Trashy Fleets WIP - HSwMS Äran and MNF Charles Martel

 

I try to post regularly these days (usually on Mondays because then I would have time to gather materials durink the weekend), but these past two weeks were our - now seemingly regular - holiday to close off the summer, including a trip to Greece, and a 4 hour delay followed by a return trip through a nasty storm on our way back home.

Anyway, after making some resin galleys (see previous post) I quickly got distracted, and as I've had these two hulls lying around, I decided to do some work on them for my 1/1000 scale Trashy Fleets project.

On the left is the assembled coastal defence ship HSwMS Äran, a utilitarian Swedish Navy vessel. I like these ships a lot, as they pack quite a punch compared to their size. She and the rest of her class would supposedly play a part in an upcoming Zinqaguri-Nordsburian naval conflict set in my imagi-world in the future.

On the right is proof that I sort of managed to master creating tumblehome hulls using balsa wood, the French pre-dreadnought Charles Martel, with its main hull complete and secondary (tertiary?) turrets attached. The four larger turrets are in the making - the two main ones are complete and await attachment, pictured right next to the hull. 

I mainly used balsa wood, plastic rods and spare 1/700 bits (like the secondary battery of a Kongo class for the Äran and main barrels of a USS Arizona for the Charles Martel) to get this far. The turrets on the Charles Martel are rods of magic sculpt kneaded to shape, then sanded, as the fibers in the balsa wood would be just too rough for such intricate work. Just as with my previous pre-dreadnought, I'm going to build bases for these ships as well.

The Armada of Venice

While my main interest is in the Age of Sail, recently my fascination with Renaissance galley warfare increased. Due to changing from larger scales to 1/1200, and other, more economical projects in the foreground, I thought I could scratchbuild some, to complement my Ark Royal ADW ships.

Fortunately I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, so my thought process was to create some masters from balsa, then a bunch of resin copies using magic sculpt. On the image above you can sort of see the evolution of the idea, from left to right.

A Couple More ADW ships

 

I've completed two more Ark Royal 1/1200 scale Anglo-Dutch Wars era ships, and a press mould copy I made of their generic 70-gun model. 

The ships were easy to assemble, paint and rig, the frigate causing some grief as despite the two layers of varnish I managed to rub some of the paint off when applying the standing rigging. Never mind, I corrected that.

The large one is obviously of a lesser quality, but it's only there to add to the numbers. I will most likely expand the project as I really like these models and the period, so I can downgrade the three resin hulls I made as I progress onward.

I'm going to stick with the basing configuration you see on the picture - 60x30 pill bases for ships of the line, 60x30 oval for frigates and smaller rated ships (also indiamen), and 20x45 (I think) for even smaller vessels such as this fluyt. 

Three more ships are varnished as I make more rigging line (which involves running the thread through some glue and hanging it out with a weight on one end to make it straighter and stiffer), and the opposing fleet's hulls are also primed, so the project is well on the way and I expect I can play a few games in the near future.

D6 Naval War: Battle of the White Sea

I've never before celebrated International Naval Wargaming Day. However, after our last move, I've still had the large-ish remainder of my 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt WW1 fleets hidden in my wardrobe, so I thought I could take some of them for an outing.

Scatter

I've had some spare Renedra bases which were of a not very useful size, along with some bits that I thought I could use for scatter terrain in 28mm skirmish games. 

I've got two bases for barricades, made of plastic and homemade resin barrels (some are copied with Blue Stuff); a torn-down wall with a pile of junk covered with a tarp and some bags; and two bases of wooden crates. 

They were done as simply as possible, a basecoat, a wash, some highlights here and there. They will blend in with the terrain nicely I hope.

Steel Fist Knights and some Old Friends

A while back I ordered eight lance-armed knights from Steel Fist - a rather hefty amount of white metal if you ask me! 

I finally got to finish the first unit - the basing is for my own games, in which pikeblocks are on 120x120mm bases and every other troop type on 60x120mm to accommodate the figures well and have enough blank space for mini dioramas.

As the Perrys I finished earlier joined the Imperial side, I chose these to be French men-at-arms, but generally just went with over the top colours and a moderate amount of white armor.

Frostgrave Crewmen Conversions

Mention was made of these fellows before, the North Star plastic figures box for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. With some kitbashing work, the figures work just fine as 17th century unarmored bods, highwaymen, robbers or other rabble characters. They are also good for pirate skirmishes - I experimented a bit with making a planked base and a dirt base for each figure, but it did not really work that well.

Now the figures are a bit stocky and there are large mold lines to remove, but they are at a decent price and can be purchased from within the EU (this box is from Fireforge Games).

Warlord plastic and Bloody Miniatures metal accessories were used to create this first group (the rest will mostly include Arabic/Berber types so less conversion work is required). I included explanations for each figure on the picture below:

Now that I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, I can also make resin copies of various headgear I can use with other figs, mostly big hats and morions from the Warlord figures which are destined to arrive soon.

Empress/Bohemian TYW figures

I purchased a smaller group of figures from Empress Miniatures a little while back: two cuirassiers, four artillerymen and seven foot combatants. The first lot is painted - these are earlier TYW types.

They include a caliverman, a veteran musketeer, four pike and an officer with rotella and sword. They are going to supplement my existing continental TYW forces. 

They scale well with Warlord plastics, less so with Bloody Miniatures, which are about half a head taller on average. But, of course, such height differences occur between real people, so sometimes I don't understand the hassle with trying to make every single figure of a uniform height and body size.

Proud of PE

This is just a short post to let you know I'm working on the Snowman Model 1/700 scale SMS Derfflinger (post-Jutland full hull version), and I think I'm starting to get the gist of properly placing photoetched parts.

Most of the ship is going to be built straight out of the box, but the three bar rails around the bridge are third party, first shaped, then primed and painted, glued in place, and finally touched up a bit.

The fun thing is I'm going to cover all of that in canvas, as per the reference image I posted earlier on this blog, but it's still satisfying to know that all that brass is there.

I'm going to add a few more ladders and staircases once this subassembly is placed on the hull (as some of those connect it to the aft funnel, there is no point in doing them right now).

So no, PE this time does not mean physical education.