Ocean Thunder: Redux

Around 1990 or so my best friend, Chris Coupland, and I decided to get into World War II naval combat gaming. We found a set of rules titled General Quarters. After reading the rules and playing our first game using the ship pieces from my Axis and Allies board game we decided it was lacking in some places. Specifically we felt their was a lack of definition between the various war ships. And thus we started to make changes and alterations to the rules. I spent many hours and dimes at the public library photo copying pages from between the covers of Jane's Fighting Ships: World War II studying all there was to know about ships of the line form the middle of the last century. In all that fiddling with the rules to make them fit with what we wanted them to be, the game was being morphed to something that was nothing like the original game but still clung to some of the original precepts. What ever we did we couldn't seem to get by that. Until my wife, at the time, suggested we just start from scratch and write the rules we wanted. 

Fast forward to around 1996, we introduced Ocean Thunder to the gaming world at a now defunct gaming convention named Skirmishes. The game was so well received that not only did we have to add additional sessions of the game, we won a near unanimous decision as "Game of the Year".

Fast forward again to 2013. I have been working on a set of rules for modern combat using micro-armor with a friend, Evan, and commented to him it was cool working on writing game rules again. He asked me what I had worked on before and I explained to him about Ocean Thunder. He wanted to play it. So I dusted off my old GHQ fleet, found the rules in the deepest darkest reaches of my computer (I have been transferring to each new computer for the last twenty plus years) and introduced him to the game. He had such a good time with it he asked me why I hadn't done anything with it. 

So here I am, writing a blog about my old navy game being dusted off and reworked to pull it out of the dark ages of gaming and getting polished up to be able to present to the world once again.

I will also be writing about the adventures, trials and tribulations of working on the micro-armor rules.

Keep your eyes out for further postings.