A Long Spell in Drydock

I feel that I owe my readers a bit of an apology right at the beginning of this post.  In looking at the blog, I realized that it has been 3 months since I’ve posted anything.  I would like to plead that Real Life ™ has gotten in the way, but the truth is that I’ve just been both lazy and in a bit of a slump.  I haven’t been completely unproductive, but the shipbuilding has really slowed down.  There are a couple of reasons for this, and they are even remotely related to naval gaming.  I’ll explain below.

Out, out damned computer!

No, I haven’t had computer problems, although I admit that would be a great excuse.  Instead, I have fallen into the snare of computer naval gaming.  I recently bought a game called Rule the Waves by a company called Naval Warfare Simulations, or NWS.  You can find their website at: http://navalwarfare.net/.  The game lets you run one of the major European navies from 1900 to 1926.  You  perform the role of the Grand Admiral, in that you get to design ships, place them, and (eventually) lead them into battle.  The navies in the game are Great Britain (of course), Germany (ditto), France, Italy, Russia, Austria-Hungary, the US and Japan.  As an option, you can manage the Spanish navy, or even the Confederate States if you want to go a fantasy history route.  I say fantasy there because all of the game is alternate history; in no way are you entitled to replay the runup to WWI.  Alliances can be made and broken based on the tension level between the great powers, and it’s even possible for the UK and Germany to sign an alliance if things go just right.  It’s also possible for real-life allies to really go after each other: In one game as the US, I fought three different wars with France.  The game is quite addictive, and many times I’ve found myself saying “just one more turn” (which is a month of game-time) until I have almost seen the sun rise.

Designing ships is one of the most fun parts of the game.  The march of technology is not always relentless, and some things that worked out in real life may not in your game.  This is an option, and you can turn it off if you so choose.  It does add an extra level of uncertainty to the game though, and I for one highly recommend it.  You can design anything from a minesweeper to a dreadnought and can ask the computer to help you if you want.  Computer designs are not always the best though!  Occasionally it will deliver a design that is overweight or has other flaws.  This is a part of the game that can keep you enthralled for hours, as you try to deliver that perfect blend of firepower, speed and protection.  If you spend money on espionage, you will get reports from what the other navies are doing, and this can be used as a guide for your own designs.  I can assure you; it WILL hurt your ego when you find that your perfect design for whatever ship is either 1) completely inept compared to its foreign counterparts, or 2) will bankrupt your country if you try and build it.  While the game stops in the 1920s, NWS is preparing Rule the Waves II which will put aircraft carriers into the game along with other technologies.  Will I buy it?  Despite my dislike of aircraft in naval games, I daresay I probably will.  After all, it’s not as if I have to paint up any aircraft carriers or airplanes, right?!  Gaming navies are a lot of fun when they’re digital, even if they aren’t quite as satisfying as a fleet of painted miniatures.

Gamer Syndrome

I think we’re all guilty of this one.  You start on a project and intend to keep a laser focus on it.  Eventually though, you look at those ships and start wondering, “What else could I use these for?”  Next thing you know, you’ve got a new project that you never planned on.  The military world calls it “mission creep,” the medical world calls it “attention deficit disorder,” and we call it “gamer syndrome.”  Even worse, you find a new set of rules that look like they would be fun, and only need a few ships.  Just a few, and they are almost all available from somewhere like Shapeways.  So, you’re looking around for those few ships, and you find all other sorts of cool stuff.  One of [fill in the blank] would be fun to paint, just to do something different.  Hmm, look at those; they would be perfect companions to that one ship you bought.  Wonder what you could do with those?  Are there rules for . . . .?  As the singer Robert Earl Keen says, “the road goes on forever and the party never ends.”

