203 Men in a Boat : Stunning Build of Dusek's 1/72 Trireme Kit

Go to Dusek's site for a stunning set of photos which show modeller 'Mr Cryns' from Amsterdam's detailed and artistic build of their wooden kit. There are many authentic features added to the already excellent kit. The crew are individually modelled and it certainly beats the hell out of the usual  'three men and a panzer' type of diorama!

Go HERE to see the rest

The  basic wooden 1/72 kit is enhanced and manned with superb figures and the whole is beautifully painted. Makes me almost want to padlock my workshop forever...

Look at the photos in full screen..marvelous. Right click and 'open new link in new window' then click to enlarge - then you get thephoto  full size instead of the slideshow format.

Paper Liburnian-Dikrotic Pentekonter/Lembus

Here is a wonderful simple model of a 'Roman Liburnian / Fleet Liburnian' in 1/72 scale.

Some more photos at photobucket HERE.

The modeller, who has copyright and has made the model available for private use on the web, is a member of 'Mondorf Mens' Club' , 'Kallboys' - a group who unashamedly enjoy mens' stuff like bowling, modelling and drinking (in moderation). KALLBOYS.
Thier linked model forum, with some nice diorama etc. is HERE.

The ship is a two-tiered, 50-oared galley based on John Coates 1995 reconstruction of a Liburnian. The Liburnian had much in common with the original ramming warship, the ancient dikrotic pentekonter, and with the Lembus as used by the Illyrians and Macedonians in the 3rd century BC. The Liburnian became the workhorse of the Imperial navy and was similar to a modern frigate, in that it was a modest vessel with a modest crew but flexible in patrolling sea or river. Such ships may or may not have a ram fitted. No 'Liburnian' has been found yet but we have sculpture and paintings which give the main evidence for what they looked like.

The model would be great for wargaming with figures, just make it a waterline version and build in stiff card.

You can download a nicely made  PDF with full instructions so you just have to print and cut and build. It might be fiddly in places but replace card struts with matchsticks etc. Oars with split satay sticks etc

The PDF is in German but if you cannot figure out how to translate this you probably could not build the model anyway.


The model was put up on Papermau, a great blog for paper models, so I link there and you can make the jump to the PDF from there. PAPERMAU. Happy building !

If you think the model is good, why not leave an encouraging  comment at Kallboys or Papermau ?

DIKROTIC CHAOS

I have put a pilot version of my largest-scale rules online. It is suitable for using with any models that are c. 30cm long. Just adjust the 'hamma' to be about half the ship's length.

Ships could be Hotz card ships printed 150 or 200%. Umbum galleys . Or maybe Revell or Zvezda plastics - even though the rules are made with bireme/'2s'/dikrotic pentekonters in mind.

Fire, other types of ships, etc. I have kept out of this set for now. My play testing is limited to a few games so far so interested to hear, if others try them, how they work out.

The point of them is that the player can move his ship(s) as an ancient skipper and at this scale must make suitable manoeuvres to execute ancient tactics rather than get them pre-packed as part of moves in the game.

You need to download RULES, ANGLE TEMPLATE, TURN TEMPLATE, SHIP RECORD CHART and WAKE MARKER files. Print last 4 at 100% without margins.

BIG MEN ON BIG SHIPS

Wargamer Tom Young has some fine photos of a whole fleet of Trieres in 28mm?scale on his blog 'Tides of War'. He has done a scenario based on the battle of Notium in 407BC - the one where the orders 'Do nothing' got reinterpreted as 'Here's the fleet, have fun while I'm away'.

Nice photos of very nice painted epibatai and a small horde of ships.

Click to go there.

I recommend a browse around Tom's blog to make you jealous of his painting and scenery.
He has a wife and kids and still has time to do all that.....hat off!

Build your own...

Ideal for wargaming ?  But maybe a bit pricey for that..

Dusek Ship Kits make superb scale models of Olympias and a bireme.

At  1/72 perfect for use with plastic toy soldiers.



I will stick to paper for now, perhaps when I retire ?

Zvezda Trireme

A beautiful build of Zveda's 1/72 model kit.

And another version here...