Black Seas ships from Warlord Games
There is lot's more of this stuff on my Links Page
These are the "studio quality" shots of the Black Seas ships, together with some WiP shots .
A Brig, fully rigged with the ratlines from Warlord
And again! I even remembered to paint the edges of the flags!
The Brig from the front. There are two sets of sails in the starter set, some are more brown and some are more green. I may try and ink the furled sails (which I painted white and which are cast on the masts) later if I feel the urge
Getting the rigging done without pulling the masts together is a challenge, but it gets easier after the first one - honest!
From the rear. All of the guns are just fairly untidily painted black and then given a dab of Gunmetal - AFTER varnishing the model, so the guns keep some shine.
The hull is white undercoat with GW Contrast Nazdreg Yellow. Decking is Skeleton Horde. Masts are DarkOath Flesh. One really handy tip I picked up was to matt varnish the ships after painting but before rigging, as otherwise the black paint on the cross spars and other fixtures will rub off when you are gluing and tying on the thread
Two Brigs, one has a bit of additional rigging between the two masts which I missed off the first one as there is no guide to rigging Brigs in the rulebook (boo!)
Both of these have been done as French. It appears the rulebook scenarios only ever need 3 Brigs, so the 6 in the Master & Commander set can cover two sides (French and British) I think
Brigs sailing away. I tied many of the knots in the rigging (around the masts) on the first one but then realised that a dab of Superglue and just wrapping the thread around the mast works just as well and is a lot easier than trying to tie too many knots. You just need a bit of patience to hod it in place whie the superglue dries - not easy, but do-able once you realise how much easier this is than tying knots everywhere inaccessible!
For the flag on the back I attached it to a bit of thread, painted the edges and then when it was all dry attached it to the ship. This saves getting red or blue paint on the rear sail.
A Frigate! OMG it's huge! But, weirdly, somewhat easier to rig as there are instructions (and I did the Brig first)
As suggested in the rulebook, I added some blue to the hull to give a French flavour
I glued the ratlines inboard on this one initially, before realising that they should be attached to those shelves on the outside of the ship. The first set is still inboard, as I'm not sure they will fit properly if placed outboard as some of the rigging that ties through the hull of the ship looks to be in the way - but I did change the other two to what I think is the proper placing. Again, no instructions on this part of the build in the rulebook
By the time I did this one I had worked out that cutting out a small v-shaped nick in the top of the sails before gluing them to the masts really helps, as there is always a bit of thread and rigging that comes down from above the cross spar and interferes with the glueing position of the sails. Every time you are wrapping rigging thread round a mast remember that it is going ABOVE the cross-spare and UNDERNEATH those big black structures on the masts
In retrospect I added a flag at the rear from the Brig flag sheet, when a Frigate should really have a much larger flag
There are a lot of lines down to the bowsprit! Getting the sails to stick to these needed Superglue Gel - but Superglue "normal" seems better for securing the rigging lines to the masts. The sails on these lines do wobble around a bit, but it's not that weird so I've not glued them together
The fleet as it currently stands. The small flag on the front is supposed to identify each individual ship, but the first one I did I stuck a French flag on there - I worked this out by #2 and #3!
The amount of swearwords represented by all that rigging doesn't bear repeating. Even three ships in I am already totally convinced not to buy the jigs you can get off eBay to "weave" proper ratlines, and am satisfied that the plastic printed ratlines from Warlord look perfectly good enough for tabletop usage
Fleet from a drone view. YOucan see that some of the inter-mast rigging has ended up saggy, but hey, it's not too bad.
Here is an un-rigged, sail-free Brig and the finished article. I have a suspicion that rigging a Brig takes about an hour, but I think I'd rather not know to be honest.
And again
The Frigate with the un-rigged version
And from above. Yeah, let's just say an hour and pretend I've lost my watch.
The Summary
I've had these ships for a couple of years now, un-made and unopened, so finally getting around to doing them was a bit of overcoming a psychological block. But it's sure worth it as they look spiffing even with a fairly bish-bash-bosh paint job for tabletop gaming use
There are also some invaluable rigging guides on YouTube - very much worth watching one or two all the way through even if its just to pick up a couple of tips as the Warlord Games instructions are pretty good but not perfect by some margin
I've even flicked through the rules a little and am optimistic they will be playable !
That's the end - so why not go back to the Links Page and browse through some more stuff
