Man O War Elf Fleet Print, Paint & Play

Well been trying to find my hobby legs again after a fair few weeks break and sem to be getting back into the swing of things finally. I enjoyed putting some time into completing this first set of ships and am happy to be painting again.

The ships are three squadrons of three and to identify the different groups I decided to have different colour fletching on the bolt thrower bolts.

Next up will be the Eagle ships of which I have three in my force. Not planning to change the colour scheme but to keep them all tied to the same visual which I am very happy with.

Whenever I am looking to paint more than one mini I like to paint one from start to finish to make sure I am happy with everything.

For this one, I found the original colour scheme to be perfect so have worked to achieve the same one as best I can.

The only stages I haven’t covered using the gallery below are the painting of the 6 gems, 2 on the prow and 4 on the obelisk at the rear. For these, I used the usual methods you can find in a number of tutorials building colours bottom left and finishing with a white dot top right.

The colours I used in order were:-

Abaddon Black base coat

Bottom left

Khorne Red

Evil Sunz Scarlet

Fire Dragon Bright

Top right

Pallid Wych Flesh

Finish

Ardcoat

Looking forward to focussing on getting the rest of the fleet to the same standard now which will give me 1500 points of ships.

So that’s all the parts ready for paint. Been thinking about how to identify the different Squadrons of the smallest ships and am thinking of using the colouring of their mast flags.

Guess nothing left now but to get the all painted.

Getting back to hobby now I am back home after being away with work.

I decided on a Grey Seer prime and am looking forward to getting some paint on them finally.

Just a quick update today. Cleaned up the last small areas where the supports were attached and some filing of the mast bases and their mounting points for a clean fit. Very pleased and will have them primed today.

So I spent some time setting up the supports for my ships as I knew I would want a consistent print each time with me building the fleet using the same files repeatedly. I am very pleased with how they have turned out and really happy with the levels of detail.

My plan today is to get them primed ready for paint and due to the colour scheme I have planned being quite light I am just going to go for Wraithbone. I have also decided to paint them prior to assembly to allow me easy access to everything.

I have chosen to go with a High Elf fleet for our upcoming nostalgic return to Man O War. I have decided to use resin printed ships of a similar look to those of the original Man O War game.  The truth of the matter is that the metal ones now on places like eBay are silly money, simply preying on peoples nostalgia and the purchase of my entire fleet would be likely cost me over £100 which is far too much for a trip down memory lane and a few games. The fact that the fleet I plan to print, which will see me with a force of around 2500 points, will cost me around £10 in resin puts this in perspective.

I haven’t been able to find any flyers that I like to represent the air assets so I am going with a total ship-based force with upgrades. I am really looking forward to getting these onto the printer and seeing how they come out. The above image shows the parts that make up the ships in their various forms and a rough scale through the 10mm gridded plate beneath them. If you are looking to get your own then these sculpts were done by Gareth Nicolas. He has done a High Elf, Dwarf and Human basic fleet ships which are all available on etsy.