Hello All

I am pleased to join this community after reading some of the interesting and helpful material here and after watching both Master & Commander and Captain Horatio Hornblower in the past few evenings.

I am a long time player of Age of Sail wargames but no expert. I started out gaming with balsa wood ship shapes and home brewed rules when I was a boy having read Hornblower and Alexander Kent and then moved on to using the Kinder egg ships and some simple scratch builds! I have since discovered the brilliance of Patrick O'Brian as well as enjoying Dudley Pope and Richard Woodman's books and now own small squadrons of 1/2400 metal ships as well as the starter set for SOG and some extra ships I recently added.

I have played a few games with the SOG starter set and particularly enjoyed the rules and the look of the table (although I must confess to being a little reticent about the thickness of the bases). As well as SOG I play Kiss Me Hardy! by TooFatLardies and I used to play using a set called "Beat to Quarters!" by Donald Gifford.

I hope to build my collection to the point where I can field a couple of line squadrons of British and 2 or 3 squadrons of French & Spanish as well as a frigate squadron for each. This would let me play many different scenarios using SOG and it is my intention to use them with Kiss Me Hardy as well. I am tempted by the Black Seas ships from Warlord but am not at all excited about rigging such ships and am not wild about painting them either!

I look forward to benefiting from the wisdom and inspiration that this site provides.

Fred Worthingham