The Temptress

Its been a long, on and off slog, as different games and genres have distracted me from getting this finished but I've got there in the end, I have finally finished my Brig and present to you; The Temptress.

She's been in a partially completed state for a couple of years now, so its been good to get motivated and finish her off... I checked back through my blog post history to try and see when I actually started her and found her origins here:
http://scottswargaming.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/pirate-port-takes-shape.html
Approx 15th May 2011... OK, so its taken me a little over three years to complete! At least I got there in the end!

She was built from the downloaded and printed out plans by Gary Chalk, using primarily foamcard, card and balsa. These plans have come into criticism for making a somewhat 'slab-sided' ship. But I think they work fine and produce what is after all, a gaming piece, and not a true scale model...

I have also gone back through subsequent posts and labelled them all 'sloop', 'ship and 'brig' accordingly so if you wish you can check back through the various posts and see them developed over time... Go to Labels at bottom of Blog page... not now, not now... you might as well read the rest of this first! ;-)

The Temptress

Recent detailing work was to add the Catheads and Anchors to either side of the bow. I used some of the new GW rust effect technical paint for these... and must thank mate Roly Hermans also, for his help with info on details, from his fine collection of pirate books, that helped me figure out just how to rig up the anchors, in at least a roughly historic manner...

Mermaid figurehead, Cathead and Anchor

Also swivel guns to the rear deck sides...

Rear Deck Swivel Guns

And of course a final paint job...

I wanted to keep the Brig dark and menacing, as befits a pirate ship, didn't want a lot of coloured effects. So main dark brown base paint job, drybrushed with a dark brown/grey mix, and then a final very light drybrush with a cream colour...

The sails I washed with a cream colour wash of thinned paint... White sails just look to clean to me, especially for a pirate ship, so I like the 'worn weathered' look the cream wash gives... My son wanted me to paint the sails black as per a certain notorious pirate ship, but I thought that would be a little too copy-cat-ish!

I considered adding rear lanterns, and briefly pondered using mini LED's to light them... but the amount of work she has been so far, I decided enough is enough! I might come back to it later and see if they can be retro-fitted, but its not a high priority task, I've got heaps of other stuff I am busy with, as if you hadn't guessed! ;-)

The rear name plate was done use Woodland Scenics rub on dry decals. My free hand is not that good! ;-)

In the Legends of the High Seas game, she would be classed as a medium ship and is equipped with 10 small cannons, 5 to each side.

She makes a fine vessel for my Foundry Pirates to crew. I have also got a handful of Old Glory sailors in a climbing-the-rigging pose, (thanks to mate Brian Smaller), which I may get round to painting, now that they have some rigging to climb!

I am pleased I got my Liquitex sea surface done recently, it certainly sets her off nicely for her maiden appearance...

Just need to see if we can arrange some games to try her out in now!

The Crows nest, a perfect musket firing platform.

Crows nest

And the Fighting tops too...

Fighting top

And here she is alongside my first pirate ship I completed, a sloop named the Becky Boo, after my daughter. As ships are always referred to a 'She or Her', I guess that means the Brig must be named after my wife!? ;-) She certainly tempted me, all those years ago now!

So I have the makings of a fleet and may have to promote myself from Captain to Commodore, and get a suitably ostentatious and flamboyant hat! ;-)

Looking forward to trying out her sea legs....

A trip to the Walls of Moria, followed by some 'friggin in the riggin', and finished off with a pint down the pub...

Over the weekend I managed to get more hobby stuff done. Since fathers trip to visit with us, has come to and end, normal service has been resumed on the home front...

Its great to see folks again, and after a month long visit, it nice to get back to 'normal' too..., though with fond memories still to last until his next time with us...

So, since garden chores were all done last weekend, it meant I could spend some hobby time this weekend...

As you may have seen in my prior post, I made a start with the Walls of Moria, here.

Once the poly and MDF was all glued up and set, it was then first skim coated with Polyfila

Once that was dry, it was all painted with dark grey sand textured paint - roughly equal parts of black paint / white paint / PVA glue / Sand....

When dry, dry brushed with mid grey...

I thought about doing another final top light grey drybrush, but felt this was enough, I wanted it 'dark and brooding'...

So there we have it,... a couple of potential staged in use pics...