All the above is a roundabout way of saying that I have been painting some modern ships of late.  Not many; as I said, I’ve been in a slump.  One of my projects was an attempt to save a mistake that I got from Shapeways.  You might remember that in an earlier post, I talked about a problem I have with one of the Rothesay class frigates I received from them.  At the time I misidentified her as a Leander class, but have since learned the error of my ways.   Anyway, this was the picture:

I figured that given the issues with this ship, I couldn’t really mess it up any more, no matter what I did to it.  So, out came the knife.  I put the gun barrels in the turret using .025 music wire, which I thought would be more sturdy than plastic rod of the same width.  I added an upper mast out of the same wire, primarily to discourage gamers from moving the ship by its plastic mainmast.  Cutting off that circular thing did cause me to lose some of the deck details there, but fortunately I was able to paint them in without it looking too bad.  Overall, the end result looks like this:

She didn't come out too badly, all things considered.

I decided to paint her up as HMS Yarmouth.  With this one and HMS Plymouth, that gives me all of the Rothesay class frigates that were present for the Falklands War.  Falklands, huh?  Well what do you know, Shapeways has almost all the ships necessary for that war.  One shop even has the Argentine carrier ARA 25 de Mayo.  Throw in a couple of modern naval rules, and suddenly I’m buying things like this:

Obviously, nowhere near complete, or even started yet.

That is a 1/1250 scale Triton miniature of HMS Hermes, the flagship of the British fleet.  Obviously I don’t have to tell my readers where this is headed. . . .  I don’t know how long it will take this Falklands project to come to fruition, but someday my group will be playing a modern naval campaign.  Right now, I just keep telling myself that it’s still cheaper than trying to fight WWIII in the North Atlantic.

Naval “War”gaming? 

For my other foray into naval gaming ADD, the explanation is a little simpler.  Briefly put, I’m blaming David Manley for this one!  A few years back, I played his “Save the Whale” game.  In that, the players take the part of either whale hunters, or activists trying to save the whale.  The activists get to do things like use speedboats to paint anti-whaling slogans on the side of the whaling factory ship, which will give them points (as will other actions) at the end of the game.  The points are only for the protesters because victory for the whalers is pretty simple:  If they harpoon a whale, they win.  Even if that doesn’t happen, they might still win if the protesters have negative points.  In effect, the whalers have won in the court of world opinion.

Ships for this are surprisingly easy to come by.  Triang-Minic made a whale factory ship, and those can be picked up pretty cheaply on eBay.  The harpoon ships are harder to find as originals but are being reproduced so that is also taken care of pretty cheaply.  I already hear you asking, “But Brian, where do you get protest ships?”  The answer of course, is Shapeways (or as I’ve come to call it, “The Great Enabler”).  A quick search using “Greenpeace ships” will turn up only 1 option.  A shop called shipshape makes the MV Solo, which served Greenpeace in the 1990s along with the Rainbow Warrior III.  However, Decapod, who makes the Cod War models also makes a model that is a very nice stand-in for the original Rainbow Warrior.  Turns out, there is even a shop that makes rubber Zodiac boats in 1/1250 scale. 

WAY more than I will ever need.  Then again, as small as they are I do expect
to lose a few over time.

The Quarter of Comparison (TM) is feeling somewhat shy today, and decided to
try and hide.

There actually a little oversize but otherwise are really nice models.  I decided to go with Rainbow Warrior I and Solo even though the two never actually served together.  After all, this is a fun game and I don’t think anyone is going to be too terribly offended by this inaccuracy.  Rainbow Warrior is probably so well known as to not need an introduction, but here’s a picture of the original in London:

My model of this ship isn’t even primed yet, but once it’s done I will update this post with pictures of it.  The rainbow and bird will probably be done via brush, but the “GREENPEACE” lettering on the side will have to be a decal.  I think a decal will be easy to make, and will look a lot better than any attempts to do it by hand.

The Solo is much less well known, but this is the original:

And here is my interpretation of her:

The model isn’t complete yet, as I haven’t finished the base or made decals for the name and Greenpeace logo on the side.   I also wasn’t able to do the sweeping rainbow stripes by brush, so went with a blockier interpretation, as you can see.  All in all though, I don’t think she looks too bad.

