From SidneyR: On a Winter Shore : Adventurers' Landing (29 points)

 

Hopefully you'll not need to adjust the settings on your screen, dear Challengers, to see my next submisison for the "Adventurers' Landing".  These are 1/4800th scale Napoleonic Naval ships, being a frigate and three unrated vessels, together with the hex terrain for a snowy, ice-bound coastline.

Hold on.  What's that, Sidney? 1/4800th Napoloenic Naval, did you say?  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the very same - ships which would neatly fit onto the surface of a coin (see below), and which could be used to fight Trafalgar on your coffee table.

So, what on earth is going on here?  Last year (which seems an age ago), in 2020, I wanted to create a set of hex tiles for a 17th Century version of the old Games Workshop game, "Mighty Empires".  I blogged about that project HERE and since last autumn I've been adding more scratch-built hex tiles to my collection.

I thought a set of small ships, moving along the winter coast seeking a suitable place to make landfall, would be a good candidate for the "Adventurers' Landing" chamber in Challenge XI.  I already have a couple of port hexes, but I wanted the ships to depict locations on the campaign 'map' where a naval landing, or a 'descent' on the coastline, was being made.

"Wait Sidney.... are those....ice floes?  Off the coast of Flanders?"  

Correct - here's part of an account of William III's journey from England to Holland in the Royal yacht, Mary, in January 1691: "...After four days at sea pelted by snow showers, dodging floating ice and fog-hidden privateers, the convoy finally reached the shallows off the Dutch coast...." .  

OK, OK, so the ice floes might not have been quite as large as these ferociously sharp ice-shards, but... a little artistic licence goes a long way, I hope!

After weeks of painting 28mm figures, the tiny 1/4800th ships are just a sheer joy to paint.  And for any non-Jack-Tars out there (like me - sorry, Peter D!), the absence of rigging - and the inability to even try and add rigging on the ships - is a blessing and a liberation.  

The ships didn't take long to paint - just an enamel basecoat/ primer, a wash with Army Painter 'strong tone' wash and then some highlighting on the sails, with some careful brushwork on the hulls.  I added a dash of red for the fighting tops on the Frigate and some dabs of Vallejo brass for the sterns of the frigate and the larger merchantman to complete the look of the tiny squadron.

The sea effect was done with PVA-soaked toilet roll tissue.  It's a very easy technique to use and forms very durable and realistic waves, which can then be painted.  I chose a dark, cold blue for my sea, but I am sure a Caribbean azure would have been possible as well.  

Here's the sea and shore tiles matched up with the other hex tiles in the set, which I painted last year.

I made the ice with thin slivers of styrofoam, glued onto the waves using PVA.  There's no science here.  Please can I apologise to any geographer, marine biologist or iceberg specialist?  I wanted to get the 'feel' of the ice floating dangerously close to the shore - I am a little doubtful that the ice would really look like that.

All that being said, when using the campaign hexes, having the ice depicted on the sea tiles is a nice way of letting the players know that the rivers might be frozen and passable.  A visual cue to a game effect, if you like...

And here's the scale of the unrated merchantman with a United Kingdom new 50 pence piece.  And yes, I am probably certifiably insane, dear Challengers, for wargaming in what is really a micro-miniature scale.

But there might, just, be some method in the madness.  As I was painting the squadron (which took, in total, about one hour), I did notice the range of paints I was using.  There are hardly any colours needed for the ships and the sea, and in this scale you hardly need any paint.  The Tumbling Dice ships are very nice and work out to be about 50 pence each.  Which if you're planning Copenhagen, The Nile or Trafalgar, is not to be sniffed at.  

As I mentioned, its a form of method in the midst of wintry madness, fellow Challengers....!!

As for the points, I'm a bit lost, to be honest.  

Looking at other splendid, recent micro-ship entries from Miles and Peter (among many others), the going-rate seems to be 2 points a ship.  That might be a bit high for my smaller sized squadron, but to complement that, I'll just add a single point for the terrain tiles I prepared with the ships.  So, 8 points for four ships, plus one point for terrain.  Plus 20 points for Adventurers' Landing, giving 29 points in total.  

I hope that would work?

******* 

Well, Sidney, I don't think my brain could cope with trying to come up with a scoring scheme for these tiny ships in comparison to the scores for other ships, so I guess I'll just have to go with your suggestion.

That PVA-soaked toilet tissue does a very good job of simulating waves.

Tamsin