Ship yards of York (5)—Thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole, Julian and Tim!

True, but not really. Actually extremely interesting and useful, so thank you to you both!

A bit of context.

Even before I have finished painting the ships that I have on the go, there has already been 'slippage'. I won't have enough ships! I'll be okay for the early actions involving one to a few per side, but once I get to May-June of 1794 I am gonna be a long way short. Sixteen ships of the line for the English and Franco-Spanish respectively will not be enough. Even with complete 're-flagging' of the latter two nation's ships.

If good sense prevailed the sensible approach would be to confined my 1/3000 ships to the small and smaller actions and to use Julian's expansive collection of 1/700 ships for the larger ones, beginning with 29th May to 1st June 1794.

Wargaming megalomania suggests doing and being able to do both. Use Julian's with fleet-scale rules and mine with a more detailed set. This could involve two goes at the same thing, or perhaps an historical re-fight with mine and an alternative history with Julian's. Or… one or more of the other permutations.

So, I am considering that I 'need' another 35 of these 1/3000 ships. This should allow enough, with some re-flagging of 74s, 80s and some of the smaller ships, for the biggest of the historic actions; Glorious First June/13 prairail, Cape St Vincent and Trafalgar. I am not ready to jump at the purchase yet, so will have a 'cooling off' period for a couple of months or so.

Enter Julian and Tim with their 'rabbit hole'.

Julian is catching up with his wargaming friends of 'forever', Tim and Nigel. On Friday he sent me an email in which he said:

Just before you 'launch' into Navwar 1/3000, Tim drew these to my attention. You may very well of course prefer the Navwar range, and enjoy the time spent building them, but I thought out of a sense of duty I would pass on the alternative just in case you might think otherwise. 

There was a link to some 1/3000 ships by 'Forged in Battle' being sold at Noble Knight games.

I had a look at them on the Noble Knight website. They said that they are cast in one piece and had pictures of the painted articles. I wondered if they are truly a single casting and what they looked like unpainted.

A quick search lead me to Forged in Battle's website. Turns out you can get these fleets for the Battle of the Nile from Noble Knight for the 'discount price' of £50.28 (plus postage), or go direct to the ‘Forged in Battle' in the UK and get them for £38.00 (plus postage)! The photos of the various fleet and squadron packs on the Forged in Battle website all depict the ships painted (of course), but I found an excellent review on this fellow's marvellous blog.

Naturellement!

If you want the impressions and opinion of a wargamer and information that is useful to wargamers, look on a wargames blog. In his post, 'Queen Catherine', the intriguing pseudonym under which he blogs, describes the ships and also provides some excellent photos of the unpainted models.

One of the excellent photos of the 1/3000 Forged in Battle' ships on 'Queen Catherine's' blog.

They look good. I really like the ‘puffed out’ sails. They are moulded as one piece, which is no problem to me as I construct and then paint the Navwar ships. The separate base looks thicker than the one provided with the Navwar models, but it would be easy to trim the lugs and to the metal base with plastic card. They are more expensive than Navwar, but not ridiculously. Detail is less than for the Navwar ships, but you get a bit more with each ship. Ratlines come with the model. These provide support for the mast, but they are solid, so some painting trickery would be required so that they don't stand out too much. A flag and pennant are also moulded with the model.

I am considering perhaps getting a ’squadron pack’ or two, to see what they are like and to mix up the look of my ships.

While searching for photos depicting unpainted versions of the Forged in Battle ships, I ‘discovered’ these:

Some of the ship pieces in the Victory II game. Photo from Board Game Geek.

They are playing pieces for an interesting looking boardgame called 'Victory II', that is a hybrid of ‘Risk' and 'Civilization’. Peter Morrison, the designer of the game, sells the pieces separately.

I am not sure what ’scale’ these plastic ships would be, but the photos of them and of the Forged in Battle ships give me inspiration to try to make my own. I reckon that I can do better than the plastics and perhaps get close to the Forged in Battle metals. While they won’t have the details of the Navwar ships, they will do and I will be happy as I will have made them—plus I’ll be able to include more sturdy masts and ‘puffy sails’!

So, at this stage, I’ll likely get a squadron pack or three of the Forged in Battle ships and will still get a pack or three (or more) of Navwar ships, but nothing like the full 35 that are ’needed’!

Meanwhile, the English fleet, as it currently stands, progresses.

Painting of English 'fleet' almost completed. While not good for military conformity, I am happy with the mix of colour schemes.

The eight 74s, with four 64s behind them.

It's not a good idea for me to photograph these too closely; they look pretty rough! The two 120-gun 1st rates closest to camera; nominally Royal George and Caledonia respectively. The yellow & black one in the next 'row' is one of the 98-104 gun 1st/2nd rates, nominally Victory.

My English ships need a bit more touching up, principally black and also a more gilt-gold to highlight the bronze-gold that I have used. I'll leave them for now though and focus on getting the Spanish and French ships to the same point. Then I can do the final touches of paint to them all before I move on to the rigging.

I have come to enjoy these Navwar ships more and more—a bit during 'building' (adding masts, bowsprits and sails)—but particularly during painting. It can be a bit of a love-hate relationship though, such as when a mast on one of the 1st/2nd rates broke this afternoon. Not a major problem though. I have had to several masts and bowsprits already, so now have a system.

I have lots of wire sitting around the place, a good store of which is in my wargames shed to use for flagpoles, pikes, lances and such. It is not needed in this case, since the staples that secure the plastic bags in which the ships arrive from Navwar are perfect for the task. How's that? They are provided with a spare mast as part of the packaging!