Sky Fighting (How I got here)

 

A few years ago a game company launched a flying battleship game.  The ships they produced were amazing and had real potential but the company stopped publishing the game.  As good as the ships were there were only three kinds of ships and only the British and French forces were produced.  I need to say I did not care for the rules but there were a fair amount of people that thought them interesting.  Things might have worked with what was out there but with only a Battleship, Light Cruiser and a Destroyer it lacked something.  Fleet boxes came with a battleship, a light cruiser and two destroyers which did give a considerable number of ships for the price.  Even the flight stand, though fiddly, did work but lacked the ability to change levels of altitude.  So when the company stopped publishing the game I sadly boxed up the figures and stored them for another time.

French Battleship

British Battleship

    

 

 

 

All those beautiful ships never left my mind and I would drag out the box and play around with them.  During one such phase I cast about on the internet to find a set of rules that might work and finally found something with a little modification would do what I wanted for the ships.  I even want so far as to build the ship charts which was fun and fired my desire to do more with the ships.  Still the frustration of only a limited set of ships kept me from pushing forward to hard.  Our club even tested the rules and found that they worked and suggested some changes that would be better.  A friend even made out of wood some heavy cruisers because he thought they were needed.  The final move was to buy some fight stands that could extend and retract for change of altitude.  When I was working on that I only got a few changed over before other things in life and money too got in the way and I once again put the ships away.  Using the flight stands though made a real difference and I knew at some point I would come back to this project.

    Now we come today.  One day this summer I see that the company is restarting the game on kickstarter and they are making more ships(aka armored cruiser) and more factions so of course I make a pledge.    One of the things that caused the ships to be shelved was because we were building a house and time and money were going someplace else.  Building the house allowed me to create a gaming space that I never had before and it now gave me the space to put up a table that would let me do the flying battleships like I wanted to.  Also I had money to start buying fight stands again so all my ships will have the right kind of bases.  Lets just say I am excited and can not wait for the new ships.
    Like I said I did not care for the rules that came with the ships and I did find a set of rules that I liked and would work but you can never stop looking for the perfect set of rules.  Osprey Publishing put out a set of rules for this period and so now I will be experimenting with those to see if they are better then the rules I am using.  And that is how I got here and where I am headed.  If everything works out there will be a sky battle at a convention at some point