We dive to the Middle Ring, and find a tempting planet called Perelandra and we take a closer look at this oceanic planet. And what we find from this place, G-5 MTBs (they are not mountain bikes and I'm not a naval expert by any means) going full speed and guns ready. G-5 class of Motor Torpedo Boat was a Soviet design before and during WW2. Three of them were captured by Finnish forces (hooray!), but only two saw action under Finnish flag before they were returned to Soviet Union after Armistice. Well, here we have four boats, so this is not the Finnish navy. :) They have white flags with red star, so they are clearly Soviets.
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| The white spots in front are intentional |
I don't know much about naval warfare or ships (or boats), but a lot can be learned from Wikipedia, like most of the stuff in the first chapter. I got these from a Warlord Games mystery box (hinted by someone during previous Challenge (or a Challenge before that)) among other things. Like I said, naval battles are a mystery to me, but they are a great fit for the Perelandra planet - I knew they would be useful. I basically followed the cover art on these little boats, painted the windows, spotlights, crew members, coated everything with grey Contrast before using brighter colors to pick up the details - for example the crew members have dark blue uniform, rather pale skin and green helmets.
Since I don't play with these things, basing was a bit difficult. Should I base them or not, and if yes, what bases to use. Without bases they get easily broken in the storage box sitting calmly on a shelf for half a century, I decided to base them. And base them like a small diorama (vignette? dioramette?), which should protect them from wear and tear and also look rather pretty on the shelf by themselves. The base is mdf base from Warbases (terrain base, maybe) and I glued the boats on it in a nice formation. I wanted to create some wave effects, but decided to do it in 2D. I could have looked at reference pictures, but that would have given me pressure, so I ignored it and just painted dark blue first and then gradually lighter tones until fine white lines and spots here and there. It was quite fun, also painting these small boats was fun, but I have no reason to buy more of these, right?
I looked at the posts from previous Challenge, and these 1:300 Cruel Seas ships have been scored as 15mm vehicles for 8 points a piece. And there has been points given for small crew members as well. 8 points for this vehicle is a bit too much in my opinion, but I'll take it. And 1:300 scale is pretty much same as the 6mm scale, so half a point for full figure is reasonable. There are 8 more or less half crew members, so that's 2 points for the crew and 32 points for the boats, total 34 points and a squirrel.
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| Closeup |
My personal Squirrel count: 6
- 20mm Napoleonic
- 28mm Sludge
- 28mm Pulp
- 28mm Warhammer 40000 Xenos
- 28mm General (including Gloranthan) Fantasy
- 1:300 Cruel Seas
From Millsy:
Super stuff Teemu! There's not a lot to work with in terms of colour with these guys so the effort you've put into the water effect really lifts them up. The high contrast styles is really convincing and gives a real sense of speed. Have an extra point for the flags mate.
