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

SYRAKOUSIA VIII : TIPPING THE SCALES

Syrakousia is not forgotten......a word about scale choices.

The common scales for tabletop model ships are 1/1200 1/600 and possible 1/2400.

My idea is to base a game on attacking Syrakousia as she crosses the table to safety. The attackers being a motley crew of pirates on variously sized vessels. Or a Baddies naval flotilla.

Exactly what scale this should take place in is a question to be answered.

Syrakousia is relatively large but we also need to represent the attackers adequately on their smaller vessels. If we take a pentekonter as the typical pirate vessel we can see how big a model will be at various scales.

A 30m pentekonter would be ..so big.. at the various scales...

• 1/2400        12,5mm
• 1/1200        25mm
• 1/600          50mm

These are not very large models, and if we want to represent men...they will be tiny.

Left to Right : 10mm, 6mm, 4mm, 2mm

The only option is to go up a level of magnitude to useable figure scales. 6mm is possible - but still rather fiddly. This is usually accepted as 1/300 scale which gets our pentekonter up to 100mm long. The ship is now a nice size and the figures can be handled but when considering the details of Syrakousia not big enough. Syrakousia at this scale is 65m /300 = 21.6cm. Not a lot of space for detail nor for figures.

4mm scale trieres with
MM 4mm figs

10mm scale is the only solution. And a table larger than a playing card.

10mm is nominally 1/183.. This makes Syrakousia 35cm long. Now that is something you can get your hands on to model. Small details like the cranes and turrets can be done without requiring watchmaker's spectacles. Attacking pentekonters will be 16cm long - and can also be modelled well.

Front to Back :1/1000, Hotz 1/300, 10mm trieres and Syrakousia mock-up in 10mm

I am not getting younger, my hands and eyesight do not improve with the years. The argument for 10mm is irrefutable. Syrakousia will sail on a 10mm seascape.

All tiny hands on deck

CONSIDERING SCALES, AGAIN

maybe a touch larger than 2mm...

The most common scales for model galleys are 1/600 and 1/1200.

1/600 ships can look very nice with the extra space for detail and one can put figure blocks on the decks to represent deck troops.

1/1200 ships are perfectly good but no longer have space enough to accommodate figures or even a marker on their decks.

In terms of table space 1/600 gives a c.1km table edge on the traditional 6x4 whilst 1/1200 gives c.2km.

A game with Athenians v Spartans

I decided that deck troops look good and wanted to use some figures. The only options are 1/300 – 6mm figures and Irregular's 2mm range.

6mm is out straight away for these smaller scales. They look like giants on 1/600 ships and collossi on 1/1200.

2mm being the only option it is immediately apparent that they are too small on the 1/600 ships and still too large to use on 1/1200. Basically, 1/1200 is a scale where one cannot use any kind of figures or markers on deck.

What is 2mm scale ? If we take a fighter as 5'8” to six feet tall in his boots and helmet then a 2mm figure is modelled at 1/900-1/800.

2mm deck fighters on 1/800 triereis

Now, to ground scale. A 40 metre 'Mark II' trieres at 1/1200 is 3.3cm long. At 1/600 this will be 6,6cm. I noticed that a nice, round,5cm lies between, at 1/800 – 40 metres divided by 5cm is 800. Lo and behold it is Irregular's scale....

The ground scale can be rounded to 1/1000 which gives a table side of 1.8km and makes translations from maps easier.

But ships !? It is necessary to produce one's own for this scale. However, this is not so bad as it seems because they are not so fiddly as 1/1200 and not so detail-demanding as 1/600. Maybe I will cast some in lead eventually but until now they can be built from card, plastic and paper – and plenty of glue and paint.

2mm deck fighters ready for action

Hammering and Sawing in the Shipsheds

Having looked more closely at 10mm figures such as Magister Militum 
 
and Pendraken

  

  I felt the urge to try some ships to size...

They are not so huge at N-gauge 1/160 scale which should suit these figures, a tireres is about 22cm and a 5 about 28 cm. So I had to try ....

5 and 3 under construction at 1/160 scale.

Lots of trial and error ..but I'll show the results soon.