New Scenario for To Covet Glory

I stumbled upon an interesting naval action off the coast of Jekyl and St Simons Islands during the American Revolution. This is right in the same area that the War of Jenkin's Ear naval battles were fought. It is a small scenario of three ships per side. The Rebels have three oared galleys compared to the larger sailing vessels of the Royal Navy.

I have largely finished the scenario and am going to publish it on my PayHip site. Since it is a one off scenario, it will be just $.99.

The British have an advantage in number of guns but face a significant challenge.

The War of Jenkin's Ear supplement is Released!

I have settled on a final cover. The product is released to the PayHip Site. The product includes a history of colonial Georgia and the War of Jenkin's Ear in the colony. It has some rule modifications for To Covet Glory and some adidtional rules for Sharp Practice to complete the scenarios. It includes ships stats for a number of additional vessels and an All At Sea campaign modeled after the Rich's article from the 2013 Christmas Special.

The historical scenarios include five scenarios modeling actual and hypothetical actions before the Spanish invasion. These include four for Sharp Practice and one for Kiss Me Hardy. There are nine scenarios covering the Spanish invasion of Georgia. These are divided into four Sharp Practice scenarios and five scenarios for Kiss Me Hardy.

In addition, there is an outline for a campaign dealing with the Spanish invasion of the Outer Banks of North Carolina in 1741. Some suggestions for additional scenarios from the time period, and instructions for assembling the Scout Boats, Piraguas, Fusta, Galliot and Galley 3d models.

I would like to point out that this would not have been possible at all without the help of many people. Rich and Nick at TooFatLardies have created some exquisite rulesets that provide toolboxes to create with. Jonathan Jones who playtested the Kiss Me Hardy scenarios and provided pictures of their fantastic miniatures. Mark Luther for testing out my Sharp Practice scenarios and also sent in pictures of his fantastic terrain and miniatures. I really wanted to use his picture of a wild pig attack against the Georgia Highlanders. Tom Davis and Brian English encouraged me throughout the two plus years to work on this.

Click the picture of the cover below to go to the webstore.

It is also available on Wargame Vault.

A print version will be made available through Amazon by next year.

War of Jenkin's Ear - Approaching the Finish Line

After working on this for so very long, I think I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. In doing my research for this, I came across this and have since lost the source for it. To the creator, I'm sorry I have not given you credit. But you produced a meme that made me laugh.

At this point, the book is 138 pages and included linked scenarios for Sharp Practice and Kiss Me Hardy using the To Covet Glory modifications. There is a bonus campaign for the War of Jenkin's Ear in North Carolina. There are suggestions for how to do a combined arms campaign of your own modeled after the Spanish Invasion of Georgia. Lastly, it will include the STL files the I created for the vessels in this campaign. These include a Fusta, a Galliot, a Galley, a South Carolina Scout Boat and a Piragua.

I am still trying to sort out a cover. This is my current attempt.

Edit: This is a followup attempt that I like better.

I will look for other alternatives but for now, this is what I have.

War of Jenkin's Ear Update!

Had a good day editing. I have it narrowed down to just six images left for the final product. For that, I have the fort painted and ready. I need to paint up a shore battery that I already have. In all, this is the closest I have been to releasing this.

Of course I got distracted. I found a scenario that I just had to work on. As it turns out, there was a naval battle during the American Revolution that occured right in the area that the War of Jenkin's ear book takes place. It will make a nice smallish scenario for To Covet Glory with three vessels per side.

That will be released soon as well but may be absorbed into a campaign that I have wanted to do for a long time around the Third Invasion of British East Florida cullminating in the Battle of Alligator Creek. Stay tuned for more on that later.

The Spanish Navy - War of Jenkin's Ear

Here are the updates to the oared galleys for the War of Jenkin's Ear. I have one of the full galley's in good shape. I have to glue and paint the yards. You can see one clipped on. The others are coming along.

The Brig is taking shape for the second time. I am getting close to having it back in shape again. I have a few others on the tray in worse states of assembly. I am steadily making progress.

