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Sailing Ship Pay what you want campaign.

So for awhile now I've had this goal, nay, this desire, nay, this primal compulsion to build a boat. It is not enough to have hand drawn maps, or 2D terrain tiles. I need a fully functioning 3D boat! Well, maybe not fully functioning. But I want to build a cool boat! I've been working on a nautical campaign full of swashbuckling, sailing, and sea monsters for a few years now. It's my White Whale project. Always just on the horizon. It'll happen some day, but in the meantime, I have a million small projects to complete and extend the chase. One of which is my desire to build a few different sized ships to enliven any possible naval combat. I actually attempted this about two years ago, just winging it and making some measurements and throwing them at some craft supplies. I wanted a cheap option that wasn't too difficult to repeat that way I wouldn't be discouraged from making multiple ships. So I limited it to cheap crafting materials like foamcore, wooden dials, popsicle sticks, and thumbtacks. And the result wasn't bad. Especially for my first attempt at any kind of terrain building. It actually turned out rather nice! To my surprise. But I got hung up on mast and sail designs and never finished. The wood on the deck had 2x1in grid carved into it for easier D&D use. and the figurehead was designed to be modular. However, overtime the boat collected dust and little scratches. I should have given it a coat of mod podge or sealant of some kind, but never did. And eventually it had an unfortunate run in with an injured owl that we took in for a night. Here's the little devil himself. Anyways, I put this project on the back burner for long enough and feel inspired to dive back in. Especially with a certain Bones ship on the Horizon that I'm still on the fence about getting. I was doing some browsing on the web and recently found this wonderful little blog complete with loose instructions and a plan from a now defunct wargamming site. The blog creator had found the old plan and adapted it to build something using most of the same materials I have already stockpiled. There's a few choices that I like better than my first attempt so I think I'm going to use this as some inspiration as I give this boat thing another go. My hold up now is still those darn masts. The original plan above used wood and required drilling out holes for the masts. The blogger use foam for his ship and found random bits of tubing to house his masts. I could try to find something random like that, but I was hoping to find something simpler for easy repetition. And I would also like to keep the masts loose so they can be removed for easy storage, or to swap out the sails. Any thoughts? Any resources, tips, recommendations are very welcome! I'll post back here with any updates.

Here are the pair of sloops from the two Brinewind Extras I got. Testing out what I want to do on Sophie's Revenge. Still feeling intimidated..... But the boats were used in Sunday's game so two thumbs up...

I am stunned at my recently arrived Sophie's Revenge, and so excited to get it to the painting table (I will have to significantly reconfigure my painting space to ensure I have enough room... As well as buy LOTS of new brown paint, ha!) It is a thing of beauty, even without a lick of paint on it. One of the first things I noticed was how the magnetized masts SNAP to the deck, hard. That's what you want, so they'll stay firmly in place. But when you remove 'em, they'll likely scratch the heck out of the painted deck. So I plan to cut disks of black felt to glue to the underside/ magnet-side of the masts, so that when they stick, they're more gentle. Thin felt should not affect how they stick, but it should make a big difference on the ship's wear and tear. Are you planning on painting yours? What strategies are you going to adopt to make it as beautiful as you can, while still keeping it sturdy as a plaything for your RPGs, wargames, or maybe even little kids (don't judge! mine are gonna be all over this thing!)

I started putting together one of the ships I got from Renaissance games pirate kickstarter. I ended up with 7 ships, and this is the 2nd one I have assembled. Well started to assemble. It's been over 2 years so figured I would give it a go. Rensissance games is sadly no more. This is s great kit. It was $190.00 during the kickstarter. It it comes with 24 cannons. I think I will paint the cannons bronze. this is about 5 hours into it.

This is the Sea Ghost from AD&D module U1: the sinister secret of saltmarsh. It will hopefully be used in my group's upcoming D&D pirates campaign set in 1600's Jamaica. Its layers will be separable, with each surface being a sort of game board for each deck of the ship, from forecastle/poop, to main deck, to cargo deck, to bilge. I'm going to try to pin the layers together so they don't just fall apart by using the mast and rudder to keep the layers aligned when they are stacked. It is made of 3/4" polystyrene insulation sheets, cut, stacked, and sanded down with a belt sander. In the end it will have paint and probably balsa wood details. That's the Barnabas Frost mini that I posted in the show-off forum standing on the deck in a few of the photos.

