For a few years I've fancied having a crack at WW2 naval but have been put off with experiences with modern naval using Harpoon twenty odd years back and the prospective "joy" of painting lots of grey models. A couple of years back I picked up a copy of Mongoose's Victory at Sea on eBay and a pile of Axis & Allies ships. They may not be brilliant, but they are painted (after a fashion).
These have (unsurprisingly) sat in a drawer for the last two years until I noticed Mongoose were planning a second edition of the rules and releasing a set of 1/1800th miniatures (the same size as Axis & Allies I believe). This piqued my interest until I saw the price (gulp!) but with my enthusiasm raised I then decided to revisit what could be done with the pre-painted plastics.
Of course I need to decide on a theatre of war and whilst I stocked up on piles of 1/700th planes many moons ago the Pacific is not very inspiring (despite reading an excellent book on it), as I want my ships to shoot at each other not just launch waves of planes.
A big of research and the Mediterranean seems the place to go...
Of course checking the pile of plastics and whilst I have a nice batch of British I only have one squadron of Italian destroyers (for some reason I have a lot of Germans, I think I was looking at doing a hypothetical Battle of the Atlantic). However it all seems jolly interesting and I have spent most of two episodes of The Forsyte Saga researching the Italian Navy, what it did in the Med and what models Axis & Allies have for them (quite a lot it seems).
All quite tempting, I think I need to find a good book on the subject...
