The first part of the fleet is complete:

A squadron of Monitors, accompanied by a Nautilus, as well as its submerged marker.
A close up of the flags:

The frontmost symbol on the banners of the Monitors is the icon of Barak Varr, the dwarven coastal hold (or at least, as well as I can reproduce it on a 5x5mm area...):

Behind it is the symbol for their position within the squadron, a rune, a hammer and a battleaxe respectively. These are nods to the symbols on the original paper flags that came with the Monitors. The second squadron will have banners with red fields and white symbols.

The Nautilus has a Norse style Raven and a rune to mark it (as the Nautilii are essentially "lone wolves", my plan is to give each one a norse style animal symbol on their banner (one again, as best as I can render it in tiny, tiny format!)

Additionally each vessel has a runic symbol on its hull, in case the banners aren't clearly visible for some reason.


First step taken, on to the next batch!

See you next time.

The tide is high,

...but I'm painting on. ;)

I had some time to paint today, so I decided to tackle the bases for the entire fleet at once. Get that out of the way.

Here they are, now that the wash is drying:

Once the wash is dry, I can do the final two drybrushes, and the bases are done (except for the gloss varnish they'll get after the minis are completely painted, that is).
After that, I'll start dividing the fleet in squadrons and paint each in turn, alternating with wreck markers or individual ships for variety.

See you next time!

Fleet muster

Whoo, the basing is all done!

Here it all is:

Primer and paint to follow when I have time... Which, to be honest, can't be soon enough for me!

See you next time!

Under the sea

And another step closer:

The four Debris markers are based and ready for primer.

It's hard to see in the pictures but in the waves are some small plasticard offcuts to represent various debris as well as some pieces of plastic rod, to be painted as floating barrels. ("All that Bugman's, lost to the sea. This is going in the Book of Grudges!") The green stuff parts are cut up casts of Dwarven ships, the ones that didn't reproduce good enough to be used for the Wreckage and Submerged markers. Waste not, want not and all that... I sculpted the sea between the debris to look foamy and agitated from the air rising from the already submerged parts of the sunk ships.

Getting close to finishing the bases on this fleet, and getting excited to paint them! Sadly, the next couple of weeks are shaping up to busy ones, but I'm hopeful I can steal away the occasional hour here and there to work on these.

See you next time!

Come and sea ;)

Yup, more waves have been sculpted:

This means I now have a game-legal 750 point Dwarf fleet ready for primer and paint.

All that is left to base is 2 Nautilii, 2 Ironclads and 4 Debris markers and the Dwarf fleet is ready to go. I'm actually getting somewhat excited!
I've been thinking about what kind of debris would be left after an all metal ship sinks. Especially a Dwarven one. All I can think of is airtight compartments that have torn away from the main ship, and casks of ale or mead...
Maybe some very light metal. :P I guess I'll just have to go for looks over realism.

See you next time!

I've got a sinking feeling....

More making waves, today on a sunk ship marker and the first pair of Nautilus-submerged marker pairings:

And the other side, showing the escaping ships boat:

Hopefully this will be carrying some VIP to safety...

And the Nautilus, surfaced and submerged:

I'm only doing a few of these per day, as staring at the white putty on white plasticard trying to discern the exact shape of the waves I'm making is putting a bit of strain on the eyes. Especially in the bright weather we're having lately. (Bitching about the weather is a Dutch national pastime... It's either too bright, too cloudy, too wet, too dry, too warm, too cold, too windy, not breezy enough or annoyingly indeterminate weather. The only advantage to Dutch weather: Don't like the weather, wait for an hour and it will be different.)
Once I do the basing on one of the Ironclads and the Dreadnought, I'll have a game-legal 750 point fleet ready for primer. With a second Ironclad and the remaining three Nautilii I can bring it up to the standard fleet size of 1000 points. I still have the Debris markers to make, but these are essentially just floating bits on a textured base, I don't expect any major issues on them.

The wrecked ship marker and the superstructure on the submerged Nautilus are made through the magical interaction between model, Oyumaru thermoform moulding plastic and greenstuff. So far I'm really liking the stuff.

See you next time!

Making Waves

I'm currently sculpting the waves onto the Man O'War Dwarf fleet bases:

It's hard to see (I guess white acrylic paste on white plasticard isn't optimal for photography...), but the bases on the Monitors are all done.Not shown on this picture are the four oval "debris" markers, as I still have to make these. You can also see the final form of the Nautilus "submerged" markers/alternative models behind the metal Nautilii. The plan is to pair each Nautilus to a submerged marker by painting the flags on them the same.

