Boating about in mess (WW2 1:1200 coastal naval)(battle report, 18 April)

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Really excellent work that has bought them to life and made them truly ship shape!

Balm

[Wirelizard]

Really excellent work that has bought them to life and made them truly ship shape!

Thanks!

I pulled out the rest of my 1/1200 collection, all pewter from Figurehead, and added masts to all the ships that had come with pewter masts (which I'd never glued on because they are terrifyingly fragile!) and this is the result:


There's just the one larger T2 tanker left to add masts and booms to, and of course paint on all the new stuff.

I've also based up a set of five tiny Ju87 Stuka aircraft to give the Luftwaffe something else to menace surface shipping with! A Stuka in 1/1200 has a wingspan of about 12 or 13mm, in case you were wondering...


There's a couple more photos and some more details over on the blog, too: http://www.warbard.ca/2023/02/22/masts-booms-part-two/

[Admiral Hawke]

I'm really enjoying this thread and your progress. Please keep the posts coming. There aren't enough naval threads on this forum -- so thank you!

[Wirelizard]

Needed a storage solution for my slowly growing fleets of tiny boats, tiny airplanes, and not-quite-as-tiny ships, so sat down last weekend to do that.

Came up with a solution that uses the acrylic bases all my stuff is based on to hold everything in a way that should keep paint jobs, masts, and other tiny details all intact for storage and transport.

I used the box that Last Square had shipped one of my orders to me in, added dividers of mat board cut 25mm tall, then put foam strips on either side with slits cut at intervals to hold the two far ends of the bases.

My standard bases are either 40mm long by 20mm wide, or 60mm long/20mm wide; the bigger ships have bases pieced together as needed. There's usually at least a couple of mm of empty base at either end, so most of the boats are held in place without the model even touching the foam at all.



Couple more pix over on the blog, as is often the case: http://www.warbard.ca/2023/03/07/storing-the-fleets/

The airplanes are still a bit random, tucked into that lower right corner, but 1/1200 single engine planes weight basically zero so I don't think they'll damage themselves for the few months they'll be stuffed there before I come up with a proper storage & transport setup for the planes as well as my slowly expanding fleets.

[Kelly_]

Great job on the storage!  I have been thinking about a similar racking solution for terrain tiles, and wish now that I had started with acrylic bases for my ships and could do the same.

One question on the masts, are you measuring out the bristles before gluing them in, or putting a whole one in and then cutting it to size after the glue dries?

[BeneathALeadMountain]

Excellent idea for very suitable storage, that’s also recycled? Take a bow sir. That work’s brilliantly and looks perfect.

Balm

[Wirelizard]

Great job on the storage!  I have been thinking about a similar racking solution for terrain tiles, and wish now that I had started with acrylic bases for my ships and could do the same.

One question on the masts, are you measuring out the bristles before gluing them in, or putting a whole one in and then cutting it to size after the glue dries?

Put them in long then trim, although not usually "full length" as these bristles are from a floor broom so can be over six inches long.

I have a pair of light precision snips (Tamiya, I think) that work nicely to trim to final length after the superglue has set.

[Wirelizard]

So it's been all quiet on the gaming front for the last while as we've been moving into the condo we started the process of buying back at the beginning of February!

We got keys mid-March and are now moved in and mostly settled, and last night I finally got my painting/modelling desk fully functional in the new space.


Decided to start on the rest of the 1/1200 airplanes, beginning with five Bf-109 and three Me-110 for the Luftwaffe to cause mayhem in. I'm also going to repaint the Stukas I did a quick paintjob on earlier this month, as I really don't like the colour scheme they wound up with.

After the Germans are done I've got three more Beauforts/Beaufighters, five Hurricanes, and five Spitfires to expand my RAF forces in useful ways.

That'll give me a couple of strike/light bomber options for each side and a bit of fighter cover, which given these tiny airplanes are intended to be adjuncts to naval-focused gaming should be enough... until I decide to go entirely mad and do up entire air wings in 1/1200. Playing fighter games in that scale would certainly emphasize the "big sky, small airplane" thing, wouldn't it?

(realistically, I'm likely to add a few scout/recon type planes - a Condor and a Sunderland or PBY, say, for offshore naval games, as I gradually expand my forces away from purely coastal theatres.

Couple more pix over on the blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2023/03/28/the-workbench-this-week-28-march-2023/

[snitcythedog]

Let me preface this post with with a comment.  I have never been into naval warfare and most likely will never get into naval warfare.  Saying that, I just had a mill around your blog and am dam well impressed.  For a subject that has to date not interested me, your postings and photos have been top notch and kept my interest throughout.  Very nice work all around and keep it up. 

