If you are looking for the ultimate pirate book look no further than "Under the Black Flag" by David Cordingly. Now this is not a new book but it can still be found on Amazon and other shops so search it out. I have read books on pirates since a lad, most of them are a chronicle of the exploits of the more famous pirates. Under the Black Flag goes well beyond that. This is a serious work of scholarship which delves deep into the question who where the pirates of the Golden Age and why did they take to piracy? Mr. Cordingly uses ships logs, pirate trial records and period journals to answer these very questions. Don't let the term "scholarly"  put you off Mr. Cordingly's prose is straight forward and his antidotes are engaging. He even delves into the contrasts between the real pirates and the most famous pirates of the western world Long John Silver and Captain Hook. If you are going to read only one book about the pirates of the Golden Age this is the book to read.


I'd also like to take a moment to welcome my newest followers, I know I've been remiss in this regard but I hope to make amends. So welcome Fran of the angry lurker, Alfons of miniaturas militares alfons canovas, Mike Reynolds, Austronaut of attempted gamer, TamsinP of wargaming girl and Brian Botzn. Thank you all for following Fiends in Waistcoats.

Five years or so ago when we where playing LOTHS I started collecting toy ships to use in those games. I rather quickly amassed a sizable fleet of 5 ships and 2 boats for pirate gaming. I did this through that vile money pit ebay. Now I never actually got around to converting any of these toys for wargaming so I have finally begun to do so. I have two playmobil ships I bought used off of ebay they are very large but I like that their decks are wide and allow for many miniatures at a time. The down side of playmobil ships is that they need a lot of work to make them look the right scale, they are very large.
This is the first of my playmobil ships, playmobil calls it a schooner but with a keel length of  14 1/2" it will have to be a 3 master to look in scale. Here is a playmobil advert photo of this ship with the masts on 14 1/2" is much to big for a 28mm schooner. I stripped it of masts and clipped off various knobs and protrusions. I also remove the screws because they weren't flush with the deck.
The playmobil ships have wheels on the bottom of the hulls for the kiddies so the first order of business was to cut off the bottom of the hull off so it would have a proper waterline. This was done with a double toothed hand saw for cutting wood.
I think the gunwale height in comparison to this 8" long 28mm brig looks correct now. The 8'' long 2 mast plastic ship is one of two that came in a board game called Weapons & Warriors Pirate Battle Game where you use cannons that shot little rubber balls to knock down your enemy's figures.
I learned about this OOP game through the LOTSH yahoo group back in the days when yahoo groups where the thing for wargamers on the internet. As you can see from the picture above a complete game nets you 2 ships, 2 boats, a round tower, 12 cannon, treasure chests, some nice palm trees and a bunch of 28mm plastic pirates. The round bases of the pirate figures are 25mm in diameter which makes these ships the perfect size.

I'm happy to report that I've gotten a hold of a pile of Pirate related Osprey books. One might think that with so many periods to cover Osprey Publishing would confine such a minor subject like pirates to a single book one would be wrong! The book pictured above covers the "Golden Age" of piracy that is the early 18th Century just after the War of the Spanish Succession.
This book covers the mid to late 17th Century's pirate activity mostly against the Spanish.
Thus book begins during the War of Jenkin's Ear all the way through the Napoleonic Wars. Though this books centers more on the state sanctioned privateers with their purpose built ships than it does on actual pirates.One would think these three books have thoroughly covered all there is to know about pirates again one would be wrong.
There are many pictures of period ships with figures to scale in this book its very helpful for anyone trying to convert ships like myself.
 Finally the pirate wargamer will find these last two titles very useful.
Well that's it for my new pirate reference next week I"ll start chronicling my efforts to convert my fleet of toy ships & boats.

Lunatic R has taken the plunge into the 18th Century with Black Scorpion's pirate skirmish game Cutlass. This isn't just any old pirate skirmish game its a fantasy pirate skirmish game! 
We used to play Games Workshop's Legend of the High Seas a few years ago but the Lunatic has always been partial to fantasy gaming. He is one of those people who's afraid of historical gaming though he did enjoy fantasy free Legends of the High Seas.
 What I like about Cutlass is the action point system which I'm told is very much like Blood Bowl, I've never played Blood Bowl so I couldn't say but I love the reaction system where the members of the inactive crew get to take an action in re-action to members of the active crew. For example if a crew member of the active gang shoots at a member of the opposite crew any of that crew's mates within 6" of him can return fire at the shooter if they can see him. I think that's great. The old GW I go/you go system was my main issue with LOTHS. I like the way in which this system works out the fantasy elements in this game, it's mostly done with skills. All crew members have a level 1 to 20 and the starting stats for each race is the same. Its the racial skills and some special abilities which differentiate the races. I'm hoping this will make for a balanced campaign. There are human pirate, privateer and royal navy factions so you can play this system as a "historical" game too.

Like LOTHS this game is all about the campaign system. I hope to have a report on that in a few weeks once I've played a few games.