 |
| Original paint work on left, new paint job on right. |
A few years back I discovered some cheap toy pirate ships for sale, so I bought five of them with the idea of painting them up and using them for gaming. A friend of mine has a rather large lounge with blue carpet and the idea was to use them for a type of naval floor war game. Like a great deal of projects, this one has languished for a number of years before I recently got inspired to relook at pirate stuff after seeing my friend Ken's 15mm collection of pirate stuff.
 |
| Now with Hat Marine for scale. |
Having acquired a couple more ships (more on that later) I have enough ships to put to sea two small fleets. All I need to do is a little prep work - removing stickers and blogging some holes - and then I can paint them and use them.
 |
| Another view of the two ships. |
The paint job will be fairly basic, but hopefully quantity will have a quality of its own! Plus once I finish the fleet I can use it for gaming, rather than have it sit in a box waiting to be used. After all, why have toys if you don't play with them!
 |
| Close up on stern detail. |
Thanks for looking, and I hope you all have an excellent 2014!
Excellent !!
ReplyDeleteI've bought 2 toy-ships like that ! and I was thinking about what to do with them!
Now, I know !
Happy New Year of course !
Thanks Sam! I hope you put them up on your blog when you finish them!
Deletedone !
Deletethat strange because they are exactly the same !
I've removed too the awful figurehead but I've not painted the waves at the bottom of the prow ...
A little bit small for 1/72, but it could work...
Maybe the larger one will be good?
They will work out well Brian! Very impressed. Happy New Year.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rodger! One down, four to go - plus the flag ships!
DeleteAs usual, your eye for war games potential comes up trumps! I like the new colour scheme- Cap'n Horatio Seadogge obviously takes pride in his command, "La Grenouille Frenetique" or is it "Le Lezard Sautant" or some other vessel? - though you could on another vessel keep the black in places. Other ideas are to paint the port lids red or white, or even to paint white or yellow the strakes pierced for gun ports (this would go particularly well on a black vessel).
ReplyDeleteI recall, by the way, that I have a small metal ship's gun that is serving no particular function or purpose among my inventory. Too small for 20-25mm scale, it might serve as a 6pr or even 9pr piece in 15mm., perhaps 'en barbette' as a shore battery gun. It's yours if you're interested.
On the 'Pike and Shotte' front, haven't done a whole lot, but it is clear that for neither army will I be able to get more that 4 pike blocks, even with my vast collection. Unless I went in for the 'small' option. Having looked into the game's conventions, 'large' pike blocks will be out of the question for my armies, I think. However, a 12-stand pike block does fulfil the 'numbers' criterion for a standard pike block (12-25), which will give me 4 in my Swedish (Severia) army (48 figures).
Cheers,
Ion
Thanks Ion!
DeleteI may use some of your ideas when painting the others up. As to the Pike and Shotte stuff, I think we figured out that a base would have 10 pike plus two command figures - hopefully that spreads things a little for you. I have got some good basing card here for you, plus some casualty markers as well. I will drop them round at some stage.
I ought to have been a little clearer: I was already counting command figures - and even then it's a stretch. My Swedes have 36 actual pike (a dozen of those extemporised from musket figures), so I would still have to find 4 from somewhere - further modification, or nick them from the Imperialists.
DeleteWhat I'll probably come up with will be a lot more 'cavalry heavy' than the 'book' examples, but then I'm inclined to think they are a bit 'Cav Lite' anyhow...
Cheers,
Ion