So that is why the blog has been laid up for a bit here lately.  It’s not that nothing has been done, but overall there’s been very little.  I promise to get back to the sailing ships soon.  After all, the Trafalgar Project isn’t going to get done if I don’t do anything on it!

The Descendants

I've been terribly dilatory about posting something this month.  There's a few reasons, and some of them I think are fairly reasonable.  For openers, I've finally decided to really start taking care of myself like my doctor said to do almost a year ago.  Consequently, I'm walking for an hour a day either 5 or 6 days a week.  It's not the 7 days a week he wanted, but it's better than what I was doing.

I've also started a new hobby that takes up a bit of time.  About a year ago, I started taking fencing lessons.  I did it in college, and then didn't for 30+ years.  Well, much to my surprise the city here teaches it as an adult fitness course so I took it up again.   As I've taken more lessons, I've started fencing with a couple of different groups.  Along with this, my wife retired after 26+ years with the city and we've been enjoying doing things together.  All the above, combined with a bit of general laziness this New Year, has kept me from updating as much as I've wanted.  With this post though, we should get 2019 started off on the right foot.

The plan is to play the first Cod War game in March, so that is what I've been painting so far this year.  I've gotten another sidewinder trawler painted, along with a couple of Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG) vessels painted.  I'll put pictures of those up later, but honestly, they're not very interesting as the ICG vessels are just shades of gray.  What has me really excited is the chance to paint up some Royal Navy vessels.

The first vessels here are a pair of Type 12M Rothesay class frigates.  Honestly, I bought them from Shapeways thinking they were Type 12I Leander class vessels but I was wrong.  To make things worse, I didn't realize this until I had shortened the mainmast to put the distinctive Leander class radar antenna on them.  After kicking myself for my mistake, I decided to go ahead and put the antennae on the ships, thereby turning them into a sort of generic Royal Navy frigate.  The Rothesay class ships also served during the Cod Wars, so I'm not really out of bounds by using them.

To me, these ships are direct descendants of my British sailing ships (hence the title of this post).  That's one reason I'm excited about painting them, but the other reason is that they carry a really snazzy paint job.  Light gray hull and superstructures, dark green decks and a dark gray helicopter landing area with white markings make for a very distinctive looking ship.  You can see for yourself in the photos below:

HMS Plymouth (F126) and HMS Falmouth (F113).

HMS Plymouth

HMS Falmouth

Clearly, one of these ships isn't quite finished yet.  Plymouth needs to have the base detailed, and some final little bits done to her.  I added the radar antenna (that large dark colored block on top of the mainmast) and the extension on top of the foremast for both ships.  The foremast extension was done with .20 wire, so as to keep people from brushing against it; the Smooth Fine Detail plastic used by Shapeways is good at capturing detail but a little bit fragile.  Hopefully this will keep players from using the foremast to move the ships.  There were several whip antennae along the deck of these ships, but I haven't decided whether or not to add those.  If I do, it should be easy to use some brush bristles cut to length.

Sharp-eyed observers may note that the hull of Falmouth looks a bit rougher than the one on Plymouth.  This is partially due to some paint problems I had on Falmouth and partially due to the way the hulls on these ships are printed.  All three of these ships have some heavy striations due to the various angles on the hull.  I'm not sure why there weren't as visible on Plymouth, but I am presuming that the way I prepped the second hull might have helped hide them.  Problem is, I'm not sure what I did!

These aren't the only Royal Navy ships for this period I've got, and I will post the others as I get them done.  In closing though, I would be seriously remiss if I didn't admit that part of the reason for this post are my two virtual shipmates: Stew and Vol.  By making some posts on their blogs this month, they kind of shamed me into doing the same. 😬  Thanks guys, and things should be back on track now!

Shapeways customer service

This wasn't a post I was planning on writing just before Christmas, but it seems like too good a story to pass up.

On 12/19, I received another Shapeways order that contained my two Leander class frigates to go with the Cod Wars project.  Much to my surprise, one of them was misprinted.  The first one out of the bag looked like this:

The second one though, looked like this:

What the...?