This was originally a birthday present last year, a fairly simple German resin ship kit for a medieval-style cog. Since I was playing a Githyanki in Dungeons and Dragons at the time, I modeled, painted, and sewed the vessel up into a more or less spelljammer, since named Black Moon's Bane from events in the game. There is a fairly detailed Work-in-Progress thread for this ship, if anyone has questions about materials or techniques. Or you can ask here; that's fine. A list of materials: Resin ship's hull model, wooden dowels, bamboo chopsticks, bamboo kitchen skewers, acrylic paint, brass wire, silk organza, silk taffeta, wooden furniture peg, jewelry findings (barrel clasps, jump rings), jewelers chain, metal necklace charms, glass seed beads, waxed linen bookbinder's thread, waxed linen carpet warp, silk buttonhole thread, cotton twine, metallic polyester yarn, nylon cord, screw eyes, 1/2" zinc fender washer, various glues The bowsprit (left) is a bamboo chopstick painted and wrapped with brass wire. The hatch on the deck (right) looks down over a forested landscape. The ship's rails are painted with (imaginary) red runes on black, then washed over thinly with silver metallic paint. From some angles the rails look silver and the runes are invisible. From others they show clearly. The ship's wheel (visible at the upper deck on the stern) is a charm bracelet charm with the hanging loop filed off. I nailed and glued it to the post (made from a furniture peg) so that it spins freely. It is mounted on a small fender washer so it can be moved around the ship. The runes around the door to belowdecks are imaginary. I may think of more stuff to say later. Right now I'm a little dazed.

My birthday is imminent (precioussss), and my husband gave me this resin ship model from German manufacturer Gelaendestuecke. I've never done anything like this before: Never worked with resin, never made a ship model, never tried to figure out rigging and sails (they aren't included in the model and even the masts are just dowels at the moment). So ... Woohoo, I have no idea what I'm doing. But I figure it'll be fun figuring it out. Here's the box And the instructions in their entirety The hull and the deck The wooden bits, the mast, bowsprit, and railings The cabin has a few issues. Note the little spot the arrow points to. That becomes relevant later. It also has a big missing spot from a bubble in the back And a crack and missing piece on one side Okay, so here's how I've begun it. First I scrubbed the resin pieces with a toothbrush in very hot water and dish liquid. There was a nasty waxy substance under the hull which I assume is mold release. Once cleaned, the bottoms of the pieces were really shiny, which seemed like it would cause a problem with the epoxy adhering. But sanding resin is problematic. Its dust is very fine and lightweight and highly toxic. Bad stuff to breathe. So I sanded them underwater, with a few drops of dish liquid add to break the surface tension so the dust wouldn't float on the water. Resin really wants to float. Sanding on the cabin exposed a greasy, waxy white substance where that little splodge was, something like a white oil pastel, and kind of gross. Scraping it out exposed more of it within the resin and lost a few flakes of the surface. It can be seen, rather big in this picture of the ship as it is at present. And here's a side view.

Ever since I started working on my Frostgrave waterfront last year, I have thought that the Reaper "Dark Maiden" figure would make a cool addition to my Frostgrave figure collection; taking the roll of either a dockside Construct, or even a Wraith or Demon. I was lucky enough to pick one up in a Box of Goodwill a while back, and it's been lingering on my painting table until I built up the courage to tackle it. I finally decided with the River scenario from the Frostgrave Thaw of the Lich Lord supplement on our schedule for next month, that it was time to build up my courage and tackle this beautiful figure. In mulling over paint schemes, I decided that I wanted to do something like the grayish-brown of the masthead shown on the shipwreck of the Charlotte during the opening scenes of the movie "National Treasure." This seemed simple enough, just some brown and grey drybrushing over a dark base. The hard part was going to be that I wanted to make it look possessed, with glowing eyes and glowing swords; and Object Source Lighting (OSL) still is not a strong technique for me. In the end I'm really happy with how it turned out. While I wish it had turned out a little more aged grey, and less brown; I still think it looks properly demonic. :)

Got this in and couldn't stop painting last night...3AM...ugh! Goinf to be lots of fun! Ship is by ESLO and I got it off ebay.