[mluther]

I have been playing Coastal Patrol for a few years in 1/600 concentrating on the eastern front.  So even less popular than other theatres!  The nice thing about TFL rules is that they are easy to adapt and modify. 
Any one in the SE USA interested in playing?  I would love to get more people involved with this really fun period and system.
Some pics from past games  Most minis are from PT Dockyard  Great service and huge selection.
Mark
   

[Wirelizard]

Let me preface this post with with a comment.  I have never been into naval warfare and most likely will never get into naval warfare.  Saying that, I just had a mill around your blog and am dam well impressed.  For a subject that has to date not interested me, your postings and photos have been top notch and kept my interest throughout.  Very nice work all around and keep it up.

Well thank you, glad you're enjoying this naval stuff! I didn't think I'd ever do naval either, and had minimal interest in WW2 as a whole a few years ago, so never say never?

I have been playing Coastal Patrol for a few years in 1/600 concentrating on the eastern front.  So even less popular than other theatres!  The nice thing about TFL rules is that they are easy to adapt and modify. 

Very nice! As far as I can tell, nobody is currently doing Soviet ships smaller than destroyers in 1/1200 and there's darn few of those. No G5 MTBs, none of the other Soviet boats and landing barges and such in my current scale of choice. It's unfortunate, because the Soviets had some unique equipment and the mix of stuff on the Axis side, especially in the Black Sea, was also quite different than what you saw in the larger theatres. (I think it was the Bulgarians who started the war with half a dozen British Vosper MTB... on the Axis side!)

If someone started doing Soviet coastal forces in 1/1200 in either pewter/resin or as 3d prints/STLs I'd snag them immediately to give my Germans some variety.

The Luftwaffe airplanes I mentioned in my last post are all based up, priming is delayed because I've managed to clog the nozzle on my white primer rattlecan again! The nozzle is currently sitting in acetone but I might need to buy another can of the same paint to get a clean working nozzle and then just switch it back and forth as needed. Frustrating, and the Krylon primer cans seem more prone to clogging their nozzles than other random spraypaint brands.

I'll also be running a Kreigsmarine S-boat attack on a British coastal convoy at the Trumpeter Salute 2023 game convention in about two weeks, so I need to do up ship record cards for that and get at least one test game in - planning on running a Hunt-class DE for the RN with radar and a gun director station, neither of which we've ever played with before, so a test scenario seems in order!

[Wirelizard]

When you have tiny airplanes, you are clearly in need of appropriately tiny decals for them!

A couple years ago now I got a 4"x2.5" sheet of custom-printed waterslide decals from Misc Minis for my 1/1200 project, saw that they were awesome, and promptly put them away in the dreaded 'safe place' and did absolutely nothing to them.

Well, this morning I pulled them out (they got found while packing for our recent move!) and applied them to some of my Luftwaffe aircraft. They do indeed look awesome, although decals these tiny are really, really fiddly to deal with - fine-tip tweezers and a sewing needle were the tools of choice.



That's a 1/1200 Ju88 Stuka with a 12mm wingspan sporting a Luftwaffe cross just over 1mm across, and awaiting the second one on the other wing.

Couple more pix, as usual, over on the blog: http://www.warbard.ca/2023/04/08/decals-for-1-1200-miniatures/

[Wirelizard]

This last weekend I ran a game of a Kreigsmarine S-boat attack on a British coastal convoy one dark night sometime in ~1942.

The British were sheparding a mixed convoy along the coast including a huge ocean-going freighter that dwarfed the tiny coastal freighters and escorts. A pair of M/S trawlers were supplemented by one of the brand-new Hunt-class Destroyer Escorts, pride of the escort fleets and eager to destroy German raiders!

The Germans had a quartet of Schnellboote and started sneaking in at moderate speed, but were spotted by the Hunt DE and one of the S-boots was clobbered hard by a couple of shells at long range very early, crippling it badly.

The other three S-boats pressed inward, and the Hunt DE, HMS Atherstone, came out to meet them. Lucky gunfire from one Sboat crippled the Atherstone's driveshafts and before her crew could do anything, a pair of torpedoes slammed into her and sent her down into the mud.

The two RN trawlers did their heroic best to protect their charges but the huge ocean-going freighter, the Fort Concord, also collected a pair of torpedoes into her flank and she was sinking fast as the Schnellboote roared off into the dark.

A solid German victory, one crippled but still moving (barely!) S-boat for a brand-new Hunt DE and a rare prize for the S-boats, an entire ocean-going freighter!

We had four German players, one per S-boat, and two folks running the convoy between them, and everyone agreed it was a good game.

[Joelegan]

Just joined and good to see some coastal forces in action.  I too have a Russian coastal fleet but can't find a set of rules.  I tried cruel seas, narrow seas and coastal  patrol.  What mods have you made to coastal patrol?
Thanks

Joe

[mluther]

I haven't made really any mods to Coastal Patrol.  I do have several books that help with specifics and boat stats  including the recent Warships of the Soviet Fleets 1939-1945, vol 1 and 2.  I think 3 is just now coming out.  The PT Dockyard site has some info and the owner is also a great source of info.
Mark