Ships Ahoy!

Five years or so ago when we where playing LOTHS I started collecting toy ships to use in those games. I rather quickly amassed a sizable fleet of 5 ships and 2 boats for pirate gaming. I did this through that vile money pit ebay. Now I never actually got around to converting any of these toys for wargaming so I have finally begun to do so. I have two playmobil ships I bought used off of ebay they are very large but I like that their decks are wide and allow for many miniatures at a time. The down side of playmobil ships is that they need a lot of work to make them look the right scale, they are very large.

This is the first of my playmobil ships, playmobil calls it a schooner but with a keel length of  14 1/2" it will have to be a 3 master to look in scale. Here is a playmobil advert photo of this ship with the masts on 14 1/2" is much to big for a 28mm schooner. I stripped it of masts and clipped off various knobs and protrusions. I also remove the screws because they weren't flush with the deck.

The playmobil ships have wheels on the bottom of the hulls for the kiddies so the first order of business was to cut off the bottom of the hull off so it would have a proper waterline. This was done with a double toothed hand saw for cutting wood.

I think the gunwale height in comparison to this 8" long 28mm brig looks correct now. The 8'' long 2 mast plastic ship is one of two that came in a board game called Weapons & Warriors Pirate Battle Game where you use cannons that shot little rubber balls to knock down your enemy's figures.

I learned about this OOP game through the LOTSH yahoo group back in the days when yahoo groups where the thing for wargamers on the internet. As you can see from the picture above a complete game nets you 2 ships, 2 boats, a round tower, 12 cannon, treasure chests, some nice palm trees and a bunch of 28mm plastic pirates. The round bases of the pirate figures are 25mm in diameter which makes these ships the perfect size.

Turn of the Century 1900 French Advertising Posters

Here are some free domain French Advertising posters from the early 1900's I received from Dover Publishing. Dover makes a series of clip art books for graphic artists you can find their catalog here.
Here are two sheets of adverts you can copy and print to brighten your terrain.

 

A Curious Award and a Cumbrous Response

I have had the curious honor of being awarded the Liebster Award by Simon Quinton of brummies wargaming blog. The Liebster Award seems to be both an honor and a bit of a curse as its very much like a old school chain letter. After much laborious thought I've come to the conclusion that I can go so far as to answer Simon's curious questions. They are as follows:

1) What is your worst habit?

Following social conventions, I have manners and I'm polite but...

2)  What is your favorite food?

Pasta, you can make a different meal with it every night.

3) Name a book you have read more than once and why? 

The Silmarillion the why is self explanatory.

 

4)  What is your best wargaming moment?

This happened in a game of LOHS I had bought the Foundry Treasure Island set which came with a lovely figure of "young Jim Hawkins" sculpted by the Perry Bros. I decided to use him as a midshipman in my Royal Naval crew. Lunatic R. conceived an irrational hatred of this figure dubbed "Young Jim" he took every opportunity to due poor "Young Jim" an injury but every effort in that regard failed. During "Young Jim's" 5th adventure I moved him past a stone tower packed with cutthroats I though I had the cutthroats pinned down by several marines who had been firing on them. But as soon as they saw Young Jim they burst out of the tower to attack him. No less than 4 vile cutthroats ran up towards Jim, formed a ragged skirmish line and fired their pistols at him. Surprisingly Jim survived this without a wound so he ran for cover on a rocky hill with the cutthroats in hot pursuit. The marines who thought they had the cutthroats pinned ran to Young Jim's rescue a mighty melee ensued where Young Jim armed with a single pistol dispatched a Cutthroat. He then survived 3 furious rounds of hand to hand with the cutthroats, the marines supported him with their bayonets. Young Jim survived and managed to drive of the Pirates.

5) What is your worst wargaming moment?

First time I played Infinity I had a 10 model unit and I wanted to move to cover in the middle of the table but I had to cross an open are to get there.  The enemy had only one model who could cover that open space so I figured if I charged 5 models in a rush he would get them all. Wrong! He gave all his orders to that one model and wiped out have my force in the first turn!

6) Who is your book/movie/game character and why?

This is rather difficult but I would have to say Solomon Kane. The elemental fury of Conan wrapped in a English Puritanical shell that's what I like.

7) If you were trapped on an desert island if you could have one companion who would it be?

This seems to be something people actually think about or at least ask in long lists of questions. I'll never actually given this any thought even in passing.

8) What is your all time favorite movie?

Bladerunner

9)  If there was any activity you've always wanted to do but never got around to doing what would it be? 

At one point Iaido.

10)  Where is your favorite holiday destination?

London

11)  What is your favorite color?

Black, and yes 11 is one too many questions.

Do not fear gentle Bloggers I have no intention of creating 11 questions and then inflicting them upon 11 bloggers. What is with the number 11 anyway? It has no symbolic significance that I know of.

Nice questions Simon.

Pirate Loot or a Pile of Ospreys

I'm happy to report that I've gotten a hold of a pile of Pirate related Osprey books. One might think that with so many periods to cover Osprey Publishing would confine such a minor subject like pirates to a single book one would be wrong! The book pictured above covers the "Golden Age" of piracy that is the early 18th Century just after the War of the Spanish Succession.

This book covers the mid to late 17th Century's pirate activity mostly against the Spanish.

Thus book begins during the War of Jenkin's Ear all the way through the Napoleonic Wars. Though this books centers more on the state sanctioned privateers with their purpose built ships than it does on actual pirates.One would think these three books have thoroughly covered all there is to know about pirates again one would be wrong.

There are many pictures of period ships with figures to scale in this book its very helpful for anyone trying to convert ships like myself.

 Finally the pirate wargamer will find these last two titles very useful.

Well that's it for my new pirate reference next week I"ll start chronicling my efforts to convert my fleet of toy ships & boats.

RSquared Zombie Horde contest

RSquared Studios the small miniatures manufacture of zombie and scary garden gnome miniatures is having a contest! A zombie horde picture contest to be exact. That's right submit photos of your zombie horde and win zombie miniatures!!!
See full contest details here.

I would like to thank Bob Kinnear and his zombie blog for pointing this out to me.

Happy Seppuku Base Stamps

Back in April of last year I did a quick tutorial showing how I made my cobblestone bases using putty and a home made stamp. The tutorial can be found here. Several people asked me where could they get a stamp? Well, now I know just where to go to get one happyseppuku.com. This little company is producing durable silicon rubber stamps in all sorts of textures and they are large enough to allow you to stamp several bases at once. I made my stamp too small for mass base stamping I can only fit 2 bases on it at a time which is an irritating time drag. You'll find downloadable PDF instructions on using their stamps on their site and links to their 2 youtube videos under "videos" on their website. Normally I would insert them here on the blog post but blogger isn't recognizing the youtube videos. This issue is becoming a regular problem with blogger these days.

 I managed to upload the video from my computer.

Most Imperssive Victorian Building Near Me

This is a belated reply to Solo Wargaming's challenge (the challenge can be found here, and Legatus' reply can be found here.) to show the most impressive Victorian building near you. I have chosen my favorite museum the Metropolitan Museum of Art known to locals as "the Met". The Met is the largest art museum in American and the 10th largest in the world.

From the balcony in the main entrance foyer. 

The sculpture garden, this is a latter edition to the building you can see the original buildings exterior wall on the left.

 Part of the main exhibit hall at night despite the picture the museum is well lit at night it loses at 10pm 6 days a week.

The Arms & Armor wing holds the largest collection of medieval arms in America and the largest collection of samurai swords of anywhere in the world outside of Japan.

American works of art like this gold inlay-ed colt revolver from 1857 are well represented in the Met's collecion.