Friggin' in the Riggin'

I have spent the weekend painting and rigging the GHQ 1/1200 ship La Superbe. I am standing on the knowledgeable shoulders of the following blogger:

GHQ website photo

http://volsminiatures.blogspot.ca/2014/05/rory-mccreadies-step-by-step-guide-to.html

This guy rigs with thread and does an amazing job. I found another blogger who used paint brush strands to make the rigging. This looks much less fiddly and gave a nice result. Unfortunately, I cannot find this blog to give him/her credit.

First up was to paint up the model. I experimented with an art felt ($5) to put the black trim on the sails. This worked pretty well but when I painted the rest of the sail, the ink ran and as a result my sails are pretty dark.

I inherited a lovely piece of kit for this project. It is a magnifier with a light. I painted without it for the most part but it came in handy putting on the hull stripes.

Next, too the rigging. I cut a few strands of black brush and put it in a jar. I followed Rory's rigging guide for thread but replaced the thread with the paint brush strands and viola...

 This is the standing rigging. The model did not come with any rat lines but I plan to purchase some fancy brass ones from Langton. At this point the rat lines would go on but will move on to the running rigging which will be done with the gold colored brush strands. The pictures do not show the black rigging well. Next time, white background!

2 hours later the running lines have been added...

Sails and Muskets

I was able to try out a game of Sails of Glory recently. It is based on the game mechanics found in Wings of War/Glory and X-Wing. You have to plan your maneuvers two in advance and cards are used to measure how far you move. The combat system was a little too devastating in my opinion. A 74 gun ship was knocked out from a bow rake and a broadside from another 74. It allowed the game to come to a conclusion in a hurry but in my opinion, a ship of the line should be able to survive a little longer than this. As you can see from the pictures, the game components are very nice. The ships are pre painted and mounted 1/1000 scale.

The first picture is of the ship's control panel. The top row shows ship strength and crew strength. These boxes are marked off as the ship takes damage and battle effectiveness is reduced accordingly. There is special damage like dismast, fire and leaks. Fires are particularly deadly and perhaps a little too common but can be minimized by ordering some of the crew to be a fire brigade.

Every turn captains pick a new maneuver card as well as assign crew to task such as firing, reloading, musketry, repair and fire brigade. You can load round, chain and grape shot.

Here is a shot of two British ships pounding a French with a bow rake and broadside. The French tried to cross the T but failed and burned to the waterline for it's mistake. The French ships later collided and were entangled for several turns. The surviving French 74 was lining up a stern was lining up a stern rake on the trapped Brits but they disentangled in time to maneuver to safety.

Very tempted to purchase this game

We scheduled future games at the Sails of Glory game including a game of Commit the Garde. I put together Russian and French armies to give the newly published Eylau scenario a try. I thought I would try to addd some snow and ice to my table to emulate this notoriously blizzardy battle. I found some snow flock at the local hobby shop and bought some light blue felt to make iced over rivers. I could not add as much snow as I would have liked because I had to be able to see the hexes underneath. I had to use a paintbrush to uncover the hex corners after flocking. Stay tuned for the after battle report...

Here is the scenario map I am trying to emulate. Each hex is 500 yards

 New Flock