Regatta at Das Krieg Haus

 The local club of the South Florida Miniatures Gamers is lucky to have its own clubhouse (read: a rented storage unit), with the affectionate nickname of Das Krieg Haus. Members take it in turn to run monthly games, usually historical and usually horse-and-musket to WWII. One member takes on the responsibility of rent, though the rest of us chip in as a quasi-membership fee, and in between games there is plenty of room to store minis and terrain - also a small library, fridge, and TV for showing appropriate films. I find it a comfortable place to just spend some time, and members spend more time reminiscing and eating pizza than playing some days. Yesterday was one of those for me...

Traditionally in December, we play Limeys and Slimeys, a beer-and-pretzels naval game that leans more towards pirates than ships-of-the-line - not that there aren't some of those, and the table can barely fit the fleet some years. There were about thirteen people present, including the father-in-law of one player and the daughter of another. This year's scenario featured a convoy of Maltese ships, sometime in the 1740s, fleeing a pair of Franco-Spanish warships and defended by a single British frigate.

Fore and aft views of the largest ships: 

 

A few representative pictures of the club. The second level, used for storage, is visible in the second pic.

 

A couple of my favorite posters. The second is Maryland militia at North Point, 1814 - a game I'd like to run at work.

Usually the ships are stocked with 15mm miniatures - this year we used 28s.

 

Line infantry doubled as marines aboard ship:

 

Towards the middle of the battle. The dhow in the center is mine. The Frenchman on the left is catching up with the larger merchantmen and boarding a little one, while the Spaniard on the right is dueling with the British escort. Later in the game, we removed the rear mat, dragged everything towards that end of the table, and replaced it on the forward end to provide more room to sail through the Straits of Messina.

Ultimately, the Brits and Maltese lost; the larger merchantmen were taken, the British frigate sunk and the smaller ships escaped after tossing their cargoes overboard. I never even fired a shot or had one fired at me, just sailed down the table with occasional tacks to avoid other ships, and spent the game ogling the ships and miniatures, talking with friends, drinking Cokes, and reading a loaned copy of Eight Hundred Fighting Englishmen - the large-scale version of Larry Brom's classic The Sword and the Flame, which I'm thinking of using with the Zulu War Paperboys.

Still had a good time - this was only my second visit to Das Krieg Haus since the pandemic started. Maybe not the smartest idea, but it did our hearts good if not our immune systems.

Dropped by the game store afterwards, but unfortunately they no longer had a copy of Chris Peers' Death in the Dark Continent and were short on paint (the teen tech lab at work would like me to run a basic painting class for all the kids busily printing DnD miniatures). Coming not so soon...