Saturday, December 8, 2012

The Admiralty's Response

Two new British cruisers (small) are added to my British fleet
After the "world turned upsidedown" debacle on the high seas, the British Admiralty has ordered two new cruisers to be constructed to accompany the sister ship of the now sunken "London" to hunt down the Brandenburg and disable or sink her.

 Some pics of the finished cruisers and my attempt to make believable smoke using pins and cotton balls.

 ...And here they are in action in confined waters....made using new hex blocks I just got in the post to enhance my M44 and Battle Cry games from RDOXX Inc. They worked pretty well to make headlands at the mouth of an estuary that the British are attempting to leave while the Brandenburg lurks in the distance.

 It was interesting to see if the large ships could be played on a very small table ("30ish" inches diameter...small and simple is always my goal..)
 Again, these hexes are too small for the scale of the ships, but that will be remedied soon...but still it was an interesting action and the simplicity of the "Memoir of Battle at Sea" Rules made playing it solo easy even with my little ones clamoring for attention.
The hex blocks are exactly scaled to M44-C&C game hexes and are very nicely made and well worth the reasonable price... my hexes are just a bit bigger, hence the gaps.


The Brandenburg barely skirts the headlands to make her escape

This time the battle was a draw with the Brandenburg escaping after heavily damaging a cruiser and the battleship and taking heavy damage herself, so the British commander decided to break off  try again another day.

7 comments:

David Crook said...

Hi Littlejohn,

Magnificent stuff! Shades of a breakout from the River Plate or even the Rufiji Delta. The models look stunning and I can't wait to see if any more German kit is due to appaer.

All the best,

DC

Bluebear Jeff said...

Your cruisers are excellent, sir . . . I look forward to seeing some German cruisers soon . . . and then another capital ship each so that you can have two-ship sections.


-- Jeff

Corporal_Trim said...

Terrific stuff, Littlejohn. I knew you were on to something with these in scratchbuilt form, and with the paint on the models look superb.

Regards,
Steve

Peter Douglas said...

Littlejohn

Wonderful looking stuff. Do the new cruisers have names? They have a resemblance to Blake and Appollo classes. And is it HMS London back from the dead or a sister ship?

Cheers
PD

James said...

These are charming. Very nicely done indeed.
I'm reminded of my own attempts to build ships out of balsa etc. when I was younger.

littlejohn said...

Peter the new cruisers are "Edgar" class...and I'm going to build up some German cruisers next.

RCA said...

very nice...