Another Pirate treasure game for Christmas

Some years it does not work out favourably but this year we seem to be having my son and one daughter with their partners for Boxing Day and beyond, and they are all experienced at "Dad's games", so have agreed to humour me again.

Background
The last time this worked successfully was in 2011 and I was still playing in the garage at Cheltenham; you can refresh your memory if you wish at this blog post Santa shot in back shock horror. Since then the house moves have taken their toll by my selling all my Darkest Africa stuff including jungle foliage, crops and huts, and also my French and Indian Wars figures, so now I have to take a slightly different approach.  I still have the "marble" design sticky vinyl, backed onto hardwearing rubber from my sandtable, but it has been folded up for 6 years and now looks like big waves!!  But still - this is a fun game and, suspending disbelief as we wargamers do occasionally, this game is intended to pit four vaguely plausible groups on a quest for riches on the coast of Africa in about 1760, so includes giant mushrooms and sacred orchids!

The Terrain
First a couple of photos of the overall gaming table - my standard 8 feet by 6 feet.

Trouble at Mango Island
Many of you will recognise that this is unashamedly, but loosely, based on Charles Grant's wonderful Christmas party search game "Trouble at Treasure Island". But my basic background this time is that King George has established a small colony on Mango Island on the West African coast providing slaves, coffee from a nearby plantation, and a trading post, as well as a well watered and sheltered anchorage in the double bay which is split by a triple-hill headland leading, at low tide, to "The Island of Wrecks".  The Plantation headland in the distance is rocky and at the near side of the bay is another headland reached by a very rickety causeway.  There are a couple of small batteries made of stockade logs (yes, R. L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island" is very much in mind!)

But there has been trouble on Mango Island. No communication of any kind has been received at Greenwich or Portsmouth for many, many weeks and the Royal Accountants want to know why the income is drying up - could it be disease, local rebellion or, God forbid, a French incursion taking over.

The Participants
Our protagonists consist of two main entities each divided into two parts, and this being a party game, no one should really completely trust their allies. They have arrived and anchored off the coast of Mango Island and are sending in smaller forces to explore, using barges and ships boats. Positions in the photos are just for atmosphere, we haven't properly deployed yet - the game is not till just after Christmas.

First we have the East European-Russian Pirate coalition. Led by Luskaya and her Looters they are Cossack style adventurers exploring the world for fame and plunder and have heard rumours about the rich pickings to be had in the Mango area. Luskaya has teamed up with Rakovsky and his Raiders as they share similar aims.

Luskaya's Looters and Rakovsky's Raiders

Around the same time the forces of the Crown have arrived and Captain Jonathan Chumley-Smythe is leading the shore party of The Revenue Men and British soldiers. Their ship has also given passage to "Squire" Trelawney and "Lady" Katherine ostensibly to reestablish the trade/slave business in Mango Bay, but they may not be all that they seem, some call them Trelawney's Treasure Seekers..........

The Revenue Men and Trelawney's Treasure Seekers

The Obstacles

I've had great fun littering the table top with all sorts of features. Many may prove to be just decoration and others may hold vital clues to the Treasure, or whatever, the adventurers are seeking. These photos give a flavour, but by no means all the detail, of what may be in store.

The Trading Post and Stables and the Great Stockade, littered with bodies of men and horses and scattered trade goods,...... but two flags are still flying?

A small abandoned cutter and two dead officers in South Mango Bay

The Plantation Battery, once well sighted to overlook The Island of Wrecks, but now it seems itself wrecked

This large cutter in North Mango Bay looks as if it has run aground in a storm, guns and stores strewn across the deck....but someone has thought to make an accessibility ladder - they obviously recognise diversity in Mangoland :-)

The whole thing will be run by clues, success leads to the next clue and eventually to the treasure, and then get it "home",  assuming your rivals don't have other ideas. Chance cards will add a bit of seasonal spice and mirth.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention the main buggeration factor. The local natives don't take kindly to having their land planted and their people taken as slaves by white folks, so they will be liberally in evidence making life difficult.....and that cooking pot down by the stream is boiling nicely............

I'm still working on the natives - loosely based on Zulus

Hmmmmm......1760, plantation, jungle, tropical island? You don't think I've been reading Stuart Insch's great little book do you? Wargaming the Sugar Islands Campaign

West Country Quatre Bras: Brunswick Corps for sale

Remember our big refight of Quatre Bras earlier in the year? See the links back from here.

and a quick reminder

Now here is an opportunity to buy the entire Brunswick Corps at 1:20 representative scale. James Fergusson is about to become a parent and realises he has to make space and some money! So he is offering the corps of Perry metal 28mm figures as a complete sale in a blind auction.

But hurry because I've only just found out and he has a deadline of this weekend! Everything is set out in James' shared drive folders here link.   This includes full order of battle, guide price etc, and many, many photos of the entire force.  It totals 409 figures and just over 500 models when you include everything.

Here is a representative sample of photos.

So, a ready made Brunswick contingent for your refights of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, or a lovely Germanic Imagi-Nations army ready for battle.
All enquiries about the sale to James please, not me. His email is provided in the documentation available via the link.  Thank you, CG

Super scenario book for smaller scale SYW "colonial" games

Long awaited, I now have my copy of Stuart Insch's first self published wargaming book "Wargaming the Sugar Islands Campaign", subtitled "A Guide to the British Expedition to Martinique and Guadeloupe in 1759".

