The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is done and dusted, and I was able to hit my goal with exclusively Black Seas models. Turns out you get a lot of points for submitting naval miniatures on account of all the extra stuff you have to do. For my last post, I took some glamor photos, and well I enjoyed them so much that I wanted them to be here on my own blog as well.
Well, progress has been slower than I would like, on account of having a kid and all, but I've managed to steal away some minutes here and there. Mostly more Black Seas work, although the new skirmish game Port Royal from Firelock Games has piqued my group's interest, so I've been doing a smidgen of dabbling in 28 mm piracy. More on that in some future post. Back to the Battle of Lake Erie. In the last project post, I was firmly in the planning phase, but now I've got some fruit to show for my efforts. One completed ship, the Caledonia, and some major work done on the Niagara and Queen Charlotte.
Before diving further into my Lake Erie project, I need to wrap up the last model I haven't posted about on here from the Analogue Hobby Challenge. This is a Bomb Ketch, a ship made for launching mortar shells at land targets, although in game, you could try to target a ship. But good luck with that.
As I'm sure you all can see, I've been obsessed with little ships lately. When it comes to painting, I've just been going along, painting an English ship, then a French, a Spanish, an American, and then a grab bag. Not that there's anything wrong with that style, per se, but I wanted to try something a little different. I took some inspiration from JJ over at JJ's Wargames, where he picks a particular battle, then gathers all of the ships involved, models and paints them, and finally creates a suitable scenario.
The last project he chose was the Battle of Camperdown, which is a sizable battle. I, however, am a simple minded man with not enough patience for that (yet). So I've decided to go small-er. Not so small as single ship actions, mind, because that's way too easy to do. Instead I'm taking a look at the War of 1812, specifically the Battle of Lake Erie.
The one that started it all. Old Ironsides herself. Yes, I finally got around to the USS Constitution, my favorite ship in history, and fiction for that matter. This particular rendition is a resin and metal model from Warlord Games Black Seas. Let's see how the model holds up.
If you purchase one of the various starter fleet boxes for Black Seas, inside you'll find plenty of plastic ships along with some metal bits. These metal bits let you customize your frigates and 3rd rates into bespoke famous ships. The United States has 3 normal sized frigates in their box: Congress, Chesapeake, and Constellation. Interestingly, they provide 3 stern plates and 4 figureheads. Intrigued, I looked into it. The figureheads match the USS Constellation, but there were two of them: the first one of the original six frigates, and the second a sloop-of-war from the American Civil War era. The stern plate and the carved wood figurehead belong to the sloop-of-war, which now sits in Baltimore. The more ornate, angelic figurehead matches the original Constellation. I set that aside for now, and I decided to work on the 1854 version.
I went really big, now back down to the really small, to the second smallest seagoing ship-type in the game: a large cutter. But unlike all of my other Black Seas ships so far, this is not a Warlord Games model. This is a cutter from Hagen Miniatures, a miniature company from Germany.
