Hobby | Black Seas Barbary State Reinforcements

I've painted a lot of ship-rigged models, of many different varieties. But, all more or less the same. The most exotic ship I've painted so far has been the xebec, which also belongs to the Barbary States. I've now added a small galley and a trio of gunboats to the force, which should make for some fun pirate actions. 

The small galley is a Warlord Games resin and metal model. It's quite simple, only two pieces: the hull with built in oars, and a single mast with the furled sails sculpted in. This helps avoid the tipsy-topsy nature of the xebec that is constantly falling over. I can understand that some people may not like the oar banks, as you don't have an option on including them or their position. Removing them would be a nightmare, as they're solid chunks of resin that form a prism that connects to the hull all the way to the waterline. 

Let me tell you the oars also really sucked to paint. Lots of back and forth to clean up little mistakes, and lots of really small areas that you had to navigate very carefully to get the black paint into. The black paint does actually do a really good job of making the "not real" parts of the ship disappear. 

Finally, the gunboats. These are actually models from Hagen Miniatures in Germany. I had the foresight to order a bunch of models before the tariffs hit and drove up all of the shipping costs. Anyways, these are all metal, and also come in two parts, a hull and mast. These were a nice excuse to use some more vibrant colors, as the hull is a lovely red-orange hue, and the spars are a vibrant saturated red. Plus I got to add a unique sail to each one for even more pops of color. 

Of course I had to base these individually like my other trio of gunboats. Speaking of basing, I had to bite the bullet on some of the smaller ships and base them. Turns out schooners love to fall over at the slightest jostling of the table and it was making for a negative play experience. So the schooners and cutters have joined the gunboats in the basing department, but all the rest shall remain free of such constraints (except the xebec, who I can't find a properly sized base for yet).

-The Space Dinosaur