From RayR: 1/1200 Ark Royal Advice Yachts [Maritime] (40 points)

 

Last year, the Rejects joined Barry Hilton of the League of Augsburg fame, at the Rapture Show at Chatham Dockyard to refight the Dutch "Attack up the Medway" in 1666, using Barry's very own Mad for War rules, we all bought some ships, which I had been painting up prior to the Challenge. It was pretty apt to see the Maritime bonus round, so I quickly painted up two ships!

Maritime: Something wet and offshore

The ships are from Barry's Ark Royal Miniatures for the Anglo-Dutch Wars and can be found here. on the League of Augsberg website.

The other Rejects, Lee, Rich and Steve have chosen to use a water effect paste as the sea, but me and Postie are going rogue with the old method of polyfilla and paint.

The figures are Advice yachts on the left we have a Dutch ship and on the right their foe, the English.

The Yachts would usually carry messages or perhaps the Admiral of the fleet!

Ark Royal Miniatures are 1/200th scale, so are rather dinky, so I thought I'd have a Warlord paintpot added for scale. as for the points, I used this green wash mixed randomly with a blue was to try and get a decent sea colour, not too blue, not too green but a bit of both.

 Reject Lee Hadley posted up his Blue squadron of English earlier in the Challenge and was awarded 15 points each, although most of his ships were bigger ships??

So its a definite 20 points for the bonus round, but I'll let Teemu decided my fate on the points per ship.

TeemuL: Good looking ships, Ray, and a fine selection for Maritime. And this time you didn't just buy some random minis hoping to use them for the Challenge, but they are actual gaming pieces, too! I'm not expert on naval games, but I like how you have painted these, especially the sails. Looks very real and I thought they are bigger than they apparently are. I scored them as 10 points a piece, less than Lee got, but still quite a lot. You need couple of more stops before going for the final topic, but of course there are quite a lot of bonus points still available.

From LeeH: English 17th Century Warships (Library: Maritime) (80+20 bonus Points)

Sea spray and salt air mix with the smell of black powder as these 17th-century warships try to chase down their enemies in the Anglo-Dutch War. These 1/1200th scale models are by Ark Royal Miniatures and are based for use with the Mad for War rules, written by Barry Hilton (of League of Augsburg  fame)

My group, Posties Rejects had the great honour of refighting the Dutch Raid on Chatham using these rules, inside the target of the attack, Chatham Dockyard. We had two days of intense fighting as we recreated the battle and at the end, we all had such a good time we bought copies of the rulebook and a load of ships. I’ve already completed three of the ships from my British Squadron, these four are the remainder.

When we started these models we all agreed not to bother with the rigging…and then one person relented and now we all have to follow! I’ve used plastic bristles from a scrubbing brush for the main lines which were fixed with a mixture of superglue and intense, creative swearing!

So how to score these? Well, I should start by saying that only half of these count towards the Painting Challenge. The four smaller ships in the back row were painted a few months ago but hadn't been based or rigged because I wanted to do those stages on all the ships at the same time. So while I have done all the basing and rigging on all eight vessels, only the front four were painted during the Challenge and count towards my target. So what points for the four that do count? One of the advantages of the challenge blog covering so many years' worth of entries is that there is nearly always a precedent from a previous entry. There aren’t many 1/1200th scale ship entries to choose from, but Curt has awarded 15 points per ship before, so I’ll put that down and leave the final decision to the umpire. Plus I'll sneakily claim the Maritime bonus from the Challenge Library which should bring my total for this entry up to 80 points. 

4x1/1200 Scale Warships = 60 Points + Maritime Bonus 20 Points = 80 Points total

Lovely work here LeeH on these boats. Not just for the painting, but at the scale, and the rigging/basing aspects for it as well. Always amazing to see this, and I think the points are very well justified for it all. 

I added an extra 20 points, 5 pts per half finished boat, for getting the rigging/basing done on them alongside all of these. 

Only real comment to add is more for the posts.. if you can add your Library progress photo alongside the post that will help to see how far you have come and which sections you have finished so far in the challenge. Another accomplishment within the challenge itself. 

Great job, and 100 pts for you Jez

Kyle

From PeterD Anglo Dutch Wars For Reidy's Reef (36 points)

Ok continuing with my run the table approach, I've got some Anglo Dutch Wars ships for Reidy's Reef.  Ships are 1/2400 scale from Tumbling Dice and there are two complete a British 4th and 5th rate.  No flags or name labels yet as I'm still playing around with Word to get these straight.

This project represents basically a swing and a mss for me, but I'll get it back on track come spring.  The Anglo Dutch Wars was to be my big project at the start of the challenge. However I got sidetracked...The ships are nicely cast but fiddly to assemble and it took multiple tries at getting the sails on each mast to get it right.  Meanwhile the Tumbling Dice War of the Pacific ships went together much quicker and so I got dug in finishing them off.  There are reasons - the 17th century rigging is more complex and the 19th century ships had slightly better connections.  Mostly though, I just didn't git her done.

