This is an average score of ~120pt per figure, but actually only a few were really "strong", their captain Filippo Scolari alone costing 155.) Then I included the ship's crew and the gunners on the island to balance things even more.

The terrain is various kitchen utilities made of wood, cardboard and wooden boxes and some DIY terrain such as cardboard ramps, walls, fences and the ruins of the Old Fort. The space is intentionally limited, of course.

The pirates were exclusively made of converted figures from the Zvezda GNW Russian artillery set.  The captive Pierre d'Arson came from this set as well, and so did the artillery crews on both sides. The defenders of the island are the by now well-known Saxons, originally Zvezda Russian figures, and their commander is a SYW Prussian officer. The OOBs for both parties are quite lengthy so I would not include them here.

The pirates were very overpowered in their attack parameters, but suffered from enemy musketry a lot. Because they had high combat scores, the enemy could not kill them, but pinned them down for extensive periods. Luckily the various stages of the island offered cover. 

Of course the heavy artillery on the island could punch through the small pirate ketch like a piece of paper, but the first shot missed and it took forever to reload the single cannon that could be aimed at the ship. 

What is left for me to do is making a few announcements about my plans for the near future.

What comes very next is a pre-dreadnought battle. A vile criminal detonated a bomb aboard the Jackewlinese fleet's modern flagship, JRS Jasksgart, and a Veudeni terrorist group claimed the act. Jackewline declared war on the Confederacy of Veuden and a fleet of five ships plus escorts is sailing out to pay a visit and take revenge on the much older Veudeni main fleet. (The Jasksgart is actually the IJN Mikasa which was knocked over and lost two masts and minor structural damage.)

Then another naval battle follows and will be posted on the Schultze-Böhnstadt blog: the battle of Linskög Narrows using the freshly acquired Fighting Sail rules.

I'm currently painting (after a long delay) the newest Baccus figures of my collection, three Maurice units of militia (AWI militia figs) and three units of mercenaries (AWI Highlanders). Then I'll move on to the SYW French figures, and with them my fourth 6mm tricorne army.