I'm also starting to look at my Empire fleet, but progress on that is hindered by not owning the mandatory squadron of 3 Wolfships. So I'm looking around for a deal on those. (I'm in no hurry, and money is tight, so most of the silly Ebay prices are right out of the question, I'll have to keep looking for a good deal.) I'm in a similar situation for the Dark Elf fleet, which is still short 6 Doom Reavers.

The plan, at this time, is to complete collecting and building each fleet I own (Dwarf, Empire and Dark Elf), as well as custom fleet-specific, Wreckage and Debris markers and any other markers they need.  Besides the fleets, I have some plastic ships from the old Dragon Lords boardgame, that may be used as merchant ships for a convoy style scenario (I just need to figure out rules and ship cards for them.)
And I'll need some terrain ofcourse. I'm still undecided if I'll simply replicate the cardboard terrain from the Man O'War box in 3d, or if I'll build my own designs. Both options have a certain appeal. (And I only have storage room for one of the options!)
I'm also thinking of making some extra counters with sloops and rafts/castaways on them, maybe some drifting wreckage/cargo as well. These don't feature in the Man O'War rules, but could always serve as objective markers for custom scenarios.

See you next time!

Archipelago of Dread

Well, they're done, here they are:

All islands from the Dreadfleet set (the wreck of a Dwarf ship is missing, because I'll paint that alongside the Dwarf fleet itself).

Lonely Island

The first island is done:

I decided not to do the castle in the dark, brooding Dreadfleet colours, as I would be using this for Man O'War as well. So it got nice whitewashed walls and blue-grey slate roofs.  (Sadly the colours on the walls got washed out a bit, causing them to look a bit flat in the pictures.) The massive skulls in the rocks still kind of bug me, but not enough to want to go through the hassle of removing them.
I quite liked painting this particular island. Enough even to maybe consider buying a second one from Ebay or a bits-seller and to make an even more living, breathing castle of it: remove the Skullz from the island, flock the rocks with greenery and add some buildings and fields within the castle walls. Maybe even extend the sealevel parts of the castle into a pier or mooring dock. I like the idea, but at the moment, my money is better spent elsewhere.

I've also been experimenting with some Oyumaru, loaned to me by Johan (Thanks, mate! ) to make some custom 3D Wreck and Debris markers for my Dwarf fleet. But I forgot to take pictures of those... :( 
I'll be using (part of) these to experiment with water sculpting some more. My reasoning for this is that these markers will be on the table for a turn only, so it's not as big a loss if one of them is a little less than ideal.

See you next time!

On the rocks...

Today I finished the rock parts of the Dreadfleet terrain:

I also painted the basing testers/experimental Nautilus submerged markers:

At this point I think I'm preferring the greenstuff water and the cutout marker, but I'm not deciding until I can sleep on it, and maybe get some feedback. I tried to paint in the shadow of the Nautilus in the rectangular marking, but it just isn't showing up clearly.
I do think I have found my water recipe, though. Just needs gloss varnishing.

I am sailing... (a.k.a. "Welp, that was unexpected!")

Well, as I said in an earlier post, I was working on a unit of Pavesiers for my Fantasy/Dungeoneering games. But last week Johan gave me the last missing component for my Man O'War Dwarf fleet. My original intention was to simply strip the paint off, and store it with my Man O'War stash until I could get around to it one day.
The Muse, apparently refreshed from her prolonged absence, thought otherwise...
Before I knew it, I had cleaned and assembled all the Dreadfleet terrain (yeah, I fell for the Man O'War nostalgia buy :/ ) , and was well underway assembling my Dwarf fleet:

The Dreadfleet Dwarf ship snuck into the assembly line as well. Might as well paint all the Dwarves in one go. And he may just be useful as a sorf of superheavy battleship? Missing from this picture is the second squadron of Monitors, and the other two Ironclads. I also have a second set of 3 Nautilii, but these can wait a bit, I fear 6 Nautilii may be a bit overkill...

Speaking of Nautilii, I want to do a bit more for the submerged option than just plonking down a "submerged" counter next to the model. I'd like to build proper submerged models and have been thinking/experimenting on how to best go about it:

From left to right:
    -A. My original idea of making a Natilus profile as a "submerged" marker.
    -B. A based, non-submerged Nautilus.
    -C. My second idea, of making an empty base, to serve as the "submerged" marker.
    -D. A still-unbased Nautilus, for comparison.
My intention is for both option A and C to have the chimney and banner still sticking out of the water. On option A I tried one of the ideas for doing water on the bases:

While I like the effect, I fear that doing all my fleets this way will simply take too much time/greenstuff. I will paint this one up, and try another one with acrylic gel, to see which I like best.

After that, insanity struck...