Bigger Ships

Managed to get the three largest ships in the fleet completed this morning (advantage of being woken by the wife who could not sleep):

 

Now the only problem is that I cannot tell which is which (unlike the original three) as I am not a naval historian and cannot make out the markings on the bottom of the base.

Next steps are:

1. Find a set of rules (Wooden Ships and Iron Men seem to pop up a lot)
2. Sort out a mat for the sea
3. Build a few islands (now where did I put that cork)
4. Paint a few more up…
5. Work out how to store them

Partizan Photos

OK I know these are well out of date but I think you may like to see them in any case – I’ve been trying to make my mind up over hex terrain or square and came across two wonderful examples of the Kallistra Hexon hexes with the first two being a mixed scale (28 / 25 / 15mm) fantasy battle based on the Battlelore game (a great fan site is here):

 

Note the interesting use of round bases – I’ve not seen this before.  Sorry to say I do not remember who laid this game on and its not on the Partizan web site.

The second use was a demo game by Kallistra themselves showing the new castle / keep they have produced for their range of figures:

Strange this is that though I loved looking at both these games (and will buy the castle one day) I decided against the hexes for two main reasons:

1. The rivers sit on top of the hexes and are not sunken.  Talking over the process shown on the web here it is very complex and hard to get a flush surface with the rest of the board.
2. The hills and slopes look wrong to my eyes.  I’ve not managed to work out why but they just seem wrong.

I’ll still use hexes for small games (see the cave man exploration game coming to this blog in November) but for SOBH and other skirmishes I’m going to make some standard tiles as tested on the Battlesuit board previously.

Snails vs. Cavemen

Looking for some different opposition to my cavemen I came across a pack of run along snails designed as kids toys that ‘run’ down the window by a very sticky wheel:

With the use of a screwdriver, the base and wheel comes off fine and a quick wash with ink and a touch of black on the eyes these will be ready to base.  I’ll post a completed picture when I have them based.

Ships ahoy

Its been quite a while since I’ve had any personal time and between daughters moving to university, broken legs (not mine I am glad to say) and other personal bits this weekend has been the first time I have been able to clear desk space again.

I did manage to spend some time at Partizan with Derek and collected a few bits to paint with the majority of the money going on some superb 1/4800 naval ships from Tumbling Dice – now though I played with 2mm figures these are really small…

Quality of the castings is fair – a couple of small holes in bases and a fair amount of whisper thin flash in places but the main issue I have is the closeness of some of the sails (esp. the sloop and 3 decks ships) that will almost defeat me painting the cross spars!  Details on the other hand are great – sails have indentations and spars, the hulls have planking and ports but I cannot tell if the captain has a beard or not!

Being a sucker for punishment, I decided to start with the three smallest ships in the fleet so using a black undercoat I painted the sails with GW Bleached Bone and a highlight / dry brush of white:

The hulls and masts / spars are then painted with GW Graveyard Earth  and the whole ship washed with Devlan Mud.  The ratlines where then re-touched in black to correct the errors from the sails.

The small base was painted with Necron Abyss, washed with Dark Angels Green and then brushed with a mix of the Abyss and white to give me a highlight.  If anything this is the weakest part of the painting as I do not know how to paint the sea – I live by a river (the Humber) and it is brown so that did not help.

The three ships only took around an hour to paint (including loading the dishwasher) and I am very pleased with the result (though not the photos as these need the big camera out and more time than I can spare at the moment):

With luck I will get them onto the larger bases tonight and sort out the link to the rules I am going to try.