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NEW SHIPS IN THE WILD

A few fotos of the reinforced fleet having at each other. All ships are Threes,

The velour base cloth is at its best here. It looks alive and no hexes...

A squadron prepares to get under way from a hidden cove. Commander has a pennant.

An Athenian drone captures the Laconian fleet forming up.

The Athenians in the distance. Laconian fleet prepares an ambush behind Holy Island.

Athenians coming up in file. Ambush awaits behind Holy Island.

The land is polystyrene. Temple is a 3D-printed Parthenon (not finished painting it yet, those metope friezes are tricky at this scale....).

SLIPWAYS BUSY AGAIN

I have been knocking together some more ships for rules testing.

All trieres/Threes

I build them from plasticard, paper, card and glue.

Tricky to do much detail at this scale

I will put scenery tips up soon and game fotos.
My eyes now feel like I should consider moving over to resin or tin casting for large numbers.....

I tried to include some variation to avoid unhistorical uniformity. Or did I just fail to make accurate copies ?

HELLER BIREME CONVERSION and an IVORY TRIERES! (and friends)

On Blog -Safari I stumbled on this....

CLICK PICTURE TO GO THERE

At Fine Scale Modeller. A great account of converting the diminutive old Heller kit of 1/225 biremes.

And then I found a remarkable and beautiful trieres carved from ivory ! And it was not alone......

 This is the work of a master craftsman, David Warther II. He has carved ships since the age of 6 and has a museum containing an entire 'History of the Ship' in ivory. His technique includes scrimshaw and super-fine construction. All at 1/8" to the foot. STUNNING.

CLICK PICTURE TO GO THERE

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

NAUMACHIA RULES IN ACTION

 A blog discovery. A fantasy campaign using Rob Langton's Naumachia rules with 1/1200 ships.

A nice game at Battle for Breakfast and Theatre for Tea Blog  HERE

Dehydrated naumachia at Nimes Amphitheatre

A jolly re-enactment of a Roman games at Nimes. In a Roman amphitheatre with thousands of spectators and hundreds of costumed re-enactors. Cleopatra and the Battle of Actium featured!

A 2016 article from Mail online. A colourful gallery of photos and a video to boot. HERE

The ships look like fun - I wonder how they were propelled ?