Chibi Maru Battleship

Here's a model I actually finished a few months ago.  It's one of Fujimi's Chibi Maru warship series, depicting capital ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy in cartoon style. This particular kit represents the battleship Hiei which was sunk near Guadalcanal in 1942.  After seeing these posted on Bob Cordery's Wargaming Miscellany blog, I was tempted to try one and ordered from eBay.  The kit shipped from Japan fairly quickly and was reasonably priced when you consider what plastic models cost these days.

How was the build ?  Pretty straightforward.  All instructions with Japanese text of course, but as the plans are a series of numbered schematics, it wasn't difficult to assemble.

This is designed as a snap together kit so theoretically no glue needed.  However, I found some of the tolerances tight indeed which no doubt ensures pieces don't fall off once assembled, but proved difficult to force into place.  Thus I think a child would struggle to build this and in straining to insert certain pieces, one runs the risk of some small part flying off the tweezers or pliers to disappear in some far corner of the room or carpet pile. As I went along, I found myself increasingly shaving parts for an easier fit and relying on glue to hold things together.

How does she look ?  Not too bad. It's a simple brush job in Vallejo # 992 Neutral Gray. Somewhat deceptive paint as it dries darker than it looks in the bottle.  The kit also has stickers for things like bridge windows and wooden decks but for the most part I didn't use them for anything more than the flag.  I didn't bother painting the lower hull.  They make photo etch parts for many of these kits although that begs the question, how much detail really needs to be lavished on a tubby toy-like battleship ?

So what's next for me in this series ?  Nothing really.  You know, if Fujimi had designed these in relative scale to each other and issued a USN counterpart to do battle with, they might have some wargaming application.  As it stands now, the kit is a novelty piece although I did enjoy the change of pace in building something like this.

Strategy & Tactics Magazine # 287

 

No doubt most of us started off playing board games. I was no exception.  My dad was bitten hard by the Avalon Hill wargaming bug in the late '50's.  Many is the time I was drafted for duty as cannon fodder in Tactics II when I would have rather been outdoors playing baseball.  But some of Dad's enthusiams eventually rubbed off on me. 

Up until the last few years, I continued the occasional board game purchase when I really have no opponents or can't muster the enthusiasm to actually set things up and have a go at playing a two-player game in ad hoc solitaire fashion.  For instance, I have a beautiful game Age of Conan with all the pieces still in plastic bags.  That was about the last as I wised up and stopped buying games that I have little probability of actually playing. But, this upcoming issue of S&T has really piqued my interest. 

Why ? Solitiare !  This will be S&T's second version some may recall the old Flight of the Goeben in S&T #21. It was subsequently released as an SPI board game in 1970.  This new game looks quite enticing:

The thought of being able to have another go at the enthralling story of the Goeben in solitaire mode makes it look as if I'll have to break my self-imposed ban on buying more board games. Also there could be some WW1 Mediterranean campaign potential in this map, as well as the possibility of playing out the battles with ship models.

Still plugging away at the Deetail knights. I took a short vacation this earlier this week so painting time has been a bit limited.

WTJ Armored Cruisers - WK Project # 8

Here's a couple of armored cruisers which I recently finished.  First up is the Infanta Maria Teresa which was sunk by the US navy in 1898, will be rechristened for the navy of Vavarde in the game.  I have to say that WTJ has done a great job with these 1/1500, but I think this particular model is not quite a home run, the low freeboard gives her kind of a squashed look, at least to my eyes.

 

Then again, perhaps it's accurate, but it seems to me that a small model looks better off exaggerating the freeboard on the high side over appearing to ride low in the water. In any case, I shimmed the hull with a base of 0.5mm styrene.

Next we have a Gloire class armored cruiser.  As squat and ungainly as a lot of the French pre-dreads look to modern viewers, the same features on a hull stretched to armored cruiser proportions make for a considerably more elegant ship.  I use mostly Vallejo acrylic paints for these ships.

I am now working on soldiers at the moment and hope to have something to show for it before too long.

