A History of Pirates

Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson - ahem

Whilst I haven't managed to generate any motivation for anything directly game related for the last couple of
weeks (and not just because of my tediously long "Factory" build), my enthusiasm for gaming and the related things associated with our hobby is unabated. I always gleaned my enjoyment in wargaming from the interaction with others, the discussion of rules, campaigns and such like as well as the bragging rights after a game well fought (whether won or lost). I've tried solo gaming, but my overall feeling afterwards was "What was the point?". Since coming back to wargaming some five years ago after a similar absence, I've had only a mere 5 participants in my games of whom only one I thought would be a long term prospect as a regular player (not #1 son), sadly though this wasn't to be as all contact with him was lost over a year ago.
It does seem that I just can't compete with the attraction of elves and orcs in the Warhammer world of Games Workshop.

Is there really a need for a caption here ?

So, whilst I may not have willing participants, I have been reading a lot and attempting to resurrect my piratical interests, with the aim of once more having another attempt to play solo.
If you're wondering "why pirates" then I'm afraid I have no hope of explaining the attraction to you!
I already have a large collection of pirates (I'm guessing about three hundred) all painted and based and three pirate ships in various stages of being finished, so I do have a head start in this fanciful idea.
As a way of easing myself into this idea, a little reading was in order, requiring a lot less effort  on my part and at little cost.
My first port of call was the Kindle store to see if there were any piratical books available cheaply. The first was the one illustrated at the top of the page "Captain Johnson's History of the Pyrates", actually written by Daniel Defoe and one that I already have a physical copy of . My version was bought over fifteen years ago (18/11/00) for the princely sum of £14.99, the Kindle version costs £0.00 (including vat) and was delivered to me in 10 seconds (approximately).

Another great find

I "purchased" the Kindle version and discovered other books at a similar price, viz: "Captain Singleton" by Defoe (see above) and "Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates", both of which I've yet to read.
These latter two books were, once more, well within my allotted budget of £0.00

The Time Life book "The Pirates"

My only other pirate reference book is the beautifully illustrated Time Life "The Pirates" and I'm now regretting not buying "The Spanish Main" in the series too, all those years ago, when I bought the original.

THW Pirate rules

On the wargames front, I'm still enthused by THW's rules "Rum"; they answer a lot of questions and thoughts I've had about other THW rules (namely their various zombie rule sets) and are a very 'clean' system, elegantly combining sea and land rules together.
They are just about everything I've been wanting from a set of pirate rules and can easily be amended to suit my own needs (namely making them more role-play light and overhauling the land-based shooting rules).
My own attempt at pirate rules (named Roger Jollie's Pirate Rules - not that you're interested) pale into comparison as do the other commercially available pirate rules that I've looked at over the years. To be fair though, there are a number of newer sets of (glossy) rules available, but I doubt I'll ever be able to see them, let alone be able to afford to purchase them!

Z-man's pirate game.

The final clincher of my renewed diversion was the present of a board game, "Merchants and Marauders". In the past I've always held off buying any boardgames before researching them thoroughly on various review sites(but mostly Boargamegeek) and have therefore none in my boardgame collection.
This game however I would probably have probably snapped as it has everything one cold want from a pirate themed game and it is so very well produced too.
There is one thing though that excites me more than even I could have wished for... it fits so well together with the campaign ideas from THW's "Rum" that you'd think they were made for each other.
I will of course be taking advantage of the obvious similarities of the two systems (board and wargame) to combine the best features of the two and may well post my thoughts in the future should there be any interest out there in cyber-space.
 In the meantime, my time is currently being spent wondering how to make terrain - houses, islands, palm trees etc. etc. - for next to nothing whilst still researching and "fine tuning" rules for a larger campaign in all things piratical.

That's it then for this week and although there's been nothing here even remotely related to Zombie wargaming, I do hope that there's been something here of interest to you.