Man O' War

 

Whilst I sort out the post for the Irish Brigade, I thought I would take you back to the early 90's for a short spell.  

My wargaming origin story centres firmly around Games Workshop. The short version of the long story is that a friend bought a copy of the September 1990 White Dwarf to school and it got passed around the social area and when I saw it, well, that was that. My hobby was decided there and then and my long wargaming journey began...... 

I have pretty much moved on from GW now, but I have fond memories of some classic games. I recall my mum having to step ove huge games of epic on the kitchen floor whilst making dinner for example, and much fun was had with Necromunda. 

Another game that I never did as much with as I liked due to being restrained by being 13 was Man O War. I sold my copy way back in 2007 for some reason, along with my dwarf fleet, and it's nagged at me ever since. It gradually krept back into thr front of my mind over time, and for the last year I have been casually watching it on eBay, but never quite pulling the trigger. 

Suffice to say, lock down gave me the final kick I needed and I managed to snag a little bundle off of ebay:

I have to say I was happy with the price I paid for this and it's pretty much the whole game. The core box contains a lot of rules with the two expansions adding flyers, monsters and new fleets. I decided to jump right in:

As you can see - plenty of stuff. The books are in good condition as well with little to no wear on them and no rips that I can see. It did take an age to sort through it all, and compare it to the contents list for the three boxes. I was a little nervous as initially it seemed loads were missing. However, I eventually found I was missing templates for just four ships - which I was able to get off ebay on their own for next to nothing. The only individual thing I cannot yet get is the range ruler for elf ships. However, this is essentially a 12 inch rectangle of blue cardboad so nothing a tape measure can't replace. There were also no dice, but after 30 years as a wargamer this is not an issue!

The ships were in a slightly worse state:

In the core box you originally got a dozen galleys - the idea being six were pirates and six Empire. As you can see, the standard of these is differing and three have been converted to chaos galleys by having the ram's heads replaced with skulls. No big deal, they've already had a trip to the freezer so I can remove the masts.

My initial plans are to strip the galleys and paint all twelve as Empire ships - this will give me a really good core to build a fleet around. On ebay you can buy 3D printed replacement masts (already ordered) and I've snagged some extra sails as well. Once these are done I plan on adding ships as and when they pop up at a reasonable price on eBay. My intial two fleets will be Empire and Dwarves. 

I have already really enjoyed this litte nostalgia hit and look forward to charting my fleet build up with you. As a final little reminder of the way things were - anyone remember spending ages looking through catalogue pages like this?

 

What glorious memories!