If you want inspriration on doing this period have a look over at Barry Hilton's league of Augsburg blog.  he's been running a series of games using these ships and had a few of us act as admirals from away.  My squadron's had two actions, the first of which can be seen here with me as De Ruyter - I was pretty happy with the result and the games look amazing!

I am ok with my results so far, they are too dark, I need to add some brightwork and bling and they definitely need flags and labels.  I am reasonably happy with the se, again I tried for a green tinge to match the classic Dutch marine art of the period.

So at the end of the day I got my 4 yachts painted in the first days of the challenge, these two ships mid-challenge as a test run and then struggled along with the rest of the fleet.  I put a big push on this week, but decided not to rush it and slow down and make sure that I was happy with the results on the rest of them.

Points left on the workbench so that I can get them right.

This are ships for 30 points Reef bonus, and a brand new project started during the challenge for (unspecified) bones points.  Plus the 3 points each for the two ships.

I really should have done a Sandy Cheeks Aquatic squirrel challenge here - this is my fourth naval project this challenge including three scales, four wars and 3 different centuries.

As all three of his (currently) remaining posts are "ready" I'm going to post them as quick-fire as I can.

Nice ships Peter! Two more posts to go...

TamsinP

From PeterD Yacht Race in Douglas' Shallows - 42 Points

I have a variety of naval projects on the go, and this is the first post from a new 1/2400 Anglo-Dutch Wars project.  I have 4 yachts which I am entering in my own Challenge Location Douglas' Shallows under the theme "Messing About in Boats".

These are 4 yachts from the Tumbling Dice 1/2400 Anglo-Dutch Wars range.  I have a couple of squadrons of these ships which I am aiming to complete over the challenge.  So far I have been very happy with the quality of these castings.

Leading the race we have two English Royal Yachts the Katherine and Henrietta skippered by two gentlemen who knew a lot about boars, and a lot about messing about too!.  Charles II and his brother James (Duke of York and Lord High Admiral at this point) were keen and skilled yachtsmen and Charles commissioned a series of yachts.  Charles yachts were used for pleasure and actively sailed and raced by the Stuart bros.  They were also armed and used as scouts and dispatch vessels in wartime and took Admiralty officials to inspect the port of Tangier.

I’ve selected two that served in the Second Dutch War as that’s my chosen niche in time.
By the third war Charles had two yachts some named for his mistresses (Cleveland and Portsmouth) one named for his mistress's anatomy (Fubbs being Restoration English for pleasantly plump) and one named Kitchen to provide victuals while cruising.

A Van de Velde painting of Charles arriving by yacht to inspect the fleet in 1672.

His Majesty’s yacht Katherine launched 1660, captured by the Dutch 1673.  Returned to the English but not  as part of the Royal Navy.  Armed with 8 guns.  49 feet long on the keel.

His majesty’s yacht Henrietta launched 1663 and sunk at the Battle of the Texel  in 1673.  52 feet long on the keel and armed with 8 guns.

On the Dutch side we the Windhund and Schiedam, both of which were attached to De Ruyter’s fleet for the Four Days Battle of 1666.  No royal connections here, but another good story.  The maritime artist Willem Van de Velde (sr) was given a galjoot and accompanied De Ruyter in battle.  He sketched from the decks of his small craft in the heat of battle, like an earlier Robert Capa  on  Omaha Beach.  His sketches are used to reconstruct battles given the inconsistencies in memories.  

The two dutch galjoots.  Not being royal yachts there is not a lot available on these vessels.

Two of Charles first yachts were gifts from the Dutch and design of these influenced later royal yachts.  The basic design had a single mast with square topsail and fore and aft sails elsewhere.  There would be leeboards instead of a keel.  I have seen similar craft used as pleasure boats sailing with my dad in the UK and French waters.

A Van de Velde sketch from the first day of the Four Days Battle.  I was tempted to use an umber wash over cream bases on my ships to replicate the two tone effect  in these wonderful works.

Detail of another sketch from the same action showing Van de Velde  on his galjoot.

As these were the first models for a new project I did some experimenting.  I wanted to replicate the greenish hue that Dutch maritime artists give the water in almost every oil painting.  It took several layers, but I am reasonably happy with my results.  I also wanted to use mdf bases ( these ones are 30mm square from Sarissa), but wanted to use the moulded bases supplied b6 Tumbling Dice on top of these.  This means using acrylic gel to bulk up my paint to smooth over the rough base edges, and it looks ok on these ships but I think that I’ve left myself room for improvement 

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Canadian loonie and UK pound to show the size of these ships.

Points wise there’s 30 points for Douglas’ Shallows but I’ll leave the ships to the Snowlord to tot up.  1/2400 ships are typically scored 3 points a pop but these are very small. I’ll also point out that each of the four yachts has a flag added which I whipped up in photoshop.  

From DaveD
Ah lets sail into the new year with Peters little boats! Oh my they are small alright , but wonderfully done. I will go with 3 points a piece