1/3000 Age of Sail - Form on the Admiral's Wake

I love the HMGS conventions, and one of the things I love most about them are Friday night age of sail wargaming with Brian DeWitt's "Form on the Admiral's Wake". Brian is an excellent convention GM, he gets what a convention game should be and he hosts multi-player games that are quickplay, fun and furious for all. His Admiral's Wake ruleset is one of my favorite and it inspired me to purchase hundreds of 1/3000 ships from Forged in Battle (FiB). Over the years I have only managed to paint portions of the French, Spanish and British fleets. Last week, I decided to take on the Dutch fleet at Camperdown (or Kamperduin for all of you Batavians reading this). I would speed paint the little buggers and try to take advantage of the drab Dutch paint schemes and GW's range of contrast paints. It was a success!

Here are the bulk of the Dutch. They are FiB's "small 3rd rate ships" coded NAP-24. Since the Dutch ships were a bit smaller, I wanted to represent them with a slightly smaller model.

Here is another angle of the same ships. The painting process involved prepping the ships (no assembly required), gluing them to bases and priming them Tamiya light grey. The hulls got a wash of GW contrast paint, rigging and masts painted dark grey and the sails where painted Reaper Polished Bone and then stained with a diluted wash of Skeleton Horde contrast. I then followed up with a drybrush of Polished Bone. Some hull details (gunwale stripes and stern windows) and ensigns/pennants were painted, finished up with the blue water on the bases.

Here are the four 74 gun "big boys" for the Dutch. The flagship Vrijheid is on the far right with a slightly different main mast pennant. You'll notice some hull color variation and this was because I used Cygor Brown at first but opted for Snakebite Leather for the remainder.  I also diluted some of the contrast paint with GW contrast medium. I like the variation in hull color and I read references that some ships were darker than others because of age and tar usage.

You may be wondering where the frigates are. If so, you are an observant and keen little admiral! I painted them but didn't upload any photos of them. Overall I am very pleased with the Contrast paints for these ships. They aren't as detail painted as my initial batches but they are good enough and they are done. I will be using contrast paints for the rest of my 1/3000 ships. I plan to use some reds and yellows for my French and Spanish ships. Stay tuned!

 

Balkans War at Sea

I have always been fascinated by both the Balkans War, as well as pre-dreadnought naval warfare. The only complete range for these ships in either 1/2400 or 1/3000 that I am aware of is Navwar's. Slightly intimidated by Navwar's "archaic" ordering process, I took the plunge by ordering Greek and Ottoman fleets. I was pleasantly surprised by the quick turnaround on my order via snail mail. I was also pleased by the castings, while simple and robust they are excellent gaming pieces. 

The Greek Fleet: Destroyers in the background with three Hydra-class battleships and the Georgos Averoff in the foreground.

I added masts to the models with a Dremel drill and florist wire. The bases are Litko.

One of the Hydra-class battleships has a third mast. I painted the ships various shades of grey based upon period photos and illustrations.

Here is the Ottoman fleet: Destroyers in the background, Battleships and cruisers in the foreground.

I opted to paint the Turks in a pale khaki color. Sometime around 1912, the fleet went from khaki to grey. Khaki is more striking and helps differentiate them from the Greek grey.

I have only gamed with these fleets once, refighting Lemnos using the ruleset "When Dreadnoughts Ruled the Seas". I had the benefit of the rules author GMing the game. The Greeks won a hardfought victory in the refight. Despite losing some destroyers and a Hydra-class cruiser, the Greeks sunk all of the Turks with the exception of the two Brandenburg-class battleships.

Painted up some 1/3000 Spanish ships for the Battle of Manila Bay. They are based for "Fire when Ready" by David Manley. I painted the Castilla in black as opposed to whitem because it would be easier to identify as part of the Spanish fleet. More too come...