The book "does what it says on the tin", and very well too. Most of us know about the Seven Years War and the French and Indian War and have more books on them than we can ever read so why buy another? Well this one is an ideal adjunct for the experienced 18th Century wargamer with ready armies and a batch of armed civilians to call on, or for the newcomer who wants to start very small and build up. By taking little known contemporary accounts, analysing them as only a wargamer can, and giving you what you need to know but not too much, Stuart is making some new wargaming material available at a very affordable price. Oh! I forgot to say it is only £8.00, and apart from the history and a guide to making and painting the various units and regiments involved, contains 6 very user friendly wargame scenarios.

These are all a bit different and include varying techniques and some special rules too. They cover  the use of French and British regulars of various kinds, marines, sailors, artillery, militia, armed civilians and slaves and even a few plantation womenfolk. Better still Stuart has included a simple but effective way to link the battles as a small campaign.

There are no photographs (apart from the small front cover one) of Stuart's games in action, which is a shame as they are colourful and beautiful, but you can see some on his blog, such as this post sugar-islands-on-tour. The blog is also where you can order the book, via the message facility on the right hand side, and this post explains further now-available-wargaming-sugar-islands.

Each scenario has a lovely computer drawn map, using an approx 6 x 4 table format but Stuart points out that he is not prescriptive about scale or rules and he uses historical companies or similar sized groups which offers the player the choice of using just a few handfuls of figures per side or hundreds, depending on your taste and resources.

There are a few near contemporary illustrations and maps which are of moderate use, depending on your eyesight, but do add some atmospheric "colour". Among the latter I count my own humble contribution which came about like this.........

I'd been reading Stuart's posts on the "A Military Gentleman" Forum in early 2017 about these "sugar islands" and it seemed quite fascinating though I had plenty of other distractions at the time so thought not too deeply about it. That is until I exhibited my military artwork at the AMG Kenilworth meeting that June and Stuart and I found ourselves together facing hoards of Highlanders led by "Bonnie Prince" Purky at Falkirk.

Above and below: Stuart guards the British left flank and Jim Purky keeps right
on charging  till all his Highlanders are exhausted

Beautiful terrain by Graham Cummings. Wonderful Crann Tara figures by
Graham, and Guy Barlow.

As one does, the occasional lull in the game prompted conversation and Stuart broached the subject of me doing some drawings for his planned book. He piqued my interest by pointing out that it featured one Madame Ducharmey, a plantation owner, who armed her slaves and followers and led by example in the front rank!

Guided by Stuart I got to work with Mr Google and found a number of original references to the campaign and Madame Ducharmey although no description or age. It turned out Stuart and I both had in mind Delacroix's "Liberty leading the People, 1830" as a guide to what we were after, only fully clothed! So this is where we started:

It just happened that I was doing an informal art photoshoot with a friend who is a beautiful "mature" woman of Southern European heritage and I thought she would be ideal as the plantation matriarch yet still young enough, and fit enough, to (wo)man the barricades. I always protect the identity of my female models, so we called her Marianne, and I've promised not to use her face recognisably in my art.  She was excited by the prospect of dressing up and using many of my reproduction weapons to recreate various women in the plantation entourage - both pale and dark skinned. My research had shown several references to women in the plural in the fighting so we created about 4 or five different characters and dozens of poses with clothing, weapons, hairstyles etc and in the end poor Stuart had to rein in my enthusiasm and just four made it to the final barricade.

Marianne, in suitably sanitised photo for the blog,
takes up on my "barricade" one of the many
 differently costumed poses we tried.

I needed lots of men of course, especially as the other drawing was to be of French Marines and local 

militia ambushing a column of British regulars on a jungle path. I have a very gifted artist friend called Andy, who is a fine figure of a man with a neat moustache and goatee beard, who could pass for a Frenchman. and is slim a bit like a campaign-hardened 18th Century soldier. He was up for the challenge of taking on all the characters I needed, including the British, and sundry shots for other military projects, over several hours of photoshoot. Here are just a couple as examples. A plantation civilian with a pistol and a British regular on the receiving end of something nasty. 

With these and other paintings in mind I had acquired some authentic leather belt and shoulder worn cartridge boxes, infantry sword and belt, and a Charleville musket and bayonet. The waistcoat and water canteen are from my American Civil War re-enacting days. I also acquired a few large sized ladies coats very cheaply on Ebay and converted the cut to resemble 18th Century military wear. As I've said before, accuracy of clothing is less important since I can paint it how I like.

My method is to choose a suitable background and modify it in Photoshop and then cut and paste all the suitable figures I need from my photoshoot archives onto the background, placing and re-sizing each one till I get a satisfying composition. A print of the design is made and the whole transferred to the size of art I'm making. In this case quite small - about 7 inches x 5 inches since they were intended for publication in a small book. I then work the pencil drawing up in fine liner pen and shade with Indian ink wash by brush.  A rubber can come in handy and some "white" Indian ink too, and in combination you can fade out some areas and build up the smoke etc. It's stupidly painstaking but I wanted to do my best for a fellow wargamer who was working so hard for our pleasure.  I got paid for the originals but was still hoping the result would bring something special to the book.

While apologising that he's not a professional publisher Stuart has done his best to present the illustrations, but something has got lost in translation and in the printed book they have got squashed by the title. I'm disappointed and want to ensure purchasers can have a decent version so I'm publishing them here too.

Madame Ducharmey leads the defence of her plantation against the British, Guadeloupe 1759

French Ambush, Martinique 1759

I'm giving permission for those who have the book and wish a better copy to download them and print at a size to suit you. Others I hope you enjoy them, but the copyright remains with me so please do not repost etc without correct attribution to me as the artist and Stuart Insch for his patronage, and a link back to this post.

I've got lots of useful archive materials from these two photoshoots so if they inspire anyone to commission some drawings, or an acrylic or oil painting just email me to discuss without obligation. 

Buy the book - it's a good read and useful resource.