Yes I Am (almost) A Pirate, Part II

So after lunch on Friday, I ran my second game of the day.  This time, it was a much more modern game of Save the Whale.  Anyone who has read the blog regularly has seen those models being painted up; now, it was time for them to be used. 

One thing that I think is important for players of the game (and readers of the blog) to understand is that it is NOT a “serious game.”  I mean, the object for one side is to kill a whale, for goodness sakes!  Instead, the game is much more fun when both sides fulfill the stereotypes that are expected of them.  Fortunately, I had a group of players that were more than ready to embrace said stereotypes.  The whalers not only wanted to harpoon a whale; they were bound and determined to do as much damage to the Greenpeace ships as possible.  My Greenpeace players were equally hardcore:  At the beginning of the game one of them said, “We don’t care about casualties and damage.  We ONLY. WANT TO. SAVE. WHALES!”  With that, I knew we were going to have a rollicking game, and we did.

There are no setup rules per se, so we just rolled random locations for everybody (including the whale) and got started.  For whatever reason, there aren’t as many pictures of this scenario as there are of the earlier one.  I didn’t even start taking pictures until several turns into the game, so this time they are going to be of more interesting moments in the game.  The Greenpeace rubber boats rapidly headed towards the factory ship, which decided to use fire hoses to keep them away.  I explained to the factory ship captain that this would give his side negative publicity points, but to his credit he didn’t care.

Damn the publicity, fire hoses away!

He was successful too.  The die next to the boat means that it can’t move for the next 4 turns.  At the same time, Solo decided to get into the action and turned their hoses on one of the harpoon boats:

"Well, if they can do it. . . "

The brown thing behind Solo is a mooring line.  Ships can drag those behind them to try and foul their opponent’s propellers, but if they roll a 1 on a D6 the line breaks and is lost.  This mooring line is probably in the Greenpeace museum, as the player kept it for the entire game, even after fouling one ship.  The harpoon ship Solo snared was  so badly fouled that with other damage it was down to only one knot of speed.  The players agreed to give him some speed back, as he was out of play otherwise.  He also tried to foul the factory ship but was unsuccessful.

"Somebody's getting a taste of this rope.  Oh, guess it's you."

The one rubber boat swamped by the factory ship wound up not mattering much, as the rest of them swarmed the factory ship and got out the spray paint.  Both of them passed their die rolls, although not on the same turn, and applied slogans to the side of the factory ship.  Fortunately for the whalers, only two slogans counted for publicity points, and the boats ran off to interfere with the harpoon ships after that.

Like fleas on a dog. . . .

"The different colors of paint make it ART, not GRAFFITI!"

The  captain of the factory ship decided to use his ship as a sort of mobile battering ram, trying to force a collision with any Greenpeace vessel he could get close to.  He was remarkably successful in this, giving damage to both protest ships and reducing Rainbow Warrior to no speed by the end of the game. 

Despite all their aggression (and attendant negative publicity) the whalers did not succeed in killing a whale, so the protesters won this game.  Given the laughter around the table for the great majority of the game, I’m going to assume that everyone had a good time.  That ended Friday for me.

On Saturday, I had a chance to play some games, so I took advantage of that.  The first one was a game called Conn, Sonar!  This is a beer and pretzels modern submarine game, and the scenario was the final battle from Hunt for Red October.  Yours truly got to drive the Alfa class sub looking to kill Red October.

1/700 scale subs are oversize, but sure look good.

 The core mechanic of the game is getting a fire control solution on your target.  Every time you are successful using passive or active sonar, you get a solution counter for your target.  Once you have three, you can fire.  You can also try to take back your markers from others by being quiet.  I had an intermittent solution on the US sub, but could get nothing on Red October, as her commander kept extra quiet by using the caterpillar drive.  Fortunately, the Dallas couldn’t fire until he was fired on.

Once I realized that I couldn’t find Red October by being stealthy, I filled the water with active sonar waves.  I finally got a solution and fired two torpedoes before I lost him again.

Things are starting to get a bit crowded.

This is where things REALLY got interesting!  Of my two torps, one did not acquire, and began a circle to the right.  The other acquired Red October but missed her.  Going past the ship, it acquired and began to track Dallas.  That fulfilled her Rules of Engagement, so now she could start shooting back.

"Sorry about accidentally starting WWIII, guys." 

My first torpedo then acquired ME, so I decided it was time to leave the area at full speed.  Dallas turned in front of Red October and fired two torpedoes that had no trouble acquiring me, given the noise I was putting out at 40+ knots.  However, my second torpedo switched from the US sub to the larger target and hit Red October.  Good news for me!  However, a target that large requires two hits to be destroyed.  Bad news for me!

"So, do you want the good news, or the bad news?"

After a turn or so of running like mad, this is my situation:

"Looks like we made someone mad."

