1:31 PM
For my recent 1/1000 ship model purchases (Chinese Yalu Fleet) I've been looking around for a set of naval rules for my pre-dreadnought ships.
I'd heard about Majestic 12 games for a while and have played ARES, their rather good small unit fantasy battle rules (recently, the Halloween Zombiethon was run using modified ARES rules). Turns out they made a dreadnought-era (going back to pre-dreadnought era) ship combat rules set called GRAND FLEETS, which actually has a yalu scenario and ship data for that (rather obscure) naval battle.
RPG sells PDFs of M12 games for about ten bucks a piece, so I got *both* GRAND FLEETS and ARES for about the price of one printed rulebook.
ARES is just a nice-to-have; I've been meaning to buy it for a while now. GRAND FLEETS is fairly complex from first glance. It reminds me strongly of the old Task Fleet Games BATTLEWAGON game, just from the paperwork aspect.
Here's a demo of GRAND FLEETs, if you want to check it out.
Judging by her classic look the other night at dinner, Drey probably won't be buying me the Japanese Yalu fleet for Christmas, even though I dutifully gave her ordering information for it about a month ago or more. That's life; I'll be picking it up myself if, somehow, I'm not miraculously proved wrong.
(dialogue bit)
Drey: "I trust you know you will be getting a lot of clothes for Christmas. You really need them".
Me: "Sure, no problem, there's only one thing, that I really, really want for Christmas and would be horribly disappointed if it didn't show, and it's that Japanese fleet I told you about a month ago."
(Drey's face shows anxiety)
Me (continuing): No, it's no big deal; you already said you had what you needed to order it.
(Recovering) Drey: Sure, er... no problem; it's handled.
After 12 years of marriage, I know a sign when I see it. :-D
