French fleet photos

Too often, I think many wargamers see the Napoleonic French navy as some sort of seagoing joke.  In fiction, they're often represented as nautical babes in arms who might get the best of our heroes in the middle of the novel, but are safely vanquished by the end of it.  Like so many historical 'facts,' this representation is greatly simplified.  In 1781, the French Royal Navy fought the British Royal Navy to a tactical draw but strategic victory at Chesapeake Bay which directly led to the birth of the United States. By the mid 1790s, the French Navy was a shadow of itself.  What happened?  The short, and greatly simplified, answer is that the French Revolution happened.  After destroying the officer corps (almost all nobles) and disbanding the cannoniers matelots (considered to be "petty aristocrats"), the new French government crippled its navy so badly that would take over twenty years to recover.

So, given the above, a French fleet can't be much fun to play, right?  Non, non mes amis! Bien au contraire.  A properly played French force can be quite deadly.  Don't rush right into close range and start blasting away; that's what the British player WANTS you to do.  Instead, stay at long range and punish the British player as he tries to get into close range.  Do it right, and your British opponent will soon understand why Nelson said, "you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil."  With that introduction out of the way, here are pictures of my French fleet at last.

First up are those heavy hitters, the three deckers.  I currently have two, which puts me in a bit of a conundrum.  That's more than I need for Trafalgar or Santo Domingo, but not enough for the Glorious First of June.  There's an obvious solution to this problem though:  Buy more after I'm set up for Trafalgar!

you must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/horationel167957.html

This is a purchased ship

Next are the 80-gun ships.  Although they are considered 3rd rates by both the British and French navies, they have the firepower of a British 98, and are normally used as flagships for smaller squadrons.

According to Mrs. Langton, this is a very old miniature.
I bought it, and should probably retire it, but...

I just love the stern decoration!  Completely different from my other ships.

This is the very first ship I built after getting back into naval gaming.
That makes it about 17 years old now.

Another purchased 80

I own 10 74/76 gun French ships, so for them I'm only doing side views.  First off are what Langton calls a 76/small 80, followed by the 74s.  Both these 76s are purchased.

Purchased 76 #1

Purchased 76 #2

"The Showboat" has stuck to this ship as a nickname.

For some reason, this is one of my favorite ships, and paint schemes.

Purchased 74 #1

Purchased 74 #2

The next ship is something of an odd duck.  It is a French 64.  However, by the beginning of the French Revolution, this class had been phased out of use in the French navy.  Consequently, in most scenarios it stands in as a British 64.  If I ever get around to doing a Suffern vs. Hughes campaign, then I will need some more of these.

Purchased French 64

Just like the real navies, I'm awfully short-handed when it comes to frigates.

40 gun frigate (purchased)

38 gun frigate (purchased)

36 gun frigate #1 (purchased)

36 gun frigate #2

20 gun corvette (purchased)

Ironclad Interlude

After a few weeks of travel and being away, I'm back at the blog.  In this post are some photos of the ironclads I showed off in the "Getting My Hands Dirty?" post back in March.

After thinking about it, and some discussion over at TMP, I've decided that I am going to have to base these ships as well.  Compared to the sailing ships, these ironclads are mere slips of metal and I think that bases will be much easier in moving them.   Also, some of the gunboats are easily under 100 feet long, so less than 1 inch in 1/1200 scale.  In a way, it's the opposite of the sailing ship problem; instead of being top heavy, they are so small that a sneeze might blow them away (or at least the resin ones).

Unlike the sailing ships though, these are going to be on clear bases.  Given that Civil War ship operations go back and forth between rivers and deep water, I don't want to own one set of ships on ocean bases and one set on river bases.  While I realize that I could use my ocean mats for riverine scenarios, this is an area where traveling has convinced me otherwise.  After looking at various rivers during my trip to Virginia, one thing I can say is that rivers aren't blue!  Brown, green or some mixture of the two, but not blue.  I'm thinking about going with this mat for my rivers: http://cigarboxbattlestore.bigcartel.com/product/full-river-4x6-plus-230 as it would let me place land on top of it while still having a very wide river if that were to be needed for a scenario.

