Cheetor's Man O' War: The Seventh Sons 01/09/18

[Sir_Theo]

This looks amazing. Is the sea surface painted? ...painted cloth? ...a lucky find at a fabric store?

// Wonders if some of the smaller ships from Uncharted Seas could be press ganged into service for MoW.  //

The ships sold by Ral Partha Europe for 'Empires-the miniatures boardgame' are a fairly good matxh for Man O War

[cheetor]

Thanks for all of the encouraging feedback everyone   Man O' War seems to have a relatively small number of a certain type of enthusiastic fan.  It is fun digging around in the games 1990s peculiarity.

I used to love the way they looked like the sea monsters on old maps. 

...and...

I never connected the models with the classic map illustrations before!

The map illustration element only became clear to me during the prep and painting processes.  It really adds a little cultural capital to miniatures that... well... maybe were consigned to the "WTF?!" file when first seen.

“Michael Bay”? 

Cracking painting! I’ve still got a dark elf fleet somewhere, unpainted.

My wife suggested the terrain set name... it's either just terrible or so bad that it's slightly good.  No going back now regardless.

You would do a beautiful job on your Dark Elves Andy.

I reckon that the Dark Elves could be fun to paint rapidly, based on my experience painting the Sea Dragon monster (below).  Once assembled and base coated, I reckon that I could knock out a fleet in a few days.  Tempting. 

Very nice. I like the highlighting on the water elemental. Amazing!

The Water Elemental was probably the easiest model to paint of the lot as it happens   Apart from adding a couple of green washes to create a little distinction between it's features, the Elemental was just painted the same way as the bases.  Roughly this way, from the Dreadfleet painting guide in the White Dwarf that came out in 2011:

I think it’s the battle mat that comes with the GW Dreadfleet game.

Yup.

The ships sold by Ral Partha Europe for 'Empires-the miniatures boardgame' are a fairly good matxh for Man O War

I had not seen those before, they look promising Sir Theo.  I will check them out.  Do you have/know of any images that show the ships alongside MoW vessels?

[cheetor]

I finished the other MoW monsters, gotta deadliest catch 'em all! 



Just like the five MoW Monsters of the Sea and the three Dreadfleet sea monsters, the "Beasts of the Deep" were a lot of fun to paint.  I planned the paint schemes slightly less than I normally would and just got stuck in.  I think that I got away with it.  There are more photos and some blather in the blog post if anyone is inclined.



Lastly, that's all twelve of my sea monsters.  With the terrain and the monsters all painted and ready to go, its finally time to tackle some ships.

[Suber]

You made an amazing work on all of them The colour choices are really inspiring.

[Sir_Theo]

I had not seen those before, they look promising Sir Theo.  I will check them out.  Do you have/know of any images that show the ships alongside MoW vessels?

I cant seem to find any. I  do own both but I think all my Mow stuff is in storage ! They are a little smaller amd dont mix particularly well within the same fleet but an entire Dwarf fleet, for example, would work fine on a table against GW ships. I like the Orc ships in particular but they are perhaps a little more goblin than orcs!

[horridperson]

Beautiful collection of models.  They epitomize the trap that makes you want tolearn more about games.  Well done.

[beefcake]

Thanks for that tutorial pic. I must get a water elemental myself now!

[jetengine]

Wonderful

[Dentatus]

Those are absolutely wonderful.

[Bloggard]

the painting of the monsters and terrain is exquisite.

[cheetor]

Again, thanks for the encouraging feedback everyone.  The project has been fun and pleasantly rewarding so far.

I cant seem to find any. I  do own both but I think all my Mow stuff is in storage ! They are a little smaller amd dont mix particularly well within the same fleet but an entire Dwarf fleet, for example, would work fine on a table against GW ships. I like the Orc ships in particular but they are perhaps a little more goblin than orcs!

Good info Sir_Theo, thanks.  I like the idea of some goblin crewed ships in a force, even if they are rules mechanically identical to existing MoW Orc fleet ships.  I may look into it at a future point.

[DivisMal]

Amazing colors on those! Really makes me wish to dig out my old Man‘o‘War stuff.

[steders]

Fantastic. I've got dreadfleet still in its box, I'll have to have a look at it. Those terrain bits/monsters look brilliant, really lovely paint job. Don't bother with ships just go for it with the monsters!
Wasn't ManOwar similar in gameplay to Epic at the time, really crunchy rules. I'm sure I played it once and felt disappointed by the faffy aspect of it. More than a handfull of ships would take a week to play. (Epic turned into a nightmare)

[cheetor]

Those terrain bits/monsters look brilliant, really lovely paint job. Don't bother with ships just go for it with the monsters!

Thanks

I like most of the Dreadfleet ships too, in particular the mecha-squid submersible "Black Kraken" and the hollowed out sea monster corpse that the skaven hang out in, the Skabrous.  I will definitely be adding some of them as time goes on. 
But a MoW fleet first.

The DF terrain is really nice, definitely something that should be in any MoW players collection.  Dreadfleet is inexpensive to pick up too, and easily worth it for the terrain alone.

Wasn't ManOwar similar in gameplay to Epic at the time, really crunchy rules. I'm sure I played it once and felt disappointed by the faffy aspect of it. More than a handfull of ships would take a week to play. (Epic turned into a nightmare)

MoW is a little like playing second ed Epic, exclusively with Titan and knights (no infantry and tanks). 

The ship templates are ludicrously huge, taking up about 1/3 of the table space: huge faff.  Online fans have made playing card sized ship records that can be sleeved or laminated and used with dry erase pens instead.  I think that is likely to help.

The MoW rules are surprisingly modern in places (hit location integration with roll to hit feels like a more modern streamlined boardgame mechanic) while still having some of the daft but potentially quite entertaining rules for things like critical hits that characterised GW games around then.

I'm hoping that MoW hits a sweet spot for my gaming group. With several of us painting MoW fleets right now, I am hopeful that the time invested by the players in their ships etc will give us a springboard into some pleasingly entertaining, shenanigans filled games.  Fingers crossed... and if it doesn't work out then we will find another rule set that will do the trick with the same models.

[thenamelessdead]

Always loved those models.