Look up to the Sky, look at the Horizon

I just did the Cruel Seas unboxing and review and Warlord Games introduced the next naval wargame, Black Seas. Similar to how Cruel Seas ties in with Bolt Action, Black Seas will tie in with Black Powder, focussing on the naval battles between 1770 to 1830.

The designers notes by Gabrio Tolentino read very lovely, and with the scale (1:700) and very solid base of plastic sprues already available with the initial release, this is simply too interesting to ignore. Oh, if you want a teaser / sneak peak yourself, the current issue of Wargames Illustrated covers a free sample sprue.

And from what I've seen so far, with the instructions and additional bits in the sprues, they have taken the feedback from Cruel Seas and spun the idea further. As for myself, I'm not that versed with the Napoleonic era or the sea battles on the high sea. I was thinking, yeah! Spanish Armada! Freebooters and Pirates! Unfortunately a bit to late as I was informed, but still the Spanish were involved in Trafalgar and will se(a)e their share of attention within the releases, that is enough for me.

So after I've covered the additional items that I have scheduled for Cruel Seas, I'd be more than happy to share some of my insights and experiences with this new game.

And I'd like to add some additional comments and infos on Aeronautica Imperialis, that didn't make it into the review. Those of you, who may know the historical division of Warhammer / Specialist Games (yes, at some point in the past, Games Workshop's developers and rule writters ran their own branch of historical rule sets), Aeronautica had its sister-ruleset among those historical gaming systems, Richthofen's Flying Circus, dedicated to aerial dogfights in world war one.

Unfortunately in 2012 the sub division, that was relocated to Forge World around 2010, was closed. Fortunately though, at Salute 2012, they sold all the remaining stock at insane prices (between 5 and 8 GBP per book). So I closed some gaps in my collection, along with some of the vignettes they still had in stock (at 5 GBP each)...

If you need more information or ressources on Aeronautica, especially on the colour schemes for your squadrons, I highly recommend some of the old Imperial Armour books. These are of course strongly influenced by the Royal Air Force and Luftwaffe from World War 2, but adding the sci-fi theme from Warhammer 40k, giving them a twist you wouldn't see in the historical context.

In the first Imperial Armour Modelling Masterclass book, you can see even more, very sophisticated paint jobs on various aircrafts of the Imperial Navy.

And a gaming table for the old Aeronautica edition, showing a snow covered Imperial Air base. Very well done, from my point of view, more fitting for Adeptus Titanicus, as it is more practical to have a flat gaming surface for aerial games, especially when you're using hex fields.

Some of the terrain was available from Forge World as part of the epic 40k terrain range. I'll have to dig in into the archives, maybe I find something that could be composed as an article, as inspiration for both gaming systems, Titanicus and Aeronautica.

At Games Day 2007 (and other events) Forge World offered two resin miniatures, covering pilots from the Imperial Navy and Ork Air-Waaagh. A Thunderbolt pilot and Ork Sqwadron (sic!) Commander. The artwork for both was used on the pilot ace card decks. Maybe we see these guys again, depending on the success of the game.

That's it for today. It will be interesting to see how both games develop over the next few month. Until then I'm back at the desk, assembling some more titans.