Now I'm not an expert on Leander class frigates, but I've never seen ANY pictures that show one with an extra deckhouse there.  So, I fired off an email to Shapeways telling them that there was a problem with my order.  Almost immediately, I got an automated email with the usual "sorry" and asking if I would send any pictures of the problem.  It took me a couple of hours to get the pictures made and sent; in fact, the above photos are the ones I used. 

About 5 hours later, I get an email back from Shapeways customer support, which is located in the EU.  The employee (I wasn't sure about the person's gender based on their name) told me they were sorry about this, and that they would replace it.  I tell them that's fine, and that I understand if it takes a few days to get done due to the holidays.  I figure that's it for now.  Keep in mind, this all happened on 12/19.

At 0845 on 12/20, I get an email from Shapeways that tells me the replacement order has been made, and should ship by January 7, 2019.  That's fine by me, as there's plenty of other stuff to paint while I'm waiting.  At 1328 on 12/20, I get another email telling me my new order is being printed.  OK, now I'm pretty impressed, as that's a good level of service.  This morning (12/21) at 1050, I get an email telling me the order is being shipped and giving me a tracking number.  Now I'm REALLY impressed with Shapeways customer service! 

Now, you could argue that something that obvious should never have been sent out, and I would agree with you.  However, the rapidity with which Shapeways has moved to make it right, especially during a busy holiday season, is certainly a big plus in their favor.  We all have stories of horrible customer service, so when we get really good customer service I think we should let people know.

This is probably the last post before the end of the year.  If it is, here's a Happy Holidays to everyone out there, whatever the holiday you're celebrating might be.  Be careful on New Year's Eve, and we will see each other again in 2019.

A Quick Programming Note. . . .

I'm going out of town with the family for a few days and am not taking a computer with me.  If someone makes a comment, PLEASE rest assured that I'm not ignoring you.  Should anyone comment while I'm out of pocket, I promise to answer when I get back.

So, about those clear ships....

This is going to be just a quick post before the craziness of the holiday season takes over and pretty much shuts everything down.  In my Cod Wars post, I put up some pictures of the Shapeways 3D printed ships that are going to make up the project.  Several people in the comments section on that post were curious as to what the models would look like when they were painted.  So, for one of the last posts of the year, here are some pictures of what I've done so far.

While the ships are finished, the bases are not.  There will be some waves, and wakes around the ships.  The ships are finished though, and that's what I'm showing off here.  I've tried to paint these based on ships that were involved in the Cod Wars, and not just generic examples.  For the side trawlers, that's been pretty easy and there are lots of photos of them.  For stern trawlers, it's been a little more difficult.  I haven't painted any stern trawlers yet, so for right now it's not really an issue.

First up is the trawler Westella.  Her registration number was H194, which I'm pretty sure means she was based in Hull.  Here's a picture of the original:

And here is my version of her:

The hardest thing has been matching the color of the cabin, and I still didn't get it completely right.  In real life, the cabins are steel but are painted to look like woodgrain.  I can't do that in this scale, so went with the darker yellow (which is clearly still not dark enough).  I also might still put some black dashes along the deck area to simulate the drain holes to let water flow away.  All these trawlers come with the mast, but you have to add the supports that run forward.  Those are made of brush bristles.

Next is the Arctic Corsair.  She is another Hull trawler (H320), and is preserved as a museum ship in Hull.  She definitely participated in the last Cod War, as she rammed the Icelandic Coast Guard vessel (ICGV) Odin after that ship tried three times to cut the Arctic Corsair's lines to her nets.  As with Westella above, here is the real thing:

And here is my version of her:

I know the rust looks a little overdone.  However, in looking at photos taken of the trawlers at sea, some ships look like the rust is what's holding them together!  I concentrated the rust amidships, since that is where the vessels took the worst beatings, due to hauling in nets.  Also, yes the red band on this funnel should have a white band inside it, but my hands aren't steady enough for that anymore.