1/1500 WTJ Ships - WK Project #6

Having decided upon 1/1500 as the scale of choice, let's look at a couple of examples.  As you can see in the top photo, the WTJ Rapid Prototype processed ships are cast in a semi-transparent plastic.  Of course they have no top masts, but they either already have existing holes ready for simple installation, and if not, the larger size makes them robust enough for drilling without fear of ruining anything.  They do not come with secondary (or tertiary) casemate guns, a sensible design choice given the chances of breakage while prepping the hull.  You can drill holes and install these guns if so desired.

First up, the an Iowa class battleship for my Federation (quasi-US) navy.  I installed the mast and one more fighting top. I don't do spars, but no reason you couldn't.

And the Borodino for my surrogate "Russian" navy.  Installed masts with fighting tops.

 

Once I finalize all the countries (grist for another post on map progress), my plan is to label the ships with their fictional names and imagi-nation flags, securing this with removable tape. Underneath the base I'll write the real world nationality and ship class.  In that way, the ships can easily be converted back to their historical identities as for the most part, I'm not getting too fanciful with the paint jobs.

Kudos to WTJ for a job well done on these ships.      

1/1800 Ships

The helping hand of Poseidon

In the previous post, I indicated that I had made a miscalculation on the scale of ships to be used for my imagi-nations project.  That is, the 1/1800 ships don't match my existing BMC fleet. For example, armored cruisers in comparison. 

But, since I have the 1/1800 samples, let's at least see what we've got here.   Shapeways is an option if you like the 1900 era in this scale. Of course, the A&A War at Sea tie-in is at play for the Shapeways ships.  So as you might expect, WW2 is much in evidence, as well as some very nice what-if ships for refighting scenarios from the Bywater novel, The Great Pacific War.  But, there are ships for the Spanish-American War.  Here we have a good portion of the Spanish fleet on a sprue.

I painted the Brooklyn. Interesting that this ship is cast in the semi-transparent plastic as used by WTJ, vs. most being the white plastic as seen above. I added the .015" masts and shimmed the base with a thin layer of styrene.

Next up, the HMS Thunderchild. HG Wells aside, It's a good generic pre-dreadnought, suitable for British or Japanese battleships in this style.  A sturdy model with the masts already done. The white plastic is slightly rough in texture, but hardly noticeable once the paint goes on.

You do get good value for the money at Shapeways, but for high caliber models, nothing beats the Rapid Prototyped WTJ ships.  http://www.wtj.com/store/index_paint_guide_hist-photo.html

First up, we have one of my favorite pre-dreads, the Russian Retvisan. Built in Philadelphia, I like the look of it compared to the French style of most of the Russian battleships. Painted her in the peacetime livery.

And a German battleship, Kaiser class. Some care must be taken with these models, they are tough but not indestructible. Unlike the 1/1500 ships, these examples have no pre-drilled hole for the upper masts, should you care to add them. I ham-handedly snapped off the rear mast of this ship while inserting the wire, had to drill and pin it to the deck to salvage the model.  I also trimmed the wire a little too close, but once done there was no turning back.

Kudos for WTJ for a process which packs such detail into a small package. But what I like best is the scaleability.  The same ships, your choice of anything from 1/1500 to 1/3000.   And my final decision for the Weltkrieg project ?  1/1500.  Fortunately WTJ had some samples in stock, and thus allowing me to avoid the production queue time,  I ordered some.  Love the bigger ships and examples to follow shortly. 

Weltkrieg Project 5 - BMC Ships

Some of you may recall previous posts about the antique BMC / "Minfigs" ships here, and also most excellently covered at the SteelonSand and A Wargaming Odyssey blogs.  I still have a lot of these ships as yet unconverted to my own style so I stripped and reworked a few more.

Amongst the warships, I also have several merchant and transport vessels.  These should come in handy.  In the next two photos, my updates on the left, originals on the right.  I suspect the dazzle painting and hospital ship conversion weren't the original livery, quite possibly added by a previous owner.

And two more British cruisers, Pelorus and Highflyer class.

