The Minion Expeditionary Force sent up a flare and so I have done my best to send ships to get in the way help...
Hi again everyone, only took a desperate plea from our beloved Minion for me to try and get another post in, some quick disclaimers about the title, only two Fletchers, but also one Portland class cruiser, which is what I'm using for the historical drama studio. This is the USS Indianapolis, which, to loosely summarise, was torpedoed whilst in transit, sinking in twelve minutes. The distress calls were ignored, the ship's failure to arrive neglected and forgotten about. Those of the crew who survived were left to the mercy of nature until a flying boat spotted them four days later. Once rescued, the Navy then tried to throw the captain under the bus, making him the only US ship commander to be prosecuted for losing their ship in action during the war in an attempt to cover the Navy's own mistakes. Nimitz reversed the sentence, but it took until 2001, well after his death (in 1968), to exonerate him.
The miniatures themselves are from Warlord Games's Battle for the Pacific starter set, cast in their resin, and went together very quickly and could have been painted up very quickly if I hadn't thought that the Rule of Cool should prevail and that jazzy camouflage was in order. I must confess that I threw research to the winds and simply squinted at the studio paint scheme, which has had mixed results in the past (I am colourblind and my US Marines therefore have brown uniforms). I did have fun though!
I was inspired by some lovely NVA armour I saw recently here with yellow stars and so did use yellow for the ship information as I thought it would aid recognition for when I eventually get around to the Japanese half of the set, I can then do their script in red.
There are six Fletchers in the main set so I thought it'd be worth getting a couple in alongside Indy. There seem to be quite a few schemes available so I'm hoping I can outfit each with something slightly different as they're not named. The above Fletcher was in a simpler scheme to make the home run feel downhill when painting!
This was used as a test platform for Indy, the different greys are mostly Citadel: Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk Blue, Administratum Grey mixed with Fenrisian Grey, and Ulthuan Grey for highlighting. The water was Vallejo Prussian Blue, with Blue Green to highlight, up to white for the various waves.
In terms of points, I am afraid that there's no precedent for the Victory at Sea 1/1800 scale* ships. I have put forward 6 per destroyer (x2) and 8 per heavy cruiser (x1), as they're roughly a 15mm vehicle or so, subject to Minion's discretion.
The location is Historical Drama, Indy is mentioned in Jaws! So, in total, 20 for the ships, 20 for the location, 40 all in.
*I originally gave the scale as 1/1700 - apologies!
Phriday Minion: Tom, glad you popped up to keep me on my toes this Friday. I rank naval gaming well at the bottom of my wargaming interests (though I'll stretch to NebulonB frigates and Star Destroyers if that counts), but you've done a mighty fine job with the dazzle camouflage on these beauties. I think the bright blue sea and picknig out the wakes helps them pop, and the yellow lettering is a great idea.
20 points seems very reasonable to me, so I have wrangled those numbers into the Spreadsheet of Doom and onto your tally. Thanks for dropping by!
