Historicals: Oak & Iron – Interview with the Rules Designer
Oak & Iron continues to sail incredibly well on Kickstarter. This week, I had the pleasure to discuss through email the new Oak & Iron Kickstarter with Mike Tunez of Firelock Games. This article is a post of that Interview.
For those not yet familiar with Oak & Iron, it is a naval combat game set in the age of pirates. Firelock Games set the scale of these miniatures to 1/600, and it looks very exciting. During this interview, I learned even more about what to expect when the game comes out. I hope you enjoy this interview too.
All pictures in this post are from Firelock Games and used with their permission.
The ships in Oak & Iron look stunning. Firelock Games does great miniatures – for sure!
The Interview – Part One
Below I posted the email interview between myself (Jacob Stauttener) and Mike Tunez. Mike designed the rules of the games Oak & Iron and Blood & Plunder. Most of the content is straight out of the email, but I added pictures and section titles to break up the content a bit for better readability.
The Game Itself
What gave you the idea to start Oak & Iron?
This is a type of game I’ve always wanted to get into. Similar to Blood and Plunder, I realized there was a desire for squadron/fleet level set of rules and nothing out there was really scratching the itch for myself and lots of other people I have talked to so I decided to give it a go!
Why 1/600 scale for the miniatures?
A few reasons. Most prominently, it works well for smaller ships such as sloops and brigantines and adds a lot of presence and perspective to the massive size of the ships on the line especially. It’s also a good size to capture lots of detail for painting without having to exaggerate details too while also not being too big so that moving a large group of ships around wouldn’t take too much space.
Oak & Iron in Play. Looks great. In MCM’s last preview article, I actually linked to a video of the game in play.
How many points is a “standard” game, and what size of table do you play on?
A standard squadron level engagement is about 100 points and will usually include comprise of 4-6 ships per side and is played on at least a 3’x3’ surface. At fleet level, 450 points is probably pretty standard and will average around 10-14 ships per side on at least a 6’x3’ table.
How many points are in the core boxed set?
You can get a 100 point squadron out of all of the ships in the box.
Wrapping it up…
Hopefully you enjoyed this part one of our four part Interview series about Oak & Iron. Lots of more details are to come out yet too.
To see this interview in its entirety, be sure to visit my personal website (Must Contain Minis). We have information about Oak & Iron as well as a host of other games.
Read more about great Indy and Historical games on my site!
Aside from writing great gaming related articles, I am also working on compiling a list of all Miniature Gaming Conventions in Ontario (Canada). If you are in Ontario, this list should be of interest to you!
