Inspired

 This week has been very productive here at the Lead gardens both because I am approaching the end of the teaching term and have a bit more time and because of the trip my wife and oldest son took to New York this past few days has given me the run of the house with my youngest daughter who is pretty easy to take care of. I managed to get some pre-dreadnoughts built and painted and had a few fun games to get me into the "holiday mood".  This afternoon I made good progress on painting up the Union figures for my Battle Cry game. Late today I was ruminating on the "Memoir of War at Sea" rules and had an, "oh wait, I have something that will work for this!" moment. So I went out to the garage (where my "gaming stuff" is stored) and I unearthed a box of 1/600 sailing ships that I had built more than 20 years ago when I was first living on my own after my first marriage went kaput. In those few months I spent in a sparse apartment without much in the way of furniture, and lots of time on my hands, I bought a bunch of Airfix 1/600 "Victory" and Heller 1/500 "Le Superb" plastic kits and set to building converting and scratchbuilding a small French and British fleet of sailing ships.

The original 1/600 Airfix kit

 I really got into it and the results were very satisfying even if I had no really good rules to use for solo gaming in the period.

This is the Heller 1/500 Le Superb unfortunately I think out of production, and I've got only four unbuilt kits left. The Victory is still available.

 I learned a lot about scratchbuilding back then and I still have a few kits left unbuilt. The scale is great for small actions.

 So I'm thinking a variant of the variant "Memoir of Battle at Sea: Age of Sail" is in order...and this afternoon I sat down with pencil and paper to do just that. As soon as I get a draft up I will post it and see what my readers think.

Some of the smaller ships were entirely scratchbuilt...and unfortunately are in need of some repair

 The scale of 1/600 is really beautiful for sailing ships and a good size if you want to do some basic rigging. The scale works also because ratlines can be simulated with a triangle of window screen cut to the proper size.

A big French three decker...the 120 gun "Orient"

 I tried to model each of these after a real ship and for this rule variant I thought a nice goal would be to make a simple game that still was able to account for different ship armaments. I've got some simple formulas cooked up based on the broadside weight to rate the ships for number of battle dice to roll and and the tonnage to give a damage value. Next I'm cooking up some sailing rules that will hopefully keep everything really simple  and in the spirit of Bob's variant on the M44 rules approach.

Some of the smaller ships are pretty damaged but I think in time I can bring them back to full glory! This is the British 44 gun frigate "Sprite"

The whole collection.

I'm pretty excited about this new direction, but of course, as always, the specter of being spread over too many projects looms on the horizon...but what the hell, I never let that stop me before!

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.

Encounter on the High Seas

HMS London and SMS Brandenburg closing range.

 The newspapers are unclear as to why this incident occurred, but word from the admiralty has it that German ambitions in East Africa were in need of a stout pounding!

An early critical hit slows the Brandenburg but she still packs a dangerous punch

 I managed to get my first two pre dreadnoughts at this larger scale  painted up in late Victorian livery, and decided to give them a go with a single ship to ship action set up the hex board I made a week ago out of the back of a Christmas tree mat. The hexes are M44 sized and I plan to get/make a larger hex mat with 5" hexes soon but until then, I just assumed the ships were located in the bow hex and it all worked out pretty well.

The London changes course to close range and sustains a hit in her forward turret.

The "iron dice" are rolling hot for Brandenburg's gun crews and the London begins to take significant damage as the range closes.

at 4.000 yards both ships run parallel courses and trade pounding broadsides.

Both ships are approaching their "break off" point with the London taking another hit on her guns.

Final turn of the game finds the London battling a fire and attempting to escape, but the Brandenburg gets in a final broadside that completely disables the London and she starts to list and the captain reluctantly orders "abandon ship!"

"Londoners were shocked at the news in the morning papers..."-

I'm really enjoying Bob Cordery's "Memoir of Battle at Sea"...and the great potential for adding "chrome" to the basic rules. The ships painted up pretty well and look the part so I started a couple of British cruisers to beef up a retaliatory strike on those overly ambitious Germans!

And finally to the stout fellows who graciously honored me with a Liebster Award for my blog please know that it was really appreciated and I'm working on posting my favorite 10 blogs that I think are tops...(I know, not the exact rules of the game...but I follow and enjoy 160 blogs on a regular basis and I thought that it would be good to honor the top ten...maybe I'll do a "Lead Gardens Top Way Beyond Cool Gaming Bogs Award" ...suffice to say I'm compiling that list right this minute and hopefully will be my holiday "shout-out" to all my favorites who give me so much pleasure and inspiration...Thanks Everyone!