Highflyer Class (I think)

Pelorus Class

I left the nationality flags and ship names off the bases this time, as they'll be serving a new ficticious country, most likely Saxonia (think I have hit upon a winning Imperialism map).  Don't have much in the way of BMC pre-dreadnought battleships, but many cruisers both Armored and Protected as well as a host of destroyers & torpedo boats, plus a few subs.

However, I think I may have blundered in selecting 1/1800 as the scale of choice.  I received the Shapeways 1/1800 ship samples this week and they are tiny in comparison with these !  Utterly incompatible.  What hurts worse is that I ordered several more WTJ ships at 1/1800 and if they're they scale out the same as the Shapeways, I'd have been better off ordering 1/1500.  For the purpose of this project at least, I'm going to have to jettison one set of ships or the other.  Quite stupid, I'm an experienced enough modeler to have taken measurements and planned more carefully.  In any case, it's all food for a subsequent thread with scale comparison shots.

Weltkrieg Project 3 - Naval

I'm going to put off for a bit the follow-up post about the Imperialism map-making experiment. Suffice it to say for now that it's going okay but not without some obstacles to overcome. But I'm still confident of making a go of it.

As indicated in the first post, this imagi-nations world war is inspired by the campaign guidelines laid out in Phil Dunn's Sea Battle Games book.  Hence the planned emphasis will be on naval activity, but you know me, can't resist painting some soldiers too.  The action on land will hopefully take on a more concrete form than abstract battles between 10,000 man blocks, but with smaller skirmishes representing much larger scale battles.

It was the introduction of the WTJ series of Rapid Prototyped Plastic models which inspired me to backdate the project to the pre-dreadnought era. And 1/1800 is the scale of choice, for several reasons.  First, it seems a reasonable compromise between the playability of 1/2400 and the appealing detail of 1/1200.  Secondly, available models: WTJ, some additional offerings on Shapeways, and the opportunity to use my antique lead BMC ships.  And 1/1800 is about as small as I can reasonably go with scratch-building.  Yes, I could probably build 1/2400, but wouldn't be able to improve much, if at all, on Panzerschiffe where the ease of buying inexpensive commercial models would render my own labor hours a waste of time.

My plan is to adapt the Dunn template of real ships renamed for ficticious navies.  But not to the extent of drawing playing cards to randomly assign them to the player's fleets regardless of national origin.  My intention is, for the most part, to group the ships in their historical fleets with accurate color schemes.  The models should retain some commercial value if I later divest myself of the collection or upon my demise. 

Which navies are essential ?  I think the following:

* Britain
* USA
* Germany
* France
* Japan
* Russsia

That almost completely takes care of the 7 Great Powers in the Imerialism scheme, perhaps some combination of Italy/Spain or Austria-Hungary for the other.  And who is not to say that Minor powers won't have fleets as well ?  Of course they could.

With that lengthy preamble out of the way, let's take a look at a recent scratchbuilding effort, a French Danton class battleship.  I did this model at 1/1800 scale, the usual composite materials of wood, styrene and brass wire.  I also used balsa wood in places in lieu of basswood, not entirely happy with the appearance of the model on that score but it did save some time.  Having based the ship on the Jane's Fighting Ships plan, not surprisingly the freeboard is a bit accentuated relative to the prototype:

 

The peacetime livery ca. 1900 is how I want to paint the "French" ships but probably anachronistic. The slow pace in French shipyards meant that these "semi-dreadnoughts" weren't launched until ca. 1910 (already obsolete by the time they joined the fleet).  And speaking of semi-dreadnoughts, you have to think that the 9.4" secondary battery would have caused fire control problems when mixed with the 12".  The extra turrets sure increased my build headaches but once I started the ship, I wanted to finish it.

A few more pics:

Not the greatest build as I was a bit rusty. Nevertheless, satisfactory.  I did choose to make it a bit simpler than what I did here with the Austro-Hungarian battleships:

 

Upcoming posts: follow-up about the map, some words about the army figures and a few more BMC ships reworked.  I have on order some WTJ ships as well as a few from Shapeways but the lead time on scheduling the production runs of these models means it'll be another week or two before anything arrives.