One problem that I did run into painting these was that there weren't a lot of color photos at deck level taken of these ships.  Fortunately though, there are a lot of photos on the Trip Adviser.com site for Arctic Corsair, and that's what I used to choose things like deck colors and the like.

So there you have it.  In my opinion, they don't paint up too badly at all.  One piece of advice though; be sure you use a primer on the models after you wash them, and not just any dark colored paint for your basecoat.  Trust me when I tell you that it will make a HUGE difference; in fact, it may well be the difference between painting your models and making the same order again.  That, however, is a story for another post. 😀

EDIT AND QUICK UPDATE:  I want to take a moment and give a big "thank you" to user Grelber over on TMP, who got me to think differently about putting stripes on the funnel.  Instead of painting a red streak and trying to put a white stripe inside it, he suggested painting everything white and using some Sakura Micron pens to put on the red stripes.  It worked extremely well.  My Arctic Corsair model went from this:

To this:

Yes, still a little shaky, but that comes from cleaning up the white area.  I think she now looks a LOT better.

Cod Wars? Yes, Because . . .

I'm of the opinion that anything which floats can be made into a good game.  For that reason, if you put on a game that has ships of some sort then chances are I'm going to enjoy it.  Due to this, I've played with everything from sailing ships to World War II battleships.  I haven't played any ancient naval (but want to try it), and I've even played Greenpeace protesters in a "Save the Whale" game.  So, I don't mind trying out an oddball game.  Keep that in mind as you read this.

One of the regular members of our gaming group likes to ram things when we play naval games.  He's at his happiest when he can bang into other ships on the table.  Preferably, the rammed ships are his opponents but I'm not sure that's completely necessary.  This has actually become a bit of a running joke among the group.  Unfortunately for him, ramming things with a sailing ship is really bad for the ship where rigging and the bowsprit are concerned.  Because of this, I've been on the lookout for rules other than ancients where ramming is actually a viable tactic, and that wouldn't require a lot of ships.  After all, this is a side project and not anything major.  Well, I finally found something that I think will fit the bill:

I know what you're probably thinking: "Cod Wars?  Huh?"  These were a series of disputes between the UK and Iceland over fishing rights in Icelandic waters.  They weren't really a war in the sense that wargamers think of one: there was only one fatality and the naval forces of the two nations never actually shot at each other.  The actions of this set of "wars" consisted of the Icelandic Coast Guard cutting the lines of trawlers in Iceland's territorial waters, and vessels from both sides ramming each other.  Not necessarily ramming to sink another vessel, but more like the traditional 'bumper boats' that the US and USSR played with each other during the Cold War.  Well then, sounds perfect for my needs.

After buying the rules, I was pleasantly surprised (and somewhat relieved) to find that all the miniatures you would need to play a game were available on Shapeways.  I bought what I would need to run the game, and was again pleasantly surprised when they arrived.

L to R: ICGV Baldur, ICGV Tyr, 3 side trawlers, British tug Lloydsman

L to R:  ICGV Odnin, ICGV Aegir, 3 stern trawlers

L to R:  Star Polaris, Star Aquarius, HMS Exmouth, ICGV Ver

Those  three sets provide more than enough ships to run any scenario, and most of the ships needed for a campaign (which is included in the rule book).  This is my first experience with 1/1200 ships printed by Shapeways, and I have to say that I am very impressed with them.  The detail is fantastic, as I hope the closeup below will show:

I will also try and get some extreme closeups before I start painting any of the models.  The fact that the ships are printed in a translucent plastic doesn't help much in seeing the details from a photograph.  To give you an idea of the detailing, the two ships at the top of the photograph (Star Polaris and Star Aquarius) are actually different from each other.  One has slightly larger funnels than the other, AND it also has an extra crane and rubber boat on board. 

You don't even need to label their bases.

As you might guess, I'm very impressed with these.  I'm looking forward to getting them painted and out for a game, just to see what everyone thinks.