I also have undercoated a model of the CSS Virginia and some sprues that I will use as a 1/600 scale forest. In the coming week, this should get some attention. I did finish painting the USS Monitor. This continues to build my 1/600 scale ACW navies. I also placed an order on Shapeways for three more vessels. I am looking forward to seeing these.

Next up is the Fort that will stand in for Fort St Simons. If I have enough spare materials, I will do something for Delegal's Fort as well. Fort St Simons will be interesting. Instead of a palisade, they used barrels filled with sand that were topped with spiny vines. Not sure how to represent that.

Painting Time

I managed to get some time to paint. I am working on the Galleys and Galliot I need for the War of Jenkin's Ear supplement. I have completed a hull for one of the Galleys and am currently fitting it with Yards. I am following the modeling instructions that I will be including in the WOJE appendix. The hulls are the ones that I have on the PayHip site. I believe that I will ignore the sails for now. But I may address that at somepoint later. I completed another Galley earlier. I left the masts bare and didn't inclue yards.

I have a base coat on the deck of five of the Galliots. I am struggling on what to paint the hulls. I have gone with a brown for the moment. I may paint some black. I have also thought about doing the upper portion of at least one in white. I haven't seen any historical description of what the various rowed vessels of the Spanish fleet looked like. Oglethorpe barely mentions the type let alone any more detailed information. Other sources are equally unclear, including the Spanish ones that I have found.

I have also begun the repiar work on a Brig that dropped during transfer. So far I have repaired the sails on the main and mizzen mast. I still have the bowspirit and the jib sails to repair. I am gluing one part per day and leaving it clamped together for a day for the glue to dry. I should have it finished in two more days.

Lastly for WOJE, I found some more piragua prints. This should get me to the numbers that I need. They still lack sails and masts. I may just finish these with bare masts. The 3d printed ones look so much better than my original paper attempts using thick cardstock. I will use the card ones as I am sure not all of the piraguas were uniformly built nor particularly handsome vessels.

This should put me in good shape to finish out the playtesting of the rest of the naval battles. I'll take some more pictures when I have them sorted out.

I also managed to sneak some of my 1/600 scale ACW prints into the painting queue. These are all models from Wargaming3d made by East Coast Iron Clads. They have an excellent line of files. A friend at work printed them for me in resin. While he only used Draft details, they came out well.

I started with the tugs and gunboats for the Battle of Hampton Roads. These small ships each are interesting in their own right. I think they would make for a great game just using them. I have them with their cards needed for the Dawn of Iron rules above. The generic tug set includes 3 diffferent tug models. The Teaser is my favorite as it has the lifeboat modeled on it. I may pick up some prints from Shapeways as they have a few small boats on their site as does Peter Pig in their range just to have more variety. I have worked on moding a few designs in Tinkercad to try and make some additional models as well. But nothing this small yet.

I also have prints of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. The Monitor did get a coat of paint. But there really isn't much there to paint for it. The first two prints that I had of the Virginia were not what I was looking for as they had a large base around the model. I did get a replacement without a base yesterday that will makes it way there soonish. The Virginia will need a bit more details than the Monitor did.

Kiss Me Hardy/To Covet Glory Items

I just received in my new turn templates from Stephen from the Kiss Me Hardy facebook group. These look great. Much better than the pictures I took. My original turn templates and wind direction tools were printed paper glued to card stock. They worked but didn't look good.

Stephen's new clear ones look great.

The picture, however, caught a bunch of glare from my flash.

I have been going through my ships and looking with dismay at how many I have left to paint. I have two galleys and five galliots that are untouched. I have most of the other vessels. The War of Jenkin's Ear book has seven scenarios for To Covet Glory. Several involve coastal forts. It is the coastal forts that I need to work on the most as I have none. In moving my ships around, one of the WarArtisan ships fell off my tray and shattered. I have been slowly gluing it back together. In this reguard, the chunkier models from Sea Dog Miniatures take less damaged when dropped.

I have printed all of the Galleys (2), Galliots (5) and Fustas (2) that I need for the scenarios. Only the Fustas are painted at this point. They can be quickly done, just takes time.

