Dreadfleet is a game that to many was a disappointment. Instead of heralding the return of Man O' War, a game in which I am too young to have formed nostalgia towards, it was this odd little narrative boardgame/wargame hybrid. I've never played it, and to be honest it doesn't seem like a lot of people ever did, because I picked up a copy dirt cheap a few years ago. There is one place that the game excels in that I think most people can agree on: the models (and the game mat I guess, it is pretty cool...). Surprisingly, these models are fairly in scale with the 1/700 Black Seas models. While Black Seas is a historical game, they do have rules for some of the "standard" fantasy elements of maritime folklore, like sea serpents and krakens. The focus of today is on the Shadewraith, perhaps the best miniature rendition of a ghost ship that I've seen.
There's just something about the way the model is sculpted floating above the water, its hull still marking the water below. The empty framing that lets you look right through the model is just a perfect way to communicate that this is an old wreck brought back to haunt the land of the living.
And boy did that make it an absolute pain to paint. I don't really use airbrushes or spray paint other than priming, so getting a brush into all of those crevices was beyond frustrating. Oh why don't you just do sub-assemblies? you may ask. I would, but because I bought this second hand for cheap, this thing was already built and primed, so I had to make do.
I chose to not go for the all-pervasive Nikilak Oxide ghost paint scheme that seems to be the only way people paint anything spectral nowadays. Yes, it looks really good, but I've done it a hundred times before with Nighthaunt, so I wanted to try something a little different. I used a ton of dark browns, grays, and greens to get a sickly, rotted look to the whole thing.
I'm particularly fond of the figurehead look. It's a mixture of an Vallejo Ochre Yellow with Army Painter Dragon Red, then washed with GW Agrax Earthshade. It's actually the same two paints I used for my
Barbary State gunboat hulls.
I decided to go for rigging, as even if it is a wreck, a ship without rigging just looks off. Plus, if you look up ghost ship practically all of the images show a ship with rigging. I used my standard Black Seas frigate pattern, slightly modified because the model doesn't have all of the same crosstrees and spars that the real ships have. This also made me appreciate how well made the Black Seas models are, as they're designed to have little ways to help you out with the rigging process.
The model looks a bit darker in real life, closer to the below picture than the above. I hit it with some extra lighting to help show off some of the details. Black Seas Hold Fast does have some rules for the ghost ship, but they're kind of lame. They just move in a straight line across the map and damage anything that they move over. So I'll have to brainstorm something better than that.
I have a few more Dreadfleet things in the wings to supplement my Black Seas, so keep a weather eye out.
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