Teeny Tiny Pirates

I had sworn that I was done with rigging tiny ships, but being gifted a pair of 1/700th Warlord Games Black Seas Brigs by Andy (a covermount giveaway on one of the wargamesd mags a few years ago) unfortunately meant the glue, tweezers and swearing all made a quick reappearance as I conjured these two little ships up into a pair of Pirate brigs.

Other than the rather obvious "Pirates are COOL!" malarkey, flagging these with the Jolly Roger does open up trying a couple of the scenarios from the Black Seas rulebook - and with my French and British fleets now stretching up to 1st Raters, the 6 brigs I already have flagged as French and British are more than enough anyway.

 

Being covermounts these were missing the sails, which come pre-printed on thin card in an actual Warlord set. 

 

Luckily Warlord provide a downloadable set of sails for Brigs and Frigates to print out at home. 

Matching up the front and back on my printer proved rather more tricky than I hoped it would be, so in the end I just printed them on two sheets of paper and glued them together - which gave the sails more robustness anyway compared to a single sheet of paper.  

The other thing "missing" would be ratlines, which Warlord provide as black-printed acetate sheets. These ones feature the more expensive and sophisticated laser etched metal ones which I ended up buying from Ali Express in China as a bit of an experiment in seeing how long delivery would take - which was not that long at all.  

I think they do look good, but whether the extra faff is worth the squeeze I'm not sure - maybe next time I might buy some sails and ratlines from Warlord anyway for a few quid?  

On what are gaming pieces after all, I doubt anyone will notice the difference, and the Warlord acetate sheets are far easier to cut out and stick on than the super-fine laser-etched ones on these little guys. 

The Big Little Ships

 Having sworn blind that I'd not get suckered into buying any more ships for Warlord Games Black Seas game (after all, as long as you have a handful of ships for each side, does it really matter how big they are?), I of course cracked recently after seeing a good deal on eBay for two of the biggest ships in the roster, some 1st Rates.

The pair I got were a French and British "Generic" 1st Rate - it seems if you buy a "named" ship (ie Nelson's Victory etc) then it costs another tenner or more than a generic 1st Rater, and frankly neither me nor any of the people I occasionally play this fairly beer-and-pretzels game with would know the difference anyway. 

So, here's one of the two beasties in pre-priming mode:

Unlike all of the others I have, this is a resin hull with metal masts - which does cause a bit of concern about whether they will be more bendy than the plastic ones in the other smaller ships.

Speaking of which, here are all 4 of the sizes of ships I now own - left to right is 1st Rate, 3rd Rate, Frigate and then Brig.  Anyways..

And here is a ship painted up on it's own before rigging. I did the colours much the same as the previous ones I have made, so the key colour here is GW Contrast Yanden Yellow, which gives that great golden hue to the hull. 

And here is the finished (British) article in all its glory.

Given these were such big ships - and also due to my concerns over metal masts possibly bending - I did add some "extra" rigging to this one too - to make it look more busy, and to actually try and use rigging to hold the masts in place (which is what I think it was used for in real life too - which is reassuring if true).

This rather disturbingly annotated picture shows the main extra bits of rigging. Essentially I added two more sets of double-rigging going forwards from the top of the Main and Mizzen masts to the holes in the sides of the ship which the Warlord guide suggests are used for rigging going up to the rear of the Main and Fore masts. 

This sort of anchors the 2 big masts at the back with cotton rigging both fore and aft, which should surely be more secure?

I also found this great guide on JJ's Wargames Blog from back in 2019 which gave me a guide to adding a sort of spiders web of rigging at the back of the ship, which also anchors the Mizzen mast to the horizontal bits that stick out at the rear - so again its structurally beneficial as well as deeply psychologically traumatic and borderline insane to add this stuff to the basic Warlord Gide rigging arrangement. 

Frankly having even as many of these things as I do own is ridiculous given how infrequently we play, but they are just so cool I am sure I will end up succumbing and buying some more .. maybe if eBay throws up some bargains ! 

  

Here's all my Blogger Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 
• A whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Ships in the, erm, winter..

 I finally cracked, caved in, conceded defeat and bought some more ships from Warlord Games for Black Seas ..

Yes, having said for almost 2 years that this was a beer and pretzels game, and that having more, bigger ships would not add  anything to the experience... well, of course, that was all lies anyway. 

So, here are a couple of 3rd Raters - one done as British, one as French. I do also have the third that comes in the set but haven't rigged it yet. 

The painting style and technique was exactly as the previous sets , as was the swearing while doing the rigging

And, just to prove they are different to the Brig and Frigates I already have, here are all three, ready for Goldilocks to steal their porridge !

Here's all my Blogger Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 
• A whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Black Seas - Rigging Hell!

 OK, maybe it's not all that bad, but the pun needed using anyway so ... I now have a handful of fully-completed ships for Warlord Games Black Seas game, and they are so spiffing that I've popped a load of them in the lightbox and taken some snaps, some of which are previewed here.

There is a whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well on the main website  

If you want to see more there is a whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Ship Ahoy! 

Here's all my Blogger Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 
• A whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Last week I started doing a little ship ..

 ..and being very, very careful with my typing as well.

Yes, the Black Seas starter set that arrived the Christmas before last (I hope it wasn't before that!) has finally started, with a test build and paint of a Brig.

First impressions are that it's very easy to make (so far..), very light, and is actually TINY! 

I'd been toying with various ideas involving buying foam storage and 9L RUB boxes, but honestly I'm not sure this will merit such investment and space as I can't see even a box full of a few of them justifying the excess foam. Instead I've put a layer of Magnabase on the bottom of the hull so they can be kept on a ferrous surface, as I can't see them shaking off anytime soon.

This model was sprayed white as part of a mass-undercoat session last week, and then done in Contrast Paints, which I thought might do a good job of picking out the woodwork details. 

The paints used were Nazdreg Yellow on the deck, Skeleton Horde on the hull and (I think) Gore-Grunta Fur on the mast. 

With the benefit of hindsight I'll probably swap the Skeleton Horde and Nazdreg Yellow over and do the ships sidewalls with the yellow colour. 

There is no "right" way to do these, but a few skulks around the internet seemed to suggest painting some of the spars black - and it does make the model pop a little more than leaving them natural (or unnatrural given the paint used) wood.

This is where it's ended up - very quick and easy. 

Next up, making more of them... and then ... Rigging! 

Here's all my Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 

Cruel Seas?

 In another strange diversion from the armies I'm really supposed to be painting, this week a pair of 'Free with Miniature Wargames" (or the other one?) sprues of Warlord Games Cruel Seas ships have elbowed their way onto the painting table. 

The actual reason is probably because I did some grey undercoat spraying of 10mm WW2 tanks last week, and it gave me a chance to quickly make up and spray these two as well - but either way, for a very simple paint job I'm reasonably happy with how they have turned out. 

The long thin ones are German S-Boats, and the others are American PT boats. I ducked the opportunity to try some dazzle cammo on them both as I'm currently wrestling with some WW2 German cammo and that's proving hard enough already!

This week has also seen the return of the Lockdown Podcasts, so if you are missing hearing 7 wargamers chat about stuff they've bought and painted recently make sure to download or stream the latest episode, which also features our first ever in-depth discussion about Yorkshire Puddings.