Tiny SHIPS – Diving into WWI Naval Wargaming

Its always great when the postie arrives with some lead, and today two orders from Tumbling Dice arrived.

The first is similar to my initial order, a wide selection of ships but this time from the British range and get a good idea on the various classes.

The second order which was combined with the above was what should be all the ships, bar one (I think a class of German Light Cruiser) needed for the Battle of Cornel and the Falkland Islands, along with a few various merchant vessels.

Paul from Tumbling Dice also looks to have very kindly included 3 additional packs of Destroyers/Torpedo Boats to make up for the savings from the combined postage. Now that’s great service and very much appreciated!

Up next for the project will probably be making the most of the reasonably dry weather and getting as many of these based up, the sea sculped and primed ready for paint, meanwhile in-between those stages I still have a few of the initial wave of ships to paint up.

I’ll also use one of the next ships to document a painting guide

This project is progressing really well and has gotten me out of the summer hobby slump.

The German Battlecruisers Von Der Tann, Moltke and Seydlitz are joined by the Dreadnoughts Helgoland and Westfalen.

On the painting table tonight is a collection of Armoured Cruisers, Light Cruisers and Pre-dreadnoughts.

After that I’m waiting for my next order from Tumbling Dice to arrive, I usually don’t mind how long an order takes (this one took 1 day) especially from indies but given how much this project has got me hooked I’m hoping it will arrive soon so I can keep the momentum going.

I start to find an initial prime of black works best, as per the previous post this is one of the rare occasions I use a spray can primer.

After the primer has had plenty of time to dry (usually I leave it overnight) the first step is a whole over base coat of Navy Blue, I’m using the one from Scale Color here as its easily available and I think works well but any navy blue should work. Your not after a perfect coating but you do want it fully covered so no black shows, I tend to mix this about 3:2 with water to give a thiner coat, that both goes down easier over the texture, makes the paint go further and also gives some slight tonal variation.

Following this are two heavy dry brush or drag brush layers. Here your aiming to give some tonal variation to the base, fist up is Vallejo dark blue which ironically is quite bright.

As per the above action shot iIfind a spare mdf base the perfect pallet here, as you can use the fact the mdf will soak away the paint to get the brush loaded up just right, a wide flat brush is ideal, and your aiming to drag it over the texture in a heavier effect that just drybrushing, hence “drag” brushing.

Once this is done i move string onto the next layer which is the same although slightly lighter Drag Brush of Dark Blue Grey, this layer really brings the sea to life. Again the mdf pallet works wonders, don’t wash your brush, wipe off the excess and start Stright away with the same brush for some extra colour variation.

Finally and with a clean brush I finish the process with a light drybrush of Off White, this wants to be a very light touch, but with extra focus added around the hull as the ship churns up the sea and then a heavier effect aft of the ship to represent the wake.

Below is the list of exact paints I used for anyone wanting to replicate the same effect.

In an attempt to try and stick to my challenge trying to get this initial batch painted by the weekend I decided some late night (~2200) priming was in order.

Nothing to ground breaking here, I started by roughly rubbing the back of the craft blade along the now dried filler of the sea base. This removes any loose bits and knocks down any high points.

For priming I took a departure from my usual airbrush approach and broke out the rattle cans, both for speed and thinking it might work a bit better with the filler with it drying quite quickly rather than soaking in too much.

In this case I used TT Combats V2 Black Spray Primer. Considering I did this quickly and late I’m impressed, good coverage, and a nice somewhat matt finish.

Tonight saw some good progress, I completed the assembly of my initial order of ships from Tumbling Dice (excluding the torpedo boats which I forgot to order magnet holes in the base for from Warbases).

I also managed to get these all based up with a quicky sculpted seascape base as per the last post.

Up next will be getting these primed up ready for painting, once ive left the filler overnight to set. As I’m really enjoying this project so far I want to keep that momentum going, it might be a push but I’d really like to challenge myself to get these painted over the coming week/weekend.

As part of research into various ships, their classes and the various orders of battle I kept stumbling across a range of excellent restored lithographs of various vessels from the period.

I’ve shared a collection of these below for inspiration. More shall follow as I continue the project and also to get around the project content limits!

I’ve decided to go for the following base sizes based off those used by Yarkshire Gamer for his and Leeds Wargames Clubs WWI naval wargame, which one day will hopefully get published.

• 140 x 40mm – Dreadnought Battleships and Battlecruisers
• 90 x 35mm – Pre Dreadnought Battleships and Armoured Cruisers
• 80 x  30mm – Light Cruisers
• 60 x 25mm – Destroyers and Torpedo Boats

All the bases are 2mm MDF from Warbases and have 3mm magnet holes added (when I remember to add them to the order). Even though I don’t always need magnetic bases I’ve found that its really useful to get a few magnet holes added and a few magnets put in there, both are cheap enough additions and much better than wishing you had them magnetised in the future.

I’ve got with a 10mm area at the back of the base for basic ship details, principally the ships name, but I’ve also in initial tests marked the type and year of construction. These will potentially be printed labels or I may use a fine paint pen.

I’ve also marked the same details on the underside of the base.

I’ve followed Yarkshire Gamers excellent tutorial for texturing up the bases, I also follow almost the same painting steps for the sea just with a few changes in colours.

All you need is:

• a cheap disposable craft knife
• some cheap ready mixed filler

I picked both a pack of 3 cheap craft knifes and ready mix filler from Toolstation (UK) for around of £7

As you can see its pretty easy to get a rough sea look, this took about 2 min to do the entire base and looks pretty effective even before being painted up.