A very pleasant surprise at the start of the week when I got notified that I will receive a delivery.  Problem is that I don’t recognise the sender...   parcel arrives and it is a nice big box and when I open it, it is full of 17th century (aka the age of piracy) ships, rules and accessories.

As Oak & Iron is a ship to ship combat game set in the age of cannons, there are obvious comparisons with Warlord Games Black Seas but having read the rules and watched a couple of bat reps on YouTube, I am hopeful that it will be a lot more playable, and a lot more balanced.  In some regards the rules remind me of x-wing as you have to plan certain elements ahead and you can buy upgrades for your ships (and even hire a famous admiral to lead your crew).

The base game comes with rules for 4 nationalities (English, French, Spanish & Dutch) as well as pirates with “national” traits (for example pirates can’t take ships of the line and other nationalities can buy certain upgrades cheaper) and 6 plastic ships (only one of which really needs glue).   The models are all 1:600 scale and as the hulls are printed in a brown plastic and the sails are an off-white, you can get away without painting them (but I will be painting the 20+ ships I got through the Kickstarter.