Apr 29, 2021

...And Justice for All


The title is not extremely correct, as these are the six Republique/Liberté-class French pre-dreadnought battleships, accidentally including one that is named Justice, but suits the theme well.

I've used up my last bit of 2mm balsa, so the hull of the ships is made from corrugated cardboard, and covered in paper. The upper half where the superstructure sits is a piece of 1mm balsa. Cardboard is a rather difficult material to sand, so the ships are a bit over-sized, especially at their beam, but this is actually somewhat beneficial: they look like stocky little things, just like they supposed to.

Construction was otherwise problem-free: lately I prefer to show my ships in a state of battle readiness, deck clutter, including boats removed, which eases the building process. 

Once I finished the German battlecruisers, I felt that although in true WW1 terms the Kaiserliche Marine does not really overwhelm the Entente fleets, in my imaginary world there is a huge advantage to the Jackewlinese - Frieglander axis. This is mainly because I made Jackewline proprietor of both the Royal and US Navy ships. It is only reasonable that without proper allies on the continent, Jackewline attempts to out-build her enemies, the Island Kingdoms (IJN) and Veuden (Imperial Russian Navy). 

The tables are turning on the Frieglander side of things though, as they have 'built' all four large battleship classes sans the Bayerns now, which means 17 ships at full fighting capacity, plus the very capable armoured cruiser Blücher and seven battlecruisers. Facing them, the Cartelucian fleet (Italy) counts five dreadnoughts, the Quisobians (Spain and South American countries) another six, four of which are the Espana-class ships of dubious quality, and the Crontaineville fleet (France) can only put five Danton-class pre-dreadnoughts to sea, sixteen ships in total. This should be somewhat remedied by the pre-dreadnought spam which these six ships here are only a forebear of.

Looking for suitable materials to replace balsa, I came across a piece of dense corkboard, and now I'm using it to build the Minas Geraes-class and a pair of Dante Alighieris (I know, there has been only one, but this is why playing with imagi-nations is sometimes better than the real world), to have at least a semblance of fair play between Friegland and her enemies. They should either be followed by the Edgar Quinets or the Italian armored cruisers (Pisa and San Giorgo-classes).

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