NAUMACHIA : PART VII

A short reference  to full size Hotz ships. Circa 1/300.
My problem with this size was space, so I rapidly switched to using them half-size.
The models are built from a flat printed sheet. You get the PDF files from HOTZ ROMAN SEAS which is worth visiting if just to see the city panoramas built from Eric's building kits. Fantastic!

A deceres with tower along with hemiolia.

Some triereis. And various buildings.

Look back through blog entries using keyword HOTZ to see a lot more.

NAUMACHIA : PART VI : RAMS, RAVENS AND WRECKS CARD SHIPS

Now on to the project which got me into this blog. Making card ships.

Part inspired by Eric Hotz ships but made in a smaller size and less complicated to build, I gradually devised a series of ships in 10cm - about 1/450 scale or so.

They are printed -out flat and in one piece so not so much cutting and fitting as with Hotz ships.

However, discussing with others, people dont seem to like paper /card for ship models. Lead has the lead as one could say. However, weight and the elimination of painting argues well for them in my opinion.

First, various Greek triereis. Early, open style with crews visible toiling away.

A mix of different styles. With sidescreens or not.  More or less decorated.

Here come the barbarians!  Persians with their exotic triereis...and lots of deck fighters.

For figures it is simply a matter of print and fold - maybe stick them on a base.

Now for the Carthaginians - a mix of Hotz ships printed smaller plus my own.

And the Romans with their scary quinqueremes - again with deadly Roman deckfighters.

I am still a big fan of the elegance of design and satisfaction of creating a 3d model from a flat piece of card. They are colourful and cheap. Still not sure what will become of them.

NAUMACHIA : PART V

And now all covered in lights like a fairy parade with fairy colours and etc..

Larger scales . Moving on to scaled - down versions of Eric Hotz card ships.

I made a series of half-size ships which were handier on the tabletop than the 1/300 full size version.

Have a look at Hotz Roman Seas website. Eric makes buildings ships and a load of wild west stuff too!

A very economical way to do galley wargaming. But you need patience and to be able to cut accurately.

original versus shrunk. based and named

Hptz buildings in background

The Disease is Spreading !

A nice blog post at 'Into the Mælstrom' on card galleys ! Keep up the good work Francesc!

Click to visit

Go on...you know you want to... try it out. As Sir Thomas Beecham said ' All things are worth trying once except  incest and folk dancing'. You don't even need a sense of rhythm to cut out and paste card ships together!

Hmm.. Beecham's Rule has been broken

Figuring Things Out

Ship games need figures of some sort. To represent the deck troops and any actions on land associated with a battle.

With 1/1200 and 1/600 ships troops get very small indeed. '2mm' scale may be useable with them but any visible details are completely lost and the space to manipulate them is miniscule.

My solution for troops has been card/paper printed elements which are cheap and easy to use.

I just purchased some Heroics and Ros figures for the first time in many years to see how they sat with the card models. The other main suppliers are Bacchus, Irregular and Rapier at this scale.
There is a lot of discussion about scales and as far as I can see the problem of 'scale creep' is a function of frustrated sculptors who increase figure size to enable them to add detail. 20mm in plastic became 25mm in lead and 25 mm has increased to 28mm. The production process in plastic often involves a size reduction from the original to the production items and so the human proportions and fine detail of Preiser and Zvezda are jealously sought after by leadsmiths - resulting in scale creep.

If we take 5'8" as a warrior's height - as per Vegetius - this gives us c.1727mm.
Some scales for figures are quoted as 'eye-height' or foot-to-eye. 1727 is to the top of the head. On my measurement the Iranian spearmen from HR are 6,5mm sole-to-crown. This is very hard to photograph due to parallax.

