Irregular Wars Wargaming

Over the last week or so I have come across two great reviews on the internet that I thought I might share. At Wargaming in Central Oregon , Ralph has been playing around with Irregular Wars and has come to the following conclusions: "... The result is something that I hoped to find, with well crafted random elements making it well adapted for solitaire play. Highly Recommended." Not something I'm going to contest! Read the full review HERE . He has also produced an army roster sheet and a unit capabilities chart which may be useful. These can be downloaded direct from Ralph's blog. Meanwhile, Yoyo Skywalker has been painting up some neat 15mm Zapotec archers and dart throwers for an Irregular Wars Mesoamerican army. If you can read a little French, or can manage with your internet browser's translator, have a browse through Yoyo's workshop - he's got some great AARs available there. Over at The Raft , Frank Shandy has some very polite things to say ab

I've recently been contacted by an old wargaming chum, Mark, from Southern Battle Gamers , the club I was a member of back in Sydney. He is currently a solo gamer based in Thailand. He has graciously allowed me to post an after action report from his first game of Galleys & Galleons - notable , as he makes clear, for very little gunfire being exchanged and a lot of boarding action. The ships are all from Eureka - 6mm scale - from the Grumpy and Irregular ranges. The fleets represent a semi-historical take on the East Indies in the 16th century, when the original inhabitants could still dish it out to the European interlopers. **** Every year one Great Ship makes the slow tedious trip between the Portuguese bases at Macao and Goa. For years now the old carrack Santa Isabella Das Indias has been doing this job, vital to the trade that sustains the Empire. Often it is accompanied by one or more smaller merchantmen in convoy. Usually the voyages are uneventful, as they are time

The pirates have spoken and the entries have been entered , drawn and quartered... My thanks to everybody who entered the give away. My impartial ship's mate drew names from his treasure chest and I'm delighted to say that the following salty rogues will be having a small deck of cards heading their way next week. In no particular order, congratulations to... Ralf from Wargaming in Central Oregon ; Jim from Jim's Wargaming Workbench ; Joshua from Le Coq Fou ; Frank Shandy from The Raft . "What's that?!" says you, "Four winners?" "That be right" says I. "Four winners!" What can you do? I found a fourth pack. Congratulations again all. Drop me a message with your postal address and I'll get the cards shipped.

   Galleys & Galleons  is a standalone tabletop wargame for naval engagements published by  Ganesha Games . The game uses a granulated version of the basic Song engine allowing players to control a handful of vessels without cluttering up the table with charts.  The rules are written to easily accommodate multi-player games, permitting large fleet actions and encouraging treachery and skulduggery.  In multiplayer games, the rules suggest that the order in which players take turns to activate their vessels be determined by drawing cards. We have had a small number of exclusive  Galleys & Galleons  turn order card decks made, exclusively to be given away to our exclusive players.  These cards cannot be bought, they are… exclusive. Each deck contains 13 cards, each measuring 2 x 2 inches (or 50.8 x 50.8mm). Ten of the cards feature the character portraits from biographies printed in the rule book, together with a personality type, such as ‘Career Man’, ‘P

There is a nice wee Galleys & Galleons after action report over at the Wandering View blog . Worth a look!

As some of you may know, I worked in Syria over a few years and have devoted much of my professional life to the study of Syrian history and culture. The ongoing war in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon  (not to mention Libya and Turkey) is nothing short of a catastrophe, certainly for the people who live in and/or come from those countries, but also for the millennia of shared cultural history and negotiated identities born of the region.  When I first started to prepare wargaming rules for Ganesha Games I made the decision that I would donate 50% of my royalties to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Thanks to your enthusiasm for Galleys & Galleons - with some help from the ongoing support for Song of Shadows and Dust - I have just been able to make the biggest donation to date (more than the total donations from the last two years  combined !). We may not personally be able to do much to solve the complicated problems in the Middle East, but it's nice to think that we can