I have a couple of printed ships from Wargaming3d. I have a large schooner and a 6th rate. Both match well with my Sea Dog Studios ships. I made the masts a bit short, I think, on the 6th rate but they are out of scale and repreesntative anyway. For the schooner, I just have straight posts at this time. I may fix them later but they are something for the moment.

I still have a few Sea Dog ships waiting for paint. There is an 18 gun Brig of War that I bought. It is a nice model and fits in closer with the War Artizan. IT is 3d printed and has much finer details than their earlier 6mm offerings. I also bought the cutter that they sell. Neither has received any attention to date.

To my surprise, I found two ships from Thoroughbred Miniatures. I am not sure what these even are. They are some kind of gun boat with lanteen sails. They look nice and come with lead ratlines. It doesn't really fit with the WOJE but may make its way to the painting table. It was in a plastic baggie with some 15mm 32 pound carronades. A nice find that I do not remember buying.

War of Jenkin's Ear - Terrain Update

I finally had a chance to finish off another set of trees over the weekend. I also did finished a rocky outcrop that I had purchased for Infamy, Infamy. Lastly, I got to play with some of the new tufts that I bought from Game craft miniatures. I bought some basing gel from them that was a bit too thick. I had to dilute it with PVA to be able to spread it on the base (used an old Flames of War large base). I tried out a few pieces of the new tufts on this test piece to see if it will work out. I like it so far.

I am not sure which one was done with flash and without. I have new lighting in my game room but I don't think it is really enough. I may have to get some lights to use for pictures.

I had purchased some eBay woodland Indians a couple of weeks ago. I received them and wanted to take some pictures. I threw the figures out on the table to see what they looked like. Again, lighting is inconsistent.

Anyway, it was a productive weekend. I also started to mess with a block of foam for Fort St Simons. I just made a template for cutting it out. I am looking forward to being able to work on it this week sometime. Who knows if that will happen.

WOJE - More Progress

I have done some layout work today. I am also working with a design package - Affinity. I am converting To Covet Glory to it and have uploaded files to WargameVault to do a hardcopy with them. However, it seems like printing from WV will be more expensive than on Amazon. I am not sure why. I need to look and see if I can reduce costs. I assume that because it is full color, that is the issue. I am looking forward to seeing how it comes out. I am debating on the pricing but to get anything out of it in royalties, I will have to charge more. Which is disapointing.

I have submitted it and paid for the proof copy. I should have it from the printer in a week or so.

I had a playtester find a few issues with the To Covet Glory scenarios. Those are now corrected and ship shape. I am planning to rough out some shore batteries and a rough fort for the sea landings. I used to have some foam around that I can piece together for it.

I really need to paint some more ships for this. But I have been far too tired when I get home to do much of anything lately. Maybe I can steal some time away over the weekend.

Oh, I also ordered some really nice turn templates for KMH. When these come in, I will take some pictures.

Woodland Indians

One thing I have been lacking is woodland Indians. I have enough for most scenarios but was a few short for some. So I have been scouring eBay for a while. I just happened to find a group of 11 painted woodland Indians online for a good price. I had a bid out on an entire French and Indian War French army just to pick up the dozen Indians within. Thankfully, I was outbid on that. Good for the seller too as the price went up quite a bit after my bid. But i did come up with a lot of 12 painted indians. They came three to a base on metal bases. They are a bit darker than they were in the ebay photographs. The basing is very different from my basing, but they get me closer to my goal.

The seller had another lot for sale but I had spent my money on STL models for ACW Ships. In all, very happy with the purchase.

Other news, Mark did a game at Gigabytes today. The table looked amazing. Can't wait to hear back from him.

WOJE Playtests

I was able to do some work on my game room to get organized. I installed some sliding shelves in a couple of cabinets. I have added a folding table to the painting area. All good changes but nothing that moved me closer to completing the WOJE book. But I was able to set up a couple of tests.