As my quarry was only damaged, I decided to try and get out of the torpedo’s seeker heads, and head back towards the (now damaged) missile sub.  They turned tighter than me though, so I wound up taking two USN Mk-48 torpedoes in the side and one was enough to kill me.  Game over.  Being a movie game, the movie quotes were flying around throughout the game.  Among them:

“We’re going to kill a friend, Vasily.”

“Set safeties to zero.”

“You fool, you’ve killed US,” and finally

“You mean you have TWO subs missing in the North Atlantic?”

Overall, they’re a fun set of rules that let us play a game of 19 turns to conclusion in under 2 to 2 1/2 hours, which included explaining the rules.  It manages to capture the feel of submarine combat, or at least what we think it’s supposed to feel like 🤔.

The last game of the day was Check Your 6! Jet Age.  This was another movie game and was actually two scenarios in one session.  To teach everyone the basic movement and combat rules, we did a scenario from the movie Top Gun of students versus instructors.  So, it was F-14's against A-4 Skyhawks with guns but no missiles.  After everyone understood the rules, we reset the game.  This time though, it was the final battle from Top Gun.  You know the one:  “Somewhere in the Indian Ocean.  Present day.”  And yes, we even had the dreaded MiG-28's.  They have missiles and afterburners, so are a much more even fight for the Americans.  The picture below is just after the merge:

Yes, there's an F-18 in the game.  Didn't bother the players, so don't
let it bother you.

THIS time though, the forces of Somewhereastan got their teeth into the Americans invading their airspace.

That is a dead Tomcat.  Note that there's no parachutes, either.

We played a few more turns, but weren't able to complete the game, as we were running out of time.  The end of the game looked like this:

Note that the other Tomcat is smoking.  Black smoke indicates engine damage
and orange indicates afterburner use.

With one F-14 shot down and another damaged, the forces of the People's Democratic Republic of Somewhereastan immediately declared victory.  The funny thing in this game were not the movie quotes (although there were a few), but this:

Remember me?

Yes, the Broadside! token that I mentioned in the first post.  Apparently it is the official currency of Somewhereastan, as over 20 of them were used during the game with the great majority being played by the Commie pilots.  I think at one point we were accused of flying this mission straight from the strip club, due to all the tokens we used!  The money used to purchase them goes to the Battleship Texas though, so it's worth it.  After this game slot, we had our convention speaker and then retired to the traditional after convention dinner.  There were other games played during the two days, but I didn't get any pictures of them.  Whether this is due to being busy, or being lazy, I will leave up to the readers to decide.

I'm taking what they're givin' 'cause I'm workin' for a livin'

So, first things first.  The title of the last post was a line from the Dire Strait's song, "Industrial Disease."  Maybe a bit obscure for a first go, but this one should more than make up for that, at least for my US readers.

Now that the Greenpeace ships are finished, it makes sense that I need whaling ships too.  You might think that those would be hard to find.  Turns out, they are mostly quite easy.  The British company Tri-Ang Minic made a whaling factory ship named Vikingen, and a set of three harpoon ships to go with it.  Vikingen does tend towards the toy end of the spectrum, with its simplistic hull and toy masts; however, it is in 1/1200 scale and it looks close enough for game purposes.

The original ship

A model of the original

The Tri-Ang Minic model as usually found on eBay.  If you look closely, you
can see two of the plastic masts on the bow.

I wanted a more realistic paint job, so I put the model in a container with paint stripper.  It was here that I learned the funnels were plastic around a metal core.  I would need to find replacement masts and funnels too.  The paint stripper did work well though, and after a little scrubbing I had a hull that looked like this:

Fortunately for the project, there is a shop in the UK that specializes in replacement parts for ships like this.  If you need parts, or obscure models for whatever reason, I recommend http://waterline-ships.com/ .  He had everything I needed, including replicas of the harpoon ships, which are REALLY hard to find.  After putting the replacement metal masts in place, Vikingen looked like this:

I decided to put the funnels on after the ship was painted, as some of the clearances would be way too close to paint cleanly.  The biggest problem in painting was that, while there are exterior pictures of the ship, I couldn't find any pictures of what color her decks might have been.  I wound up using a picture of another factory ship model, the Sir James Clark Ross:

So, with no further ado, here is the repainted Vikingen:

While the picture and model of the prototype shows the forward and aft superstructures to be have open areas, I decided to go with just portholes instead.  I wasn't sure I could paint it in such a way as to look realistic, and I certainly wasn't about to try and start cutting holes in the model!  Given her beginnings, I think she looks pretty good.  Sharp-eyed observers will note that I didn't put the white stripe that is about halfway down the hull.  There's a reason for that, which I will explain later.

After the factory ship comes the harpoon ships.  As I mentioned earlier, these are really hard to find as originals, and come with prices to match.  Fortunately though, http://waterline-ships.com/ has got me covered there too, as he offers reproductions of them.  They come in two pieces: the hull and a funnel.  This is what they look like out of the package:

It's a bit basic, but given its background that's not really unexpected.  On the bright side, that means that they should be easy to dress up.  Another online search gave me some photos to work with for a color scheme:

Clearly, this paint job was never seriously considered.

