Treacherous Tides

Ahoy, me hearties! The Kingdoms of Men and High Elf fleets have continued to expand, and I now have 3 classes of vessel designed, printed and painted for each navy. I’ve settled on 1:900 scale for this project, as it’s a good trade-off between getting some great details and keeping the cost down.

I designed the ships in Blender and had them printed at Shapeways in the high definition plastic that continues to impress me. It’s possible to make out the individual bolts on the elven weapons and I’ve even been able to add little wheels on to the gun carriages on the human vessels.

Considering these miniatures are printed on a high end Envisiontec DLP machine, the cost is very reasonable. It’s still more expensive than I’d like though, so I’ve taken steps to minimise this as much as possible: hollowing out the undersides of the hulls, connecting multiple ships together so they get charged as a single part, and substituting the sea bases for a less expensive FDM material.

The ships are now up for sale in my Shapeways shop. There is even a nifty tool that lets you look at the models in 3D. The next step is to add some flyers! I’m thinking a griffon for the humans and a phoenix for the elves.

I’m looking forward to playing some more Galleys and Galleons with these now!

Kingdoms of Men: Kestrel

“I tell you true: the Kestrel ain’t a flash sort o’ship, oh no. Not many opportunities for your death or glory capt’n to distinguish theirselves when they’s carrying dispatches or on the lookout for smugglers. She’s still got teeth though, mark my words. Aye, you can scoff, but many’s the merchant found hisself striking to a Kestrel that he let get too close.”

This is the first of my ships for an inevitable human fleet. I was loosely inspired by my old Bretonnian Buccaneers from Man O’ War when designing this, but I’ve elected to go with a small number of cannon rather than a catapult, in addition to various other differences. I suppose I could make a catapult variant without too much difficulty if I decide to go full-on nostalgia mode. 😉

As with the Elf ship I shared a couple of weeks back, this is another sculpt that I’ve rescaled to 1:900. I had to make some sacrifices in terms of detail, but even so the ship still sports a wheel and even tiny gun carriages. Again, it’s a combination of Shapeways materials: a high def black acrylate ship with a white strong flexible base. I’m calling my fledgling range of fantasy vessels “Treacherous Tides” and I’ll put them up for sale on my Shapeways store soon.

In other exciting news I now possess copies of Galleys and Galleons and the fantasy expansion, Fayre Winds and Foul Tides from Ganesha Games. Apparently these rules work well for around 6-7 ships per sides so we’re not talking full fleet actions here, but that’s good since I don’t have many ships (yet 😉 ). Thinking about it, my Man O’ War fleet wasn’t much bigger than this anyway. I’m looking forward to trying these rules out with the Dreadfleet mat and islands I’ve still got lying around.