Over the last couple of months I have much enjoyed painting my first Age of Sail miniatures. To be honest, they are the most enjoyable minaitures I have painted in quite some time. Over the last couple of years, my focus has been on gaming and terrain and much less so painting, which in most cases I have been happy to hand off to the professionals.
These miniatures, however, are a lot of fun and once assembled look great on the table. I have also played a couple of games of Black Seas and that has been fun as well. To prepare for a game tomorrow night, I decided to paint up and assemble (the assembly is the more challenging part of the process) some more ships for my Spanish fleet.
1st Rate (yet to be christened)
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| Lots of guns |
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| This is a resin and metal model, I have heard some complaints about the metal masts and they are a bit more of a challenge with the rigging but I think it came out OK. |
3rd Rate (the Montañes)
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| An all plastic model |
Gunship Squadron
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| Single Medium Cannon in front. |
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| I did these in Salem, but my mat was in Montreal so I will have to darken up the base a bit. |
Not 100% sure on how to score these but my friend Adam in his recent submission developed a scheme so I will follow that. It seems a Gunboat Squadron is 12 points, a Brig is 10 points (I would have thought this would have been a bit more as it certainly takes more time to paint, rig and apply sails to a brig than paint the gunboats), a 5th Rate was 18 points, so I think + 8 more for a 3rd Rate which is quite a bit bigger that the frigate as you can see below (24 points) and finally +4 points for the 1st Rate, which is only marginally bigger than a 3rd Rate (28 points) is reasonable. So I am hoping 68 points is a correct amount, but I will of course leave the final determination to the experts.
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| My Spanish fleet |
These look really great and look good in full sail. The point scheme is sensible, never disagree with Adam on ships but it would be nice to have something for scale as I have no clue how big a ship is (somewhere between 1" and a 1' at this scale. I'll add a couple for the flags as I did with Adam but your maths is shocking - or mine is but I get that to be 92 + 2 for the flags = 94
Wow John, fine work, way to go. I run screaming from Age of Sail modelling and painting projects, and have great respect for those who can pull them off. Well done sir!
ReplyDeleteNow Greg when I look at all those beautiful figures you have done for 30k, I would think you would find these a piece of cake!
DeleteNice ships John :)
ReplyDeletethanks tamsin
DeleteI thinking your maths maybe off but probably because you are counting too many ships. I believe it is 12 points for squadron (which comprises 3 ships)and then 24 and 28 points for the 3rd and 1st rates. I make it 12+24+28+2=66. The 6 ships in the background were done before the challenge.
ReplyDeleteOutstanding work John those Spanish colors realy look sharp
ReplyDeletei think the trip with the colours is once they are applied, repaint them.
Deleteright, cheers. I'll correct.
DeleteI agree John you need to do a couple of coats.
DeleteVery nice looking flotilla
ReplyDeletethank you
DeleteJohn - really great ships. I very much like your whole fleet. I agree with everything you say about the Black Seas models, though it does take a massive amount of time to do all that rigging so we deserve all the points we can get. (And, I agree, too, that the game is great fun - but I have to confess to bias - you'll find my name in the rulebook credits.)
ReplyDeletegood on you noel, it is a lot of fun to play;and no question, it is 2-3 hours just to rig the ship!
DeleteGreat looking fleet.
ReplyDeletethanks stuart
DeleteLovely! I think my eyes would be popping out of my head if i had to paint something of such a small scale nowadays.
ReplyDeleteBravo!
Lovely work on these ships John.
ReplyDeleteGreat looking ships! There seems to be a lot of them this challenge!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
These are stunning, John. Well done!
ReplyDeleteVery nice stuff! If AHPC IX was Cruel Seas, X is Black Seas!
ReplyDelete