Gold Cup Playtest

Got together with a few friends to walk through a Thunderboats! modification to play the 1965 Gold Cup race. I'm pretty thrilled with the results. Dave Schueler and I agreed to violate the rules guidelines that essentially let players create their own boats. In this case, players choose boats and drivers from each heat. Boats and drivers are rated, so all are not equal.

The racers run their boats three laps, and choose boats for the next heat in the reverse order of finish. So there is always a little handicap for after each heat.

Dave also created a set up special cards for the race, that drivers receive at the beginning of each heat. These are in addition to the regular event cards. Generally the input was favorable, so I'm anxious for the real deal.

Germs, Figures and Hydroplanes

It's been a week since I returned to work from the President's Day holiday. For some reason micro-organisms have also chosen to return to work with me and I'm sick, sick, sick. It hasn't kept me from heading off to work every morning, but when I come home I'm just dying. I'm living on a steady diet of Dayquil and Nyquil. Probably not a good thing, but I'm making do. Combine that with deadline week, and it doesn't make for a real productive week.

I've picked a little bit at my AWI figures, but most of the time I've painted was devoted to my Gold Cup project. Last week I carefully razor sawed the openings for the tails and cut them from my super thin sheet plastic and primed them. I decided to work on three boats: Tahoe Miss, Smirnoff, and Such Crust IV. All three boats are pretty and look different than other boats I've already put together.

Tahoe Miss has a squarer, jet fighter look to her tail. Not exactly a beautiful craft in 1965, but very effective, Tahoe Miss was very fast, with Chuck Thompson an effective driver. Unfortunately she was pretty beat up in the race, with a blown supercharger and a hard bounce that broke one of Thompson's ribs. Tahoe Miss finished third.

Smirnoff is an interesting boat. Sponsored by Heublein's, the vodka distiller had a big picture of a properly labeled bottle on the fighter plane tail. In 1964 This did not comport with Washington State Liquor Control Board regulations. The booze bottle was replaced with an image of A-1 Steak Sauce, another Heublein product. Miss Smirnoff finished eighth in the '65 Gold Cup

The last boat I have ready to work on is Such Crust IV. This was an older boat in its final season of racing. Boasting twin Allisons, this Detroit boat was a sled. Qualified by Bill Muncey, one of the best drivers in the business, he was unable to race because of an ailing back. The elephantine Such Crust, finished seventh. This is a much larger boat than Sean's models represent, but it was in the race, so I'll have to do my best.

So it's Smirnoff in the blue and red with the bottle on the tailfin, and Miss Tahoe in the bright red and green. Colors are bit shaky. It's tough to find good photos, and I often have to resort to photos of R/C models. The colors also frequently changed from year to year, and often within a racing season.

Hydroplanes on the Horizon

I'm looking ahead to planning for a project using my existing minis after my Spanish Civil War stuff is done. I don't have much more to do. I've got seven vehicles to paint, two 22 figure units of Italian infantry, and a couple of infantry guns for the Nationalists. It will go fast.

After they are done I'd like focus some of my attention on painting boats for the 1965 Gold Cup. I have a few, but the boats that raced in Seattle that year were:
Miss Smirnoff
Gale's Roostertail
Miss Lapeer
Tahoe Miss
Miss Madison
Miss U.S. V
Notre Dame
Miss Bardahl
Mariner Too
Miss Exide
Savair's Mist
Such Crust

I've already painted four of these boats, so I'd need to finish eight more. They're always fun to do. I'm actually considering a six player game in which those who win in heat 1A have their boats handicapped in 1B. I may also work with Dave to see about the possibility of pre-rating some of the boats in advance in order to create a more authentic handicapping system.

Meanwhile painting proceeds apace. I'm working on the first sixteen figures of the 2nd Maryland. I finished the first eight and I'm pretty pleased. The next eight are all in hunting shirts, so they should go pretty fast.

Museum of Flight '08

Yesterday NHMGS returned to the Museum of Flight in Seattle. We've been there each year since about 2000. Some of the days have been great, some not so good, but yesterday's MoF day was the best yet.

We've had difficulty attracting game presenters and gamers to play the games, but yesterday that wasn't a problem. Bruce Meyer had a full house for his Napoleonic skirmish game. John McEwan hosted his balloon race to a crowd. Dave Schueler and I had nine hydroplanes going in the afternoon (in a game designed for six.) We also had a lot of curious onlookers and some players from those attending Educator's Day at the museum. I think it was a great symbiosis, one I'd like to repeat next year.

I've included a few pictures, but have many more available on Photobucket

The first photo is of our air racing game, using the Daveshoe's newly modified rules. It was fun, though my plane, Mr. Mulligan, the big white plane at the rear finished dead last.

The last is a view of the DBA games, balloon racing and Napoleonic game from the second level.

The last picture is of the hydroplane racers at the finish. Exide, in the middle, is being lapped at the end by Miss Spokane and Miss Madison at the finish line. Mark Waddington's Miss Spokane won with a final burst at the finish line.

Thunderboats!--the Extended Version

Yesterday seven of us gathered at Game Matrix to run out Daveshoe's revisions of Thunderboats for cup racing, meaning multiple heats. Dave ran the games while Dave Demick, son Casey, Mark Waddington, Dale Mickel, Chris Bauermeister and I pushed around the boats. Any excuse to race hydroplanes makes for a good day, but the additional rules for pit crews, enhanced build points, and the fickle nitrous bottles were especially fun.

I don't know what strategies others used, but building a boat with 21 points to spread over three heats was a challenge. I took Miss Wahoo, one of my favorite boats, and chose a top driver, a top pit crew, three engine points, four hull points, a couple of re-rolls, and one nitrous bottle. I figured it would allow me to take some extra chances, and the strategy worked pretty well-through one heat.

