Monday 27 September 2010

Balkrunia and Karagoz - The War at Sea

One of the facets of an early 20th century ‘imagi-nation’ that I intend to take full advantage of is the naval side. As my two protagonists are based on the Balkan nations and the forces of Ottoman Turkey then the potential for much in the way of naval activity is very high. The ‘terrain’ I will be fighting over makes use of the 1914 -1918 maps of the Mediterranean available in the board game ‘The Great War at Sea: The Mediterranean’ although some of the national boundaries will need to be modified. For the ship models for the two sides I have been extremely fortunate to have acquired a substantial reinforcement to my existing collection of old Minifigs 1/1200th scale WW1 ships and so these models will furnish all of my needs in respect of hardware. The first batch had been acquired from ebay but far and away the largest portion came from Bob Cordery ; to whom once again I extend my most grateful thanks.

I will post a fuller background to the composition of the fleets once I have decided how best to split them up. My feeling at the moment is to have a Karagozian fleet mostly of earlier vessels but with a couple of ‘state of the art’ types whilst the opposition has more modern types overall but is mostly lighter in weight. In any event, I want the fleets to be quite different in their composition in order to present each side with differing tactical challenges.

For the rule I will probably use a variant of Axis and Allies: War at Sea as these are simple and great to use for a club night game. I will also be making use of the aerial dimension as well and plan to make use of the Irregular miniatures 2mm biplanes and probably some Brigade models dirigibles for air support.

The models themselves will be easy to paint as detail wise they are very basic. It was a great shame that Minifigs never expanded the range (German ships were mooted but never materialised) and indeed, the moulds seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth. When the fleets are ready I will post some pictures to the blog of the Eastern Mediterranean’s finest in action.

2 comments:

  1. I have 1/3000th vessels for the 1912 Balkan Wars somewhere, similar setup with mostly old stuff and a couple of "modern" ships to build a fleet around.

    1/1200th is a nice scale but I've never heard of the Minifigs range- sadly neither Triton/Skytrex nor Navwar do ships later than the 1860s or 70s in this scale and I know of no other manufacturer.

    Please post some piccies when you get them done.

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  2. Hi Monsewer Crapaud,

    I also have the fleets for the Balkan Wars in 1/3000th using Navwar models - including the ships that both Greece and Turkey ordered but never took delivery of. The Minifigs ships are late 70s vintage and they only ever got around to producing British types. I have a number of these and so will be using them for both Balkrunia and Karagoz in due course - the rationale is that both sides purchased quantities of ex Royal Navy vessels disposed of after the Great War. Pics will follow in due course and I have started to feature these on my blog 'A Wargames Odyssey'. Drop by and have a look when you get the chance.

    All the best,

    DC

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