My crew is big and it keeps getting bigger

The Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewmen set is kind of useful. The figures work well with swasbuckling adventure type games, and you get a lot of spare parts per sprue in the set you can use to kitbash other things. 

While they are kind of monopose and a bit on the smaller side of 28mm, and also require more prep work than, say, a Perry plastic figure, they are on the other hand easy to paint.

Whatever floats your boat.

This month has mainly been about terrain projects. I might have mentioned that I've got some pirate themed gaming in mind, and for that I needed a longboat at least. (A one-mast ship with four guns is a work in progress.)

It's made out of balsa wood, the outer planks were soaked then bent to shape as with a plank-on-frame model ship. It includes six oar benches and forks, some equipment for longer voyages, and a swivel gun at the bow.

The pair of random Bloody Miniatures figs are just there for scale. 

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.

Pirate Party

Finally, they are here. A band of seven nasty pirates (one for each sea I guess). I have also made stats for them in Flashing Steel.

Six figures are from the Zvezda GNW Swedish artillery box, and one is from their Russian counterparts I found lying around. They were given various weapons and I modified a few poses as well - separate arms are useful for this kind of work.

Wolves of the Sea

A handful of assorted Strelets figures, still from the Tsar Peter I big box, mostly artillery crews, officers and pikemen without pikes.

They will be used for various sea-going actions, but right now I'm stuck with the corvette as I couldn't gather enough courage to continue painting it. 

Continued Pirate Adventures

The ketch, the figures and a large boat are all finished.

Pirate ketch WIP

Put some work to the wee ship between exams. 

Gluing the sides to the base. The base is plasticard with a cardboard deck over it. The sides are also cardboard. Because they are hollowed, I used pieces of PVA-soaked paper to cover the edges.