I am about to begin new models for Cruel Seas by Warlord. What should be next?
The E Boat tender Tzingtau:
Or a TypVIIC and IX german U Boat:
Just leave a comment below. The Ship with the most votes will be done first!
I did the mould and cast the first examples of the MS Louisa coastal freighter / collier.
I did three different ones.
The collier version loaded with coal:
The version with a load of crates and boxes:
And a version loaded with wood:
Here is a size comparison with an E boat by warlord:
More pictures when I finished painting them up. Next version will be a gun carrier.
This is the start of a steam ship liner. It is a generic ship and based on a lot of contemporary pictures.
I wanted to reuse the hull of the S.S. Bellota to safe me from doing a new hull and mould. should be more cost-effective this way. As you can see I work with o core of extruded polystyrene clad with paper for detailing. When you paint that later on with a diluted PVA it gets rock solid.
Here are a few more pictures:
More to come
The paper model of the Hunt class destroyer i used to build my resin version from came with a little coastal frighter. A motor ship running with a Diesel engine. As I had a bit of time in between bigger projects I decided to build that model in 6mm for Cruel Seas ,too.
Here are the pictures of the nearly finished build.
She is nearly as long as a S Boat ( E boat) but wider.
I will probably do the molds next week.
Here is the latest steam ship I finished . It is the loaded version of the SS Bellota.
Here are all the ships i did recently for Cruel Seas , by Warlord Games, together with a trawler and a Fairmile D ( both from Warlord)
Next will be a coastal collier, used in the east coast convoys, and a liner, wich could be used as a troop ship.
For a x mas present to myself I got the cruel seas starter box. I just finished painting the first miniatures for the game. The miniatures are made from plastic ( S-boats and Vospers) the bigger ships like the coastal tanker are made from resin and metal. Included in the starter box are the torpedo markers and everything else you need to play. The rules are quite nice and give a very fast paced game. Alas in the first edition there were many mistakes in the rulebook so that warlord published grata 14 days after release of the game. Despite these problems at the start the game is really good. I like it and will play it a lot. There are some issues with torpedo shooting but nothing wich can’t be tweaked if not liked as written.
I will write a run through the rules later.
Here are the miniatures. I got the starter and the tanker model. As said above the tanker is resin and metal the other boats are plastic as are the torpedo markers.
Here is the tanker model:
I built it strait out of the box. If I built it again I would replace the metal masts with brass wire ones for sturdiness. It is a nice little coastal tanker so don’t expect a ocean going ship it is a smallish coastal steamer. But that is the kind of ship you would expect to find as prey by the S boats or vospers in the channel.
Next up the two Vospers. There are two different Vosper versions in the basic game. A later war version with 4 torpedo tubes and an early version with 2 torpedo tubes.
The masts are quite thick , but I think these is to keep them from braking when gaming with them. at least these are wargaming models so have to be more sturdy then scale models. I think that I will replace the plastic masts with brass wire ones when I build my other boats. If you look closely at the bridge of the two tube Vosper boat you can see some crew in the bridge area. They are from the tanker model.
Next up is the S 38 Schnellboot.
Again the boat is build strait out of the box with the addition of brass fotoetched railings and some Tamya crew figures. The railing is 1/350 scale ( the boats are 1/300 scale) but i think it fits quite nicely. The crew figures instead are only 2 dimensional ones I wouldn’t use them again. I will wait for the warlord metal figures and replace them.
Here is the S100 Schnellboot with armored bridge.
Again with fotoetched railing and to be exchanged Tamya crew figures. The Splash markers are resin casts done by myself. I didn’t like the ones in the starter box. By the way the gaming mat is by Deepcut studio.
Here are some shots of a test game of the scenario which will be played at this years Kiepencon in Münster Germany .
Torpedo hit on the Tanker:
Marker done by me in resin.
Altogether a wonderful game and nice miniatures will definitely do more here. The only thing missing is more coastal cargo vessels . I will probably scratch and cast some in the near future to have convoys with more ships.
First up will be a former northsea island steamer . The Rheinland build in the 1920. So stay tuned!
Just to let you know why I haven’t posted a lot in the last weeks, I rather had a lot to do since the beginning of January as I will do participation games with the cruel seas set at Kiepencon on the 27th of January .
You can read more about the Kiepencon here.
The game is called sink the tanker and is one of the scenarios from the rulebook. As an incentive Warlord Games will sponsor a boat model for every participant in the games ( as long as stocks last)!
So hope to see you there!
The venue is:
La Vie Treffpunkt, Dieckmannstraße 127, 48161 Münster Gievenbeck
The convention lasts from 10:00 to 18:00 ( 10:00am to 6pm)
Pictures of the models I am working on at the moment to follow
Rhine in Flames is the name of the annual fireworks displays that take place at different times at several sections of the Middle Rhine. Brightly lit passenger ships cruise in convoys at night across the river to allow their guests to look at the entire firework as it is ignited. At the event Rhine in Flames in St. Goar and St. Goarshausen the convoy does not move, but the ships are laid during the fireworks between Burg Maus and Rheinfels Castle. Along the riverside will be held wine festivals which are visited each year by hundreds of thousands of spectators. The largest fireworks display in the context of “Rhine in Flames” takes place every year on the second Saturday in August in Koblenz.
The picture above shows you what it looks like. Now you probably think what this has to do with wargaming. To tell the truth nothing… But it has something to do with terrain building. A very good friend of us is turning 50 this year and we and our friends wanted to invite him to St. Goarshausen to see the “Rhine on fire” festival. So we needed something to present to him at his birthday, which shows were we will go for the birthday celebration. Therefore I build a terrain piece showing the rhine on fire festival in 6mm. This is the story how it was build:
Above you see pictures of the base. I used a MDF piece roughly A4 sized and built up the river bed and the hills from Styrodur and Styropor. The rocky pieces are made from cork bark chips. The buildings were individual cut from Styrodur. Everything was glued with a hot glue gun and wood glue like Elmers. the coin is there as a size comparison .
Next I added filler round the cork bark and to fill in spaces between the Styropor pieces.
Then sand and grit was glued on with Elmers wood glue. As can be seen above.
Then I needed ships a lot of them ! Therefore I build some out of styrodur and made moulds to cast some more:
Above you see the process of mouldmaking and casting the ships. The mold were made from thermoplastic plastic. You heat it up in hot water ( see the picture of the pot) it gets very flexible then and you just press the master into the hot plastic and let it cool down. When cool you can pull the master out and fill in green stuff or as in this case grey matter ( another softer 2 component epoxy putty). The grey ships are the casts.
Then I needed the fireworks. I made them from wire and steel wool . The steel wool was soaked in white glue to fix it all together.
The next step was to add woods to the bare hills. This is just clump foliage from Woodland scenics.
Then I fixed the fireworks to the terrain piece and glued the ships on.
Now night ( black primer) came. The complete piece was sprayed with an airbrush in black and successive lighter grey shades to simulate nighttime:
The fireworks were then painted silver. The complete following painting was done by brush.
Next step was to cooler in lighting of the houses the church tower and the castle:
As you can see I also painted in the reflections of the lighting on the river like the lights of the ships , the lighthouse at the harbor and the castle.
Then I painted the fireworks and the reflections of the fireworks:
The last step was to give the river a coat of gloss varnish to simulate the water:
I think it looks a bit like the picture I have shown you at the start of the article. At least I think as a voucher for a weekend at the Rhine it does the trick.
What do you think!?
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