The Fellowship at the Gates of Moria...

"Speak Friend, and Enter"

Its a fairly simplistic terrain piece in its current state. Very usable, but could be improved upon. I think I'll try and make an insert that will fit the open doorway , that I can paint the Ithildin doorway on to, in both a closed, and then open format. I'll also model some wasted trees to go either side as per the movie image at top of this blog post.

However, as it is, its also doing double duty as rocky walls within the abandoned dwarven realm, where goblins have now made their home...

The Dwarrowdelf... while fleeing the wrath of the Balrog, the Fellowship are beset by goblin arrows from up on high...

Plenty of places to perch goblins!

Not bad for a couple of days work.

Whilst various parts of the above were drying, I pressed on with a couple of other things...

Having got my Brig out and dusted off recently (Old terrain projects never die - they just gather dust!), I decided, having just finished the crows nests, it was high time to add some rigging rope ladders to reach them.

So, I used some simple dress makers pins, chopped down to size, and glued these into place, to act as anchor points for the string to be tied round for the main vertical lengths, superglued into place. Once that was all done, then the laborious part was  supergluing into place all the horizontal lengths - that took quite some time, I can tell you, but I think the effect is worthwhile...

It really begins to to look more properly ship-like now, I think, though its certainly no scale model. It still is a wargaming model first and foremost.

I do have some tiny Dead-eyes, that I may mess about with seeing if I can get them to look right at the bottom end of the rigging on sides of ship hull.

Next thing I need to do is rig up the Anchors and CatHead supports. I've also got some swivel guns to add to the hull sides.

I think, I've also got some small racks with, wooden 'pins' in them which go on the insides of the hull sides.

After all that hard work in the rigging, it was time for a pint down the pub, so I broke out the DAS clay, and started cladding the Victorian Tavern. I got the front sides done...

To wrap up the weekend, I had a brief time for a game of LOTR with Chris... he'd had a mate over for a sleepover playdate for the weekend, and they played LOTR all weekend it seemed. Once his friend had left, it was my turn... no rest for the wicked! ;-)

That's all for now folks, as always thanks for viewing.

Drink up me hearties... Yo Ho!

Just when you think you have a plan and its all sorted, a chance re-union and we're off in another direction again...
I mentioned in my earlier post about getting some Cherry blossom trees from good mate Roly. Whilst there, my son, Chris, and Roly's daughter, Monique, got chatting, and Pirates of the Caribbean came up...

So guess what ... once home, Chris was wanting to play a pirate game...

So we got out the pirate board, and came up with a scenario, using Legends of the High Seas rules...

Chris wanted to play a game where a pirate crew, would land at port, have to sneak into town to the  tavern, and recruit more crew and get out again. He would play the pirates.

I got to play the Royal Navy defenders. There would also be 2 loose 'Thugs' who would attack anyone in range, and 4 prospective new crew near the Tavern who would be 'recruited' once they were in base contact with a Pirate. The pirates and crew would then have to get back to their ship...

The town awaits, as the pirate sloop moors alongside the jetty...

[please excuse the white board ends -  damage to board during storage was half way being fixed]

Unsuspecting Caribbean town... Port Royal?

Chris the Pirate!

Gotta have the right musical accompaniment!

Pirates hit the jetty

 4 pirates come ashore...

The 'thugs' are noted by green tokens. The 'recruitables' are marked by yellow tokens... We played by the sentry rules so navy could not activate until 'triggered'.

Marine musket gives fire...

Pirate 1st mate shoots at thug...

Hand to hand action starts to hot up...

It's not looking good for the pirate captain...

Melee up the side alley...

2 more pirates come onto jetty, from the sloop, looks like the lads need a hand...

Recruitment starts, in town square...

More action on the dock...

One second, recruited.. the next second, shot!...

3 vs 2 against the pirates, its not looking good...

The game ended with all the pirates killed! But the Navy midshipman and a marine also fell...

It was a fun little game, and yet I couldn't help think the game would have played better using a different skirmish set of rules... and I got thinking about Empire of the Dead.

Don't get me wrong, I like the core LOTR SBG game mechanic, used in LotHS, which works well for large skirmish battles... but having played Empire of the Dead, I think that rule set is better suited to these smaller 'gang fights'...