In heat one I finished third. I was actually positioned pretty well to compete for the win, but stalled just before the finish line. That's a tough place to crap out. I had good die rolls-no, great die rolls-until the bad card draw. Unfortunately everyone else had good die rolls too, so I couldn't recover. Dale won the first heat. In heat two, in the first turn, I took hull damage and lost three of my four boxes. I stayed pretty conservative for a full lap and decided to take a few more risks. This became more difficult when my driver lost his nerve, so his plus three die modifier became a plus two. Mark Waddington won, but I used my nitrous bottle on the final corner and rolled a perfect twenty to pass Dale and take second. I hadn't won any heats but with nine points was still competitive. I needed to win the last heat to win the race. Didn't happen. I had pretty mediocre speed rolls, and lost my nerve again, so I was only a plus one driver. That meant taking risks were, well, risky. Through a series of card draws and a nasty collision roll Wahoo got pretty well beat up. Worse, I just couldn't get a decent die roll and was in danger of becoming irrelevant as I fell further off the pace. Finally, on the last lap, I rolled a fifteen, trusted to luck and made a move that pushed me right into the crowd of leaders. The downside is I had five rolls to make for engine pushes, corner pushes, roostertails and the like. I only passed one and my boat's fragile hull sprung a major leak and my racing day was over. Mark won the race in a close finish with Dale. Well done. All seemed to enjoy the new rules. I thought they demanded a lot more strategic thinking.

I should explain the pictures. First-as usual-I nearly forgot to take any pictures. The camera remained in its bag until the third heat. The first picture is coming out of the first turn--probably turn two of the heat. Everyone is still racing. Hawaii Kai leads the pack. I'm the brown boat running second on the outside with Mark's red Miss Exide running inside. In the second pic Dale and Casey are counting hexes as Casey prepares to move his blue Revenge. "Ah geez my driver lost his nerve, can I manage to push that corner?"

Below, Dale's Mariner Too has a mishap with his nitrous bottle. Not many drivers took them as there was a chance that they could result in an engine fire. I only used mine once, and it was very successful. Dale used his twice, and the second time, bingo, engine fire. I happened to have a Litko fire marker to decorate his boat with. Dave contemplates the cluster of racers in the turn second turn of lap one. His Hawaii Kai is still leading, but he'll suffer engine damage in the second lap and have to drop out. My boat is in hanging in there, but in fifth place.

Hydroplane Pictures

I've taken some photos of a couple of my newest hydroplanes. The first one is Casey's boat, the Revenge. It's not a historical boat, and the only one I've painted that is not historical. He likes the game and wanted a custom craft. We shared some ideas and agreed on a pirate theme, hence the Jolly Roger and the name Revenge in Old English characters.

The second boat is the Mariner Too. It was an entry in the 1965 Gold Cup and was driven by Fred Alter.

Just a reminder, if you are a regular reader and live nearby, we're running a hydroplane race on the 19th at Game Matrix around 11:00 Daveshoe has put together some rules for multi-heat races including pit crews and a rule for nitrous oxide bottles that should make racing a bit more strategic and interesting.

New Pics

It's Thursday the 19th, so I must be on vacation. Yippee. I've been busy too. I've made some painting time each day, as I promised, and I finished a couple of hydroplanes, and mounted up my Anglo Danish DBA army. Tonight I move on to the Austrian Hussars, before taking on yet another DBA project--the III/5b morph of the Byzantines. Here are some pictures

The Anglo Danes are a dark ages army. Yes, they are the folks who clobbered Harald Hardrada's Viking invasion of England in 1066. Of course they lost at Hastings a short time later and opened England to the Norman Conquest. You remember: King Harold Godwinson-arrow in the eye, Bayeux Tapestry and all that stuff. They are a remarkably boring army. Mostly spears, with three stands of blades and a stand of psiloi. I painted them with some sort of representation of Harold's dragon standard. It looks better in the picture than in real life--however it does pass the three foot test. The figures are 15mm Old Glory figures.

These are my two newest hydroplanes. The dark one is the Slo-mo-shun IV, the first three-point hydro. I believe her first year was 1952, and made Seattle the home of the thunderboats for many years. It had a very large aircraft style tail. This is a boat I painted for Dave Demick. The white boat is the Miss Century 21. It was originally Miss Thriftway, an extremely successful boat that Bill Muncey drove. It changed its name for the 1961 and 1962 seasons, and continued its success, winning the Gold Cup in '62. I don't think I got the striping quite right, but I did the best I could. The next boats I paint will be the Mariner Too for the '65 Gold Cup, and my son Casey wants a custom boat in blue. I think I'll call it Casey's Revenge and give it a bit of a pirate motif.

A Twist on Thunderboats!

One obsession that's stayed me with for much of the last year is my interest in hydroplane racing. Daveshoe and I are discussing some slight changes and additions to the rules, including points for pit crews. Rules for pit crews could be important if I proceed with my next big idea--historical races.

Hydroplane racing in Seattle has a proud history, and wouldn't it be fun to do some historical races. Not only that, but it would help me direct my building and painting plans. I've taken a look at three Gold Cup races in Seattle-1959, 1962, and 1965. There is a great list of boats for each of these races. Some of them would be hard to obtain pictures for, but it would also give me something to do. For the time being, I'll start with the 1965 group, which has some fun boats. I don't quite know how I'll recreate the enormous Such Crust with its twin engines, but I'll think you just stick with the models I have. The boats for the 1965 Gold Cup race are:

Miss Exide
Miss Bardahl
Miss US 5
Mariner Too
Gale's Roostertail
Tahoe Miss
Miss Madison
Notre Dame
Miss Smirnoff
Miss Lapeer
Savair's Mist
Such Crust