So, the first thing my harpoon ships need are some masts.  That first picture shows a modernized vessel, so I decided to not even try to do radar domes or the radar mast on the wheelhouse.  I kept it basic, and used .20 music wire to make my masts.  Even that minimal addition made the ships look much better, but they still needed something else.  It took a while, but I finally realized that the "something else" was the walkway to the harpoon station.  I was out of plastic sheet, so cut them from a flap of a cereal box.  When placed on a base, that gave me an unpainted model that looked like this:

Looking much better . . . .

The models themselves are simple enough that there's no need for any masking, or other painting tricks.  With a fairly simple paint job, they can be done reasonably quickly, but still look pretty good.  Eventually there will be a third harpoon ship, but it's going to be painted just like these two.

I swear that the portholes don't look that bad in person.

Other than the third harpoon ship, this project is almost finished.  I still need to paint the whales, and make some markers for things like fire hoses, mooring lines, and graffiti for the side of the factory ship.  Yes, graffiti.  The protest players are able to gain bonus points by painting graffiti on the side of the factory ship.  When those little things are done, I'll put them in another, quicker post.  One thing I MUST do though, is to throw in a picture of the whale as I promised Stew I would do that.

This is the diecast whale that originally came with the factory ship.  They are not uncommon but can still be rather expensive.  Fortunately, http://waterline-ships.com/  makes replicas of this little fellow also.  He's only about 1/2 inch long, but that is still a 50 foot whale.  He is awfully generic, but there are some better whales out there from https://www.ships-and-more.de/ and I might upgrade to those later.

I would love to hear from some of my UK readers about these Tri-Ang Minic models.  There's quite a few of the factory ships left, so did anyone ever actually play with them?  I can understand the smaller ships and whales  getting lost over time; I'm more curious about whether anyone actually played with them as toys.

There's a protest singer singing a protest song , , , ,

Well it's taken a while, but I'm finally making some progress on the "Save the Whale!" game.  You might recall that I mentioned this one in my post entitled "A Long Spell in Drydock." If you want to refresh your memory, here's the link: https://mymodelsailingships.blogspot.com/2019/06/back-in-saddle-again.html .

I had to find some decal paper, as none of the craft stores in our area carry it any more.  So, after finding some, I printed up  my decals for the Greenpeace ships.  The one for Solo came out looking really well, and it's amazing how much of a difference it made.

The original

My model, before decals. . . 

and after.

Even I'm surprised at how much of a difference the decal made.  Now, the ship really looks finished.  Encouraged by this, I went to put the white logo on the side of Rainbow Warrior.  At this point I realized my mistake; I had bought clear decal paper, not white.  While that worked just fine on Solo, it obviously was not going to work on the other ship.  Rather than make the same mistake twice, I ordered some white paper online, and waited for it to arrive.

While Decapod's model of Rainbow Warrior on Shapeways is pretty good, I decided to modify it to more closely match the photos of the real ship.  Specifically, this photo:

After looking at this and some other pictures of the ship, I started modifying the model.  I took everything off the ship behind the superstructure.  Then, I installed a foremast and mainmast made out of .020 music wire.  This should make them resistant to breakage, and encourage gamers to be careful with them.  I made some changes to the forward deck area based on other photos not shown here, and put boats on her by using some of my GHQ small boats from sailing ships that I cut to the right length.  Finally, I used some small plastic rod to put the two square green items on the top of the wheelhouse.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures during the modification, but the ship went from this:

to this:

Not too bad, but she will look even better once the lettering is on the side.  It turns out that I didn't get the green of the logo to be an exact match for the hull color, but I realized at the beginning it wouldn't be perfect.

The white line below the letters is where I was not quite able to reach in with a brush and touch the edge of the decal up with green paint.  I think, though, that when I put the wake effects onto the base that will be covered.  Honestly, I'm not quite as happy about these as I was with ones for Solo.  It's still better than not having it, and it doesn't look quite as bad to the naked eye as it does here.

Of course, you can't have Greenpeace ships without the rubber boats to go with them.  As I mentioned in the earlier post, I had found some Zodiac boats on Shapeways that looked like this:

Well, they paint up pretty quickly.  The 4 I did took maybe 45 minutes tops. 

In looking at pictures of Greenpeace rubber boats (technically Rigid Inflatable Boats, or RIBs) there doesn't seem to be a standardized color scheme.  These four represent what seem to be the most common colors.  Although the black boat seems to look smaller than the others, they are all the same model.  I thought that was an interesting optical illusion.

And with that, the protest forces for my "Save the Whale!" game are done.  I guess the only question left is, "What's up with the title for this post?"  When I started the blog, I was stuck for a name, and my wife came up with what I'm using now.  Since I'm old enough to remember when "Come Sail Away" was a huge hit for the band Styx, I thought it would be funny if the post titles used lines from songs, or were a play on the lyrics.  So, I'm starting to do that with this one.  No prize for guessing who the artist and song are, because Google makes it too easy to find anything nowadays.