First I did some small scale actions with the Scout Boats. I have a scenario that honestly can be run with either To Covet Glory or Sharp Practice. Spain's Indian allies have stolen a scout boat. They are escorting it with a couple of war canoes. The Georgian's are in hot pursuit with a pair of scout boats. I was playing around with it and noticed that the plastic sheet that I use gave a slight reflective surface when placed over the blue felt that I use for naval games. I place some small sand colored circles under the plastic for sand bars. Then can place other terrain on top of that to show the shore line extended under the surf. This led to a fun picture.

I had trouble with the river I created. I made a thin plastic river that I painted the underside of. I was pretty happy with the results but put the river in storage. While in storage, the paint stuck to itself and peeled away from the sheet. I had to throw it away. Was very disapointed. I had a home made ground sheet that I was curring up to use for various things. i cut a large section out of it for my new wide river. It looks OK but I may get some more plastic sheet and try to adhear it to the cut ground cloth to get the look I want. Who knows if that will work or look right. But to my colorblind eyes, it looks OK for now. Would love to get some comments on it.

I will be running a scenario with my son on this table soon. Hopefully it will go off well.

Terrain Items - A Smokehouse

In looking for typical terrain that would have been present during the War of Jenkin's Ear (and the AWI and ACW for that matter) I have found the ubiquitous smokehouse. Colonial Williamsburg has a website that they dedicated an entire blogpost to smokehouses. It is an interesting read. Of the 88 original surviving structures of Williamsburg, twelve are smokehouses. Given the need to properly and safely prepare meat for storage, it was an item everyone would have. Or as the article puts it, "Everyone needed a smokehouse."

This makes it an ideal piece of terrain. It is a relatively small building. The example I am going for would be 8' square. In 1/100th scale that works out to just over 24mm per side. The article describes them as "Typically, these are cubical structures of wood, eight to fourteen feet square, with steep pyramidal roofs for holding in the smoke among the hanging cuts of meat."

These are simple shapes that are easily handled by Tinkercad. I have found numerous examples online. Most are Civil War era buildings. There is a historic Colonial Farm in Maryland that offers a nice one that I discovered on TripAdvisor.

This is the building that I am going to try to model. One interesting point from the Williamsburg article was a real estate notice that they had discovered. It noted that there was a 8' square smoke house listed with a house and the major selling point was the door to the smokehouse to discourage theives.

These tended to be working buildings for only a small portion of the year. Animals were slaughtered in December and packed in salt to dry then smoked. The rest of the year, the smokehouse served as storage for the meat until it was brought to the kitchens.

Speaking of kitchens, most would be separate from the main house. Especially in the South where the summer would turn the house into an oven if cooking were conducted within. They yard behind the house would be divided into a clean and working sections. The clean section would feature the kitchen and dairy while the working section would have the smokehouse and animal pens.

This is having me rethink a couple of scenarios. First with the Jekyll Island Raid scenario for the War of Jenkin's Ear supplement. Captain Carr's Hermitage plantation would have featured thse working buildings. Outhouses, a smokehouse, a kitchen, animal pens, a well, and a corn crib. What it would not have featured in 1742 was slave cabins as slavery was illegal in Georgia during this time. There would have been civilian workers present as well as the members of Captain Carr's company living there as well.

The other scenario would be for an as of yet unstarted campaign book on the run up to the Battle of Cowpens. The scenario is a battle at Hammond's Store. Unlike the previous one, there would have been a possibility of slave cabins near the store. The store would have been the home of the shopkeepers who would have had to have gardens, animals and other amenities necessary for life in the frontier.

Here is the model that I have creatd from this.

"Walking" the Battlefields of the War of Jenkins' Ear

Last week, I got to go on a family vacation. My son had a Scout trip to Jekyll Island to do some beach fishing.

By the way, if you are feeling generous, please support my son by buying some Boy Scout popcorn (https://www.trails-end.com/store/scout/8DBE0ZRW?share=3S3LB9KZ). He is raising money for next year's summer camp. He just earned his First Class rank and I am very proud of him.

Siezing the moment, I steered some of the activities over the weekend. We did a fishing charter from St Simmons Island. This had a cruise past several important sites for the WOJE. I managed to see the site for Bloody Marsh (slightly underwhelming) and saw Horton's House. I am going to display some things out of order from how I experienced them, but relevant to the narative of the War.

