I’ve found myself, as I often do, flirting with the idea of playing some World War II naval conflicts. Specifically Guadalcanal. The issue, as always, is multi-fold.

1.      I know little to nothing about proper naval combat in World War II, which makes it hard to judge rulesets.

2.      It’s bizarrely expensive!

On point one it’s pretty simple: I have picked a designer I trust. I intend to play Nimitz by Sam Mustafa. I can’t sit here and tell you why it’s a great ruleset for World War II naval combat just yet but I generally trust Sam to deliver a great set of rules.

The second point is what is truly stunning to me. I’ve established I can readily 3D print ships and have found a few free files online to print. Unfortunately, those free files don’t quite cover the gamut of ships needed to cover a single campaign—so I need to buy ship files. These are generally sold for an average of $4 a pop. So for $4 I can print a plastic ship that isn’t especially well detailed (It would be better if I had a resin printer). Okay, surely there aren’t a billion ship types, right?

Okay, obviously wrong. Why else would I ask that? Let’s take Guadalcanal as the example and use the free set of scenarios provided on the following website for another game: https://fireonthewaters.tripod.com/tlp.htm

Across this campaign there are 38 unique ship classes. To buy the necessary files, I’d need to spend $152. That’s a fairly high amount for what are pretty small ships! Even worse if I want them in metal, at which point we can hit $1,000 for all 75 vessels needed at minimum to play out the campaign.

I’ve considered buying a $270 pack that includes all files for vessels fielded by America and Japan in World War II. Honestly, I suppose it’s just a good deal at this point. It’s a steeper startup cost than I’d like but at this point it’s wiser long term than trying to buy piecemeal.

Now we hit the second issue: will I even like naval wargaming? No idea!

Okay, okay. There’s got to be a safer way to get started and at least try things, right? Right.

http://www.topsideminis.com

Here you can buy easily printed topside view chits for naval vessel. You print them onto paper and mount them onto a solid backing. See below:

It’s not a ton to report on. It’s not super cool looking or an impressive hobby project. It’s just a functional, easy way to get ships onto the table. At the end of the day, at the scales played, the ships really are just chits anyway. While I’d like to paint some up, I’ve decided that for this project I’m going to pop out enough of these counters for my games and just play this campaign, then decide if I really want to invest hundreds of dollars into 3D printing and painting ships. I have the feeling I’ll be happier this way.

It’s part of a recent effort of mine: I need to minimize the grandiose approach to playing games. I can’t just produce everything in the world for a game and then expect myself to paint it before the game ever hits the table. I did that with Infinity and now own a ton of terrain I may never paint. I did it just this last month with Carnevale and I can feel the fact that I’m running out of time to paint its terrain before my interest moves on as it always does.

I’ve slowed down recently. Part of it is a new hobby and part of it is a growing child with whom I can play more games. The irony of playing more games being that it means I have less time for painting and hobbying. Maybe these ships indicate a direction that will better fit into my life.

Maybe.

If nothing else, they look better than I expected.