Empire of the Dead, although for a gothic horror, steampunk setting, can still handle the pirate setting as it has rules for medieval weapons and muskets etc, and a few custom tweaks can be added as necessary - perhaps adding the Fame and Fortune points for the heroes, and heroic actions, as I like those elements of the SBG game..

EotD also has more interesting rules for hiding and sneaking about, wounding effects in combat (not just alive or dead), and I think the single model activation in turn works better, plus there's an over-watch type shot mechanism... All of these factors I think would make for a better pirate game experience.

So we'll give that a whirl and report back...

Of course this little bit of C18th fun, had me reaching for my scratchbuilt Brig, in an effort to finish it off properly... here's where I last had it... shown from an earlier game, quite some time ago... usable but not finished yet...

Since this pic was taken I had added more cannon firing ports to the hull sides, and also a mermaid-like figurehead below the bowsprit, see below pics.

Also, I was never fully happy with the sails and fighting tops - it seemed wrong the sail was in the way of the crew man accessing the fighting top from the rigging ladder (to be added)..., attached to mast, behind him.

So I trimmed back the sails, adding a slight curve to their undersides and added the railings round the crows nest and fighting tops...

I think it looks much better now, and models wont accidentally fall from on high either if the table or boat takes a knock!

Next I need to add the rigging - that's going to be a fiddly job no doubt! Any tips from folk who have already done it to their models ships - I'm all ears!

I had also made another addition to my terrain collection - I ordered a set of cargo/stores made by Infinity, from Slave to Painting.... I can see these being widely used through many settings - LOTR, EotD and of course Pirates!

Foundry pirate for scale...

Just need to get them trimmed and painted up....

Pirate Brig takes shape

I managed to get more work done on my Gary Chalk Pirate Brig over the weekend.

As you can see from last time I have added the Main and Foremasts, the fighting tops or 'crows nests', and also the cross spars for the main square sails, but an addition to the plan is the gaff-rigged rear booms towards the stern, which would signify the ship as a 'Brig'. And of course the bowsprit.

I must admit, the more I have got into making this ship, the more I have researched and looked at what type of ship a Brig is, but that has led me to look at what the 'other' named types of ship there were out there and what they looked like.

Being a self professed land-lumber this has all been quite fascinating. I recommend the Pirates Cove link in my links sidebar. This site was a wonderful source of info on ships and types.

I also found wikipedia very useful for its simple diagrammatic representations of these ships - in particular how the sails are supposed to go. However, this ship is to be a playable gaming model, not an accurate scale model, so there has to be some sense kept in all this. I will not be adding ALL the sails as show in the various pictures and diagrams, just enough to give it that 'Brig theme'.

I have placed an order with Laurie at Kapiti models (see link in link sidebar) for another ships Wheel, as per the smaller sloop previously seen in another blog post.

The only thing I am a little stuck for is a suitable looking anchor.

That, and I am awaiting an order for some hobby dark brown 'burnt umber' paint, so I can make a start on painting up my growing 'fleet' ;-)

Arr Arr, keep a weather-eye open , ship mates!

Pirate progress pictures

Some more pictures of progress as promised after tonight's work:

The second small sloop, just showing the card sides being added, and then the balsa being added, strip by strip. Its actually thinner than I originally thought, it's 0.8mm thick, cut into roughly 5mm wide strips.

The Metal figure is just for scale - it is a LOTR dunlending 28mm. Still he looks wildly pirate like in his own way perhaps?

Here's the first small sloop, now pretty much finished, just awaiting painting. I cut the holes for the cannons, added the deck grate and pinned into position the wheel. I am probably going to leave the wheel removable to allow movement of figures on deck as it's quite a cramped little sloop. With the two cannon present I may struggle to stand 8 Pirate crew on deck.

Here's the Brig, starting to get decked out as it were. All interior planking done, ladders added, windows added, cannon holes cut, doors added, deck grate added. Just now awaiting the masts to be added.

I am sorry this shot is sideways on, I think blogger has had one of its 'moments' or perhaps my gimp software is playing up? Anyway you can see how the stern windows look for the captains quarters.

I'll try and continue work this week and get some more colourful shots up this weekend. Fingers crossed.