Fort St Simmons, Delegal's Fort and the Shore Battery

From Driftwood Beach on Jekyll Island, you can see the former location of Fort St Simmons and Delegal's fort.

The view of southern St Simmons is rather blurry. In the picture below, Delegal's Fort would have been to the right and Fort St Simmons would have been somewhere near the center and the shore battery between the two. Taking a zoomed in picture in high wind, rarely produces great results.

Nothing remains of these three sites on the island. Their position on the island left them vulnerable to weather and erosion. As such, they are lost to time.

Gascoigne Bluff

The bluff is a small rise near the shoreline. The depth of the salt marsh near the bluff is much smaller than in other places near by. It was a suitable landing site that the British established the bluff as a naval base for the colony of Georgia. Captain Gascoigne of the British Sloop of War Hawk build the base in 1736. Given its suitability as a landing ground, the Spanish choose to land here unopposed after bypassing Fort St Simmons and the other forts on the south side of the island in 1742.

This is a view of the bluff from a Dolphin/Eco tour that the scouts took. The fishing pier in the picture is where we meet our guide for the fishing trip we took. It is possible that a dock of some sort may have been present in 1742.

From the fishing pier, this is a view to the north towards Fort Fredrica. The salt reeds that give the islands name "the Golden Isles" is visible here.

This is another view from further out on the pier. It gives a better idea of how deep the salt marsh extends from the islands. During low tide, the marsh is "dry" and the ground is waist deep mud.

When the Spanish did an investigatory probe up towards Fort Fredrica, they would have sailed from the bluff north along the Mackay River towards Fort Fredrica. In the morning, a thick fog hung over the river. It is only 200 yards from St Simmons across the Mackay River to the mainland. The Spanish Galleys would have had to navigate this shallow river to reach their destination only to be driven back by the fort's guns.

Gascoinge Bluff was also the location that in 1794, the live oak timbers were cut and shipped north to become part of the frigate USS Constitution.

Bloody Marsh Battlefield

The battlefield is a tiny park that is currently surrounded by subdivisions. The field is a small opening in the woods that is bordered to the east by a large marsh. At the time a road ran from Fort St Simmons to the northeast to the battlefield and angled north towards Fort Fredrica. The Georgia troops that ambushed the resting Spanish troops from would have been to the north and west of the opening. Pinned against the marsh, the Spanish troops only would have have the road to retreat down. The pictures make the clearing appear larger than it is. There is parking for about seven vehicles and enough room to turn around and head out of the tiny park. That the park stands at all is likely an accident of needing a minimum amount of greenspace for the surrounding communities.

Jekyll Island and Major Horton's House

Jekyll Island was vital to the overall defensive strategy of Georgia. Nothing remains of the northern fort on the island. It was captured without resistance by the Spanish during their withdrawl from St Simmons. What does remain is Major Horton's house. This is the second itteration of the house. The first wooden structure was burned by the retreating Spanish in 1742. The current residence is the rebuilt farmhouse that was completed in 1743. The structure is two stories tall and built of tabby. Tabby is a strong concrete like material made from oyster shells. Many of these shells came from the discarded oyster shells left in large mounds by the native Americans that had lived on Jekyll prior to the arrival of the Spanish in Georgia. The material is very strong as is in surprisingly great shape after enduring several hurricanes in its over 250 years of existance.

Part of the military significance of the Horton home was that his plantation was manned by indentured servants who worked the property. Among their jobs was to operate the brewery that supplied Fort Fredrica. The loss of the brewery was probably a devestating loss to the British defenders.

Views of the Islands

The Georgia Barrier Islands are beautiful. They are known as the Golden Isles due to the salt marsh reeds that surround their landward sides. They have picturesque sand dunes, marshes, wooded swamps and woods. Many of the trees are shallow rooted live oaks. They are very pretty trees that are draped in Spanish moss.

It was a great trip. I want to go again and take the time to visit Fort Fredrica. There isn't a marked site for the battle of Gully Hole Creek that occured earlier in the same day as Bloody Marsh. It was a great vacation and it has gotten me excited to finish work on the supplement.