These are from the Boat Pack, part of the Renaissance Miniatures East Asian line. I made them up for my husband's birthday. On the whole they went together fairly straighforwardly. I found the cabin support hoops on the larger boat (they call it a "twakow" but "tongkang" may be a more common term -- I just think of it as a riverboat with a sail) needed a little shaving to fit into the openings on the deck. The planks that go over the hoops, making the shelter, were a little fiddly on both the sampan and the larger river boat. I ended up leaving off the top central plank on the sampan. I include the Reaper Sea Lion and a Dark Sword mermaid warrior figure for scale. These are the outrigger canoes, one with a sail: This is the larger, sailed riverboat and the sampan:

Do people know of lines of very small (two or three inches, max) model ships and boats for tabletop combat? Or have favorites? This isn't urgent, more of a "it would be nice" sort of thing. There's a game coming up likely to involve combat at sea, and actual little ships could help. We can, of course, use Star Trek Battles and X-Wing ships. Or dice, for that matter. But actual little ships would be fun. They don't have to be perfectly historic; fantasy or steampunk ships are okay too. Bonus points to anyone who knows where I can find a little paddlewheel steamship.

So i picked up some discount minis this weekend. I've gotten them washed and glued together, and filled the rather large gaps with green stuff. The dragon bat gargoyle looking thing came with arms that i'm not going to use. I clipped down the shoulders he had for htem to be more streamlined with his wings mr. sea serpent will get more added to him once that green stuff dries. I plan to do splashes and water trailing off the upraised flipper

So, as a surprise and celebration of my Githyanki character finding a proto-spelljammer to work on in our D&D game, my husband gave me the slightly early birthday present* of this resin ship model: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.gelaendestuecke.de/onlineshop/product_info.php%3Finfo%3Dp359_schiffsbausatz-no--2.html&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dschiffsbausatz%2Bno%2B2%26client%3Dsafari%26hl%3Den I've not worked with resin before, and I haven't done much model building either. The instructions are surprisingly minimalist for a German product (Complete text: "We recommend water-soluble colors and glutens. You find colored examples under www.Gelaendestuecke.de") Can I ask people who have experience with ship models, resin terrain, etc., what they would do? Please forgive my ignorance and inexperience. Here are my thoughts: The stern end, quarterdeck, whatever, has a few dings, chips and bubbles, so I guess I shall be getting some green stuff to fill in bits. There is a hole in the deck piece (a flat piece separate from the hull) for the mast, but it is not as large as the dowels supplied. I plan to drill it out a bit, maybe extend it all the way through the deck (which is about 3/16" thick). I am thinking that not gluing the mast in but making it removable will make for easier storage and less risk of breakage. But in that case I may wish to drill the hole a little into the hull itself for added stability. Or is this foolish and should I just glue the whole thing solidly together? Rigging and sails are not included and it's not entirely clear how they are put together. Can anyone point me to a reasonable pattern? I have linen cloth suitable for the sails and linen bookbinding thread that should do well for miniature rope. Despite what they say, I think I would like to use epoxy to hold this model together. Should I pin it in any way? This looks like it will be fun, but I would like to do it right. Any advice from the seasoned and experienced would be deeply appreciated. *precioussss

So first of all thanks to metal chaos for the idea, you can see the original thread and discussion on acquiring ships here http://www.reapermin...aiden-and-crew/ So lets start with the basics, the smaller ship is a Mega bloks Black Pearl and the larger Is the mega bloks Flying Dutchman. The main issue with these ships is the hull are four separate sections as you can see I have attached each section using a combination of superglue and white glue when i ran out and loose 4x2 blocks btw these mega blocks are interchangeable with legos it seems if you need spare parts.. Also the goal of This is to have 2-4 ships with level decks with 5' grid markings for my skull and shackles game. My orignal worry was scale of the ships vs 28" minis but here you have a couple of examples (and as always forgive the crappy camera work) you can also see the major challenge that comes with these ships all those bloody nubs have to come off, Im going to grab a dremel kit to clean the upper deck. Btw My nearly complete ship came in, so here's a idea of what the finished products will end up looking like.