6,5mm into 1727 gives 266. i.e. a 5'8" man 6,5mm high is thereby modelled at 1/266 scale. Close to 1/300 but no cigar.
Playing a little we can see that 1727 / 300 gives 5.76 as the sole-crown scale height for an ideal 1/300 miniature.
If our ancient man is 5cm shorter - at 5'6" /1677mm- this gives a model scale of 1/258 ..getting bigger.
What this means is that larger figures such as Bacchus are getting further away from 1/300.

Now, for ships. Eric Hotz's ships are, nominally, 1/300 scale. Examining some models we can see that they are a little over-sized. A trireme is about 170mm long - to represent Olympias' length of 37m. This gives them a scale of 1/217. Nowhere near 1/300.

Putting Heroics and Ros figures on their decks shows this disparity. The HR figures are lost.

This goes some way to explain why Bacchus figures look better than HR on RomanSeas ships.

At present I want to produce my ships at a scale where a trireme is c.10cm long. The aim is to have a scale where what happens on deck can be shown whilst giving a playing area as large as possible.
10cm representing 37m gives a scale of 1/370. There is obviously an overshoot here aswell but I was not actually aiming for 1/300.

If I put HR figures on one of my triremes they do not look like dwarves but they do not look like giants either...

RRW ships have a scale discrepancy of -23%. RomanSeas have a discrepancy of +28% relative to 1/300. RRW are actually a little closer to HR figures scale. Bacchus' larger figures sit better with RomanSeas than with RRW.

Looking at some fotos of Olympias I can be happy that HR will actually not look out of place on RRW ships.

Hotz ships can be shoe-horned into Ten-Centimetre scale

Looking at my Hotz fleets in a despondent mood ... great idea, great ships but wrong size for me.
Printed at 66% the triremes from HRS are broader and longer than mine. I could print them smaller - but then the construction process becomes too much for my eyes and patience.

Then, comparing the size of the pentekonter and bireme from HRS I discovered they actually fit !
HRS trirem is a bit over-dimensioned maybe. In any case I can use the others unmodified, just printed at 66%.

At 10cm to 35m for Olympias HRS is a bit long and far too broad.

But  pentekonter and bireme match well to their original lengths.

This comparison gives a chance to show how the Hotz models have the elegant curved shapes which I sacrificed for easy construction. (In fact, Olympias is parallel-sided for most if her length.)

Anyway, nice to discover I can recycle some models. Perhaps I  may just grit tmy teeth and use the 30 HRS triremes also..?

Hotz Ships. Going down ?

I was wandering around the web and noticed I could not find any games played with ships or rules in the last few years ! The only games I could find played were small forces of Roman ships against pirates.

But I can also now find 10mm ships available in lead and resin.

Has anyone, anywhere, played a game with the larger  Hellenistic style Hotz ships ?

Does anyone anywhere still use Hotz ships regularly, or even occasionally?
If not it is a shame but the silence seems to point that way.

Anyway, I am hacking out more ships to play my Cynossema seanario, and have nearly finished a draft of the next Peleponnesian War battle(s).

MAKING 1/400 SHIPS (11cm to 40m)

Having made a bunch I have some tips if you want to try it at home. Takes 30 mins for one ship.

Print at 66% from original files. You can get 2 triremes on one A4 card by printing non-centered and running the card in again bottom.first. Smaller is possible but that means a pentekonter will be a nightmare and troops become meaningless blobs.

Use clothes-pegs or some other small clamp to hold edges while gluing - especially prow and stern.
A pair of blunt-ended tweezers also recommended especially for after ship is on base if anything needs adjusting. Make it complete before sticking to base.

Rest of tips are scribbled on a trireme print below.

 

Glue the ships to the base along the hull lower edges. A bit of thick paint can give a hint of a wave and add 

some adhesion when dry. 

Oar sections can be horizontal as if out of water or edge glued to base with again 'paint foam' to help hide edges and glue them down.

Add a little oar-wake and lhull-wake on the painted base. The base should be 2-3mm thick.

Write ship name at rear of base in white marker so it looks like foam from a distance.