Below are some photos of the ironclads after they've been painted.  While I'm happy enough with how the two Monitors came out, I'm not as happy with the CSS Atlanta.  I just don't think that I did justice to all the fine details that Thoroughbred put into the model.  For the moment I'm consoling myself with the fact that the pictures show the ship at much larger than full size, thereby magnifying my sloppy brushwork.

USS Weehawken

Obligatory shot with US quarter

USS Nahant. You can see why the different markings are necessary.

Their opponent, CSS Atlanta. The flagpole is removable so she can be the
USS Atlanta as needed.

Even this ship is not particularly tall, as the quarter shot shows.

Toby Barrett at Thoroughbred was nice enough to send me a little extra with the order, which was a 2 gun earthen battery.  So, those pictures are below.

It actually looks a lot better in person.  This photo makes the color look
like dog poop brown.

I tried to make the mud around the guns a slightly different color,
to show it being stirred up by people moving around.
I think it worked pretty well.

The detail is very nice.  This flagpole is also removable.

So all that remains now is to get in a game, and see what we think of the rules I've chosen.  Right now, I am going with Sail and Steam Navies, which appears to be well thought out, while still having as much detail as the old Ironclads game by Yaquinto.

New Basing Ideas

If you've viewed this blog before, you know that I make my own bases for sailing ships.  I use a wooden base, make a water surface out of Sculpey clay, and then bake it as per the instructions.  I've never been too happy with this method, because the Sculpey contracts as it sets and this causes the wooden base to sometimes warp.  However, it was the best way I could think of to make each base look individual, which is something the Langton resin bases just didn't do to my satisfaction.  I think, though, that I might have found a better way of making bases.

While in Charlottesville VA, I went into a hobby shop named Rail Tales (railtalesva.com).  If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend dropping by, as they do more than just model railroading.  In fact, one of the owners (I think it's Nathan) used to be a naval wargamer!  While telling him about my problems with bases, he suggested that I go with Evergreen sheet styrene for the base instead.  .060 styrene is 1.5mm thick, so there will be no difference in height with my older bases.  Since I didn't want to bake styrene in the oven, he suggested the Vallejo water effects paste instead.  I tried some experiments with these this week, and I think I like the results.

This is the stuff I'm talking about.

The styrene sheets I bought are black, so I started by cutting out an appropriate size base, and then painting it in the blue I normally use.  Then, I put down a layer of the water effects, and let it dry.

So far, not very impressive (and not quite dry yet).

Since it dries clear, it doesn't really look like very much.  I then paint a few of the ridges in a gray color and then drybrush over them with the blue again.

Looking a little better.

 After the hull is glued in place, I build up the water paste around it and let that dry.  I then paint the wake with light blue and white, then hit the entire base with Vallejo gloss varnish.  The pictures below show how the new bases look with my Russian 50 gun heavy frigate.

Now that's more like it!

I think this might be the way forward for the sailing ships.  I will try and get out the mat to see how well this new base blends in with it.  I promise to add those pictures here when I do.

Getting My Hands Dirty?

My normal gaming group knows what my naval prejudices are.  I'll play a WWII game, but don't particularly care for them.  Airplanes foul up an otherwise perfectly good sea battle.  I do like WWI, but zeppelins get almost as much side-eye as airplanes do.  And don't EVEN get me started on submarines.  Torpedo boats and destroyers I can respect, but in gaming terms submarines are more like hooligans waiting to mug someone than they are a fighting ship.  Ironclads get a small amount of side-eye too.  Skulking behind armor and polluting the sky with clouds of coal smoke don't seem like a gentlemanly way to fight a battle.  My gaming friends just laugh at me, and say I'm a reactionary where naval games with technology are concerned.  My retort is that I'm a traditionalist.