Getting the Steam Up: Part 2 Predreadnoughts

Rescaled plan of the HMS London...the original scan from Janes Fighting Ships 1905-6 is on the upper left, the rescaled version is on the right.

 Much-inspired by some great links sent to me after my recent post on some homemade pre-dreadnoughts I have moved into a "Homemade pre-dreadnoughts Mark II" phase. In particular, I am enjoying the look of the really cool pre-dreadnoughts on the "Old Admirals" blog, and Bob Cordery's stylized wooden predreadnoughts. I decided my small scale pre-dreads were a bit too small and I was taken with the idea that the ships could be larger and carry a bit more detail while remaining entirely scratchbuilt from inexpensive materials and, most importantly, quickly built.

SMS Brandenburg

 My approach was to take original scans from a copy of Janes Fighting Ships 1905-6 that I recently got on ebay (for a really great price) and manipulate the scanned image to give me a new template on which to base the hull shape. I wanted a more abstract look to the models, and just a bit stylized so I settled on a 1.5 inch width by about a 5 inch length to make my battleships. This size would work with 4" or 5" hexes and give me the look and the size that would allow some more complex detailing on the models. Most importantly I could use round toothpicks and readily available wood shapes for turrets and gun barrels and everything would still look believable to the eye. So the scanned image was resized in Adobe "InDesign" to get the shape that I was looking for...so shorter length and wider beam was the watchword.

HMS London

 The result is pretty satisfying, even if they are not true scale models, they are fairly faithful to the general look of the historical ship (which is what my earlier efforts had missing). They have a nice heft and plenty of room for deck details.

HMS London in it's raw state...still working on the masts.

 I used balsa for the main hull and wood toothpicks for the gun barrels. Some plastic tube and metal pins make up the rest...all really cheap available materials.

SMS Brandenburg..the models are very raw at this point...sanding and priming will hopefully take care of the imperfections.

First coat of acrylic gesso to seal and give a good primer coat to cover imperfections in the balsa hull

the London and the Brandenburg...a first pass at a new fleet of pre-dreadnoughts

Finally a few pics from the internet to make the visual comparisons easier...

SMS Brandenburg during the late 1800s...she was refitted in WWI so some of the barbettes were no longer visible in later pics. She was part of the German fleet during the Boxer Rebellion

The "business end" of the Brandenburg

 
I'm finding the wealth of info on the web to be a scratchbuilders dream...that spherical turret on the Brandenburg is way-cool and not just a little "steampunk" as well!

Finally Got Up the Steam

 One of those long untended areas here at the Lead Gardens is my project to paint up the plastic figures of my Battle Cry game. But I recently got re-energized by an ebay purchase of a second copy of the original Hasbro/AH game and doubled my figure count and opened up the possibility of doing more ambitious battles like Gettysburg in a more "grand manner".

 I finished the first set of Rebs last night and was pretty happy with the result. Though they are still a bit too shiny in these pics...I think another coat of flat spray will do the trick.

 

 I also think I managed to find the ideal solution to the plastic figure painting problem. I did the usual soap wash and then followed with an undercoat of black acrylic gesso mixed with "Weldbond" PVA glue. Weldbond is very tough and flexible and dries very tight to the surface and I think enhances the already great adhesion of just straight acrylic.

 I followed with a classic triad of base block colors, plus ink wash (I use "Didi's Magic Ink" from "The Warstore"), followed by a light drybrush of white. I coated the figures with Krylon triple thick gloss which gives the figures a very durable top coat. I then made a pass with Krylon Matte spray to get the shine to "flatten", but with only some success in getting to a satin finish. I'm going to try again tomorrow but I think the figures are at least a bit better than unpainted.

 You can see in the pics that I have to go over the bases again because pulling them off the paint sticks peeled the paint around the edges of the bases but that should be easy to fix.

 I think in general these guys came out too dark so in the next set I'm going to try to lighten the colors so when the wash is applied it should not darken things too much.

 I also replaced the game flags with paper flags downloaded from the various free flag sites.

Ultimately I want to be able to throw these fellows back in the box and not loose any paint to chipping...so we will see...
...But, I may eventually base these guys up and go to marking hits on a stand instead of the individual figures.