HMS Bienfaisant

   A project that I need to get better at working on is my Battle of Dogger Bank (1781) navies. I'm always really pleased with the ships I finish for this project and the box they are stored in is something I can happily just sit and stare at*, but the process of rigging the ship is an ordeal if you aren't in the right frame of time.

*although my mate Neil's ones are a work of art that put mine to serious shame

   Every ship I've painted for this project, so far, has been for the Dutch navy, this is the first ship for the British, HMS Bienfaisant, a 64 gun ship of the line captured from the French.

   I had a plan to try and do a ship a month this year to just keep them slowly trickling out, its now march and this is the first, so that's going well.

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Is That Hobby I See?

    In the past week or so I've managed to start sneaking in the odd bit of painting time. I'm not going to promise that I am now painting again, but hopefully this is where I can start slowly getting models back through my system and onto the table*.

*Although, I appreciate with the backlog posts there hasn't really been a gap

   The first thing up is the last thing I painted** and is a Langton Miniatures Dutch 1:1200 scale 68 gun ship of the line - Cerberus. I've managed to get a couple of Wednesdays in a row out gaming, while the first one was a bit of a last minute job, the second was planned a week in advance so I gave my mate Neil a shout about organising a game and he decided that we needed to get our 1:1200 Napoleonic fleets onto the table again - something I whole heartedly agreed with - link to club post. This then reminded me that I had a ship that was painted and just waiting on it's time to be rigged, so I spent a few hours on Saturday, while my son was at a birthday party, with a film on in the background and rigging a ship.

**because obviously

   The next thing I painted up was a recent purchase. My brother and me are still trying to organise more games of Bolt Action and there is a risk the next gaming day might be booked in - so I started looking at lists and realised my winter Germans didn't actually come to a full 1000 point army. A quick order later and I had a team to fill in those last few points and some options for later on. The teams included are; Panzerschreck, flame thrower and sniper. I wanted the Panzerschreck, but the sniper will be equally as useful.

   I still have half a mind of buying another squad or two, or platoon, for this army as it's pretty fun to paint and it's out grown it's current box anyway . . .

   Lastly, and a surprise late entry, is a Chaos Space Marine Venomcrawler. I had a few hours spare while I was doing something else, so I just kept doing a single colour in-between jobs until I had a finished figure in front of me that I hadn't planned. I've been reading a bit of 40k and 30k stuff recently and this was my concession to get it out of my system without spending any money.

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Playing with Ratlines

    In a slight break to the promised schedule I have a quick post on my Dutch 1:1200 fleet. After finishing all the models I had in my backlog for this project, I knew adding a few more ships at some point soon would definitely be on the cards and I found a gap in my outgoings to squeeze an order in*, which arrived early last week.

*Thanks to Carol for correcting my order, again

   While the order includes extra ships to bulk up my fleet in a few different ways, the big thing that I have added to this order was Ratlines for all my ships - old and new - and it is at this point I want to say, Real friends don't recommend ratlines to their mates, naming no names, Neil. It is worth saying before I accidently tank the Langtons sales, the brass ratlines they sell are gorgeous but its just one more fiddly detail to do on a model that would test the patience of even the more laid back stoner. 

   The first ship to be finished and receive it's ratlines is the Hercules a 64 gun Dutch ship.

   I also added some pinnaces and rowboats to the order** that will get added to the painting desk in batches over time. I'm not sure what I plan to use them for, but I have no regrets.

**Somewhere a Neil is calling me a stupid boy . . .

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The Dutch Navy At War

After about a month of little to no hobby I finally managed to finish a project* and get a game in using them, in this case, my 1:1200 Dutch fleet. Like I said in my last posts, tis fleet has been on the backburner for so long that it had stopped being funny, so getting started was a brilliant feeling. I got to the point that I was really enjoying knowing I had an afternoon rigging a ship, which is something I didn't think was possible. So the last ships I needed to finish were: 

 *for the moment 

The three 54 gun ships

The correct ship with this name (I noticed that I had misnamed a 64 gun ship by accident)

The last pair of ships.

Hofnor is the only non-historical name in this fleet - named after a schooner (Jestor) in the Alan Lawrie stories I'm reading at the sec.

   Then last week, I headed round my mate Neil's house one evening to give my fleet a baptism in fire. My fleet was slightly bigger than Neil's British, but his fleet were generally heavier ship for ship, so it made for an interesting game. We used his Quick Play Naval Rules for the engagement as they feel like an age of sail battle without bogging you down with rules.

I messed up my deployment badly, so spent the first turn trying to get my ships into the semblance of an order of battle, before we hit each other at the start of turn 2.

It was first blood to HMS Captain (74) firing on HNLMS Admiraal de Ruijter (68) but she was soon ganged up on by both HNLMS Admiraal de Ruijter (68) as she pulled past and HNLMS Erfprins. With little HNLMS Ajax (24) getting a cheeky raid in before learning why a small ship shouldn't fire on their betters.

We ended the game on a draw as both fleets were about to begin manoeuvring for their second go past. Thanks again, Neil, for the game, I really enjoyed myself.

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Almost a Fleet

  This is by far one of the weirdest projects I think I have ever done, it's given me the most frustration that a relaxing hobby has ever managed but the most satisfaction with a finished model, it's going to be a slow project but I'd quite like to get it finished before we are allowed out to play again (assuming July at some point?), but we are making progress towards that goal.

   This post is for the two 68 gun ships in the fleet and the last two of the first order I placed all those years ago. Again, the models are from Langton and these are the two ships that had suffered the most in the years of moving between shelves and boxes with multiple broken masts.



Admiraal de Ruijter*

Admiraal Piet Hein

*I'd appreciate it if you could ignore the upside down pennant . . .

   The Two ships from the last Dutch navy post have both been given their ensigns, pennants and names too, which means I am free to start on my next batch of ships.

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Fledgling Navy

   This isn't a project I thought I would be blogging about as it's at least 6 years old and was very much in my 'never going to happen pile', but lets start at the beginning. My mate Neil at my gaming club runs a 1:1200 naval game once every few months with his beautiful French and British Langton Fleets (and has recently added a Spanish fleet) and while I am terrible at the game, I have always been jealous of his collections. I want to say it was after the first game we played I decided I was going to buy my own fleet, because how hard could it be* and an order to Langton later and I was the proud owner of 4 Dutch 1:1200 ships.

   I duly painted them, stuck the masts into the hulls and then looked at the rigging, decided it was well above my abilities and put them away. In the years that followed I broke masts, scratched them up and decided the project was so dead that it was only laziness stopping them just being thrown away.

   Then this week I started reading a fictional naval series following a British officer called Alan Lewrie (as you might be able to see on the right if I'm still reading one) and it got me thinking again. I spent one evening following the rigging guide on the Dutch 74 and found that I could rig a ship. The end result is nowhere as nice as Neil's attempts but I then spent days afterwards going back into my man cave to pick the ship up and have another look.

*So naïve 

The first two ships in all their glory - they just need names on their bases and ensigns (which are on order).

The Admiraal Generaal - Dutch 74 

The Ajax - Dutch 24

The other two ships have been repaired as they were the worst damaged and are awaiting their rigging, which should be done within the next few days and I have 4 more ships on order. I'm really looking forward to getting these on the table.

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