Now, given the above rant I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why these turned up in the mail on Monday:

Actually, I'm not at a loss.  We played Yaquinto's Ironclads for a couple of months, and I became convinced that they could be fun after all.  So, I picked up a set of rules, and these three little beauties from Thoroughbred Miniatures.  Although they are best known for 1/600 scale models, they also do a line of 1/1200 scale ironclads as well.  As you can see, they are beautiful sculpts, with no flash and very dainty detailing.  The two monitors are Passaic class ships, which were the first ones built after the original Monitor.  The Confederate ironclad is the CSS Atlanta, so my test scenario for rules is going to be Atlanta versus Weehawken and Nahant.  I don't know if it is a "fair" scenario, but it will be more interesting than the usual Monitor/Virginia scenario and allow 2 other players to sit in on the first playtest instead of just one.

Full disclosure: I had some ironclad minis in the past, but got rid of them.  One of the things I had forgotten was just how small the ironclads are in comparison to my ships of the line.  The picture below shows these ships with the usual quarter.  As you can see, they barely come past the slotta-base holding the coin:

The 74 gunner is on a base, but I think you get the idea.

Because of their small size and low profile, I'm not sure about how to handle these.  I'm thinking about doing away with a base altogether and just putting magnetic material on the bottoms of the hulls.  Then again, putting them on a base would give the players some way to handle them other than the smokestacks.  I suspect that a base will win out in the end.

Right now, I'm in Virginia enjoying what can only be called a Civil Wargasm, and so will take more pictures of sailing ships when we get back home.  Oh, and of course the rant in the first paragraph is all in good fun.

Accessories: Dice Towers

For me, having a dice tower during a naval game actually serves a very practical purpose.  With a bunch of my ships on the table, the last thing I want are players tossing dice all around them.  I'm not saying that anyone would intentionally try to break them; in fact, I'm pretty sure a player like that wouldn't be allowed in our groups.  When the simulated shooting starts though, the die rolls get a little more rambunctious.  We all do it, and I include myself in that indictment.

Why a dice tower though?  Why not just a box, or tray?  Well, according to Wikipedia dice towers have been in use since the 4th Century CE, so it is certainly a period correct piece of equipment.  A tower also helps guarantee that the dice get some randomization to them when rolled.  The most important reason for me, anyway, is that dice towers are just cool.

My first tower was homemade, based on some plans that I found on the Internet.  It worked well, and still does, but is big and bulky.  That means that it's hard to carry with everything else.  It has given many years of faithful service, but I wanted something that is a bit easier to lug around.  The other problem is that I'm not what you'd call a 'woodworking guy,' and the tower shows that.  No one ever said anything about it, and if they had my prepared response was, "the inherent flaws of a handmade item are merely part of its charm."  I guess, if you pare it down to basics, I just wanted something a little better.  That's where Unique Dice Towers came in.

My homemade dice tower. Remember, "the inherent flaws
of a handmade item..." etc., etc.

I told you it was big.

Unique Dice Towers (their website is in the link list)  makes laser cut dice towers out of various woods, and with various decorative designs.  They also sell kits that you can build yourself, and even offer you the ability to customize a tower with your own graphics.  As I'm sometimes cheap, I went with the standard kit made out of 3mm birch plywood.  It has a separate tower and tray, so that it can be folded down for storage.  You could even store your dice in it if you wanted to.  The tower is about 5" tall, 2.6" wide and 1.6" thick, with the tray being 1.8" tall, 2.9" wide and 5.3" deep.  As built, it has no finish, but I may stain it later.

Yes, there is a Plexiglas window in the front.

The open end goes toward the back when closed, so you can
store dice inside, if so inclined.

 
 As the pictures below will show you, compared to my homemade one it is downright minuscule

.

Overall, it's a good product and I could see myself picking up another one sometime in the future.  Check them out!