20 March 2010

A welcome addition

Found this while shopping at the not-quite-local Half Price Books:



Not a bad find for $12. This will be moved up to near the top of my book reading queue!

14 March 2010

A brief update

A snippet or two of activity here:


The mini in the foreground is Affondatore, with Regina Maria Pia to starboard, mounted on thin steel bases - 30mm x 60mm - and primed. The bases are much larger than any I have used in the past, but I rather like them as there will be plenty of space for labeling and splash markers - many thanks to SteelOnSand for the tip!

But, I feel that in my haste to get them mounted I have made a slight error. The bases are very thin steel, which will probably lead to players, in the heat of gaming, to grab the mini instead of the base for movement. So, I imagine that I will add a layer or two to the bottom of those steel bases to give some needed thickness.

Also on the workbench:


Here is Re d'Italia in her packaging.




And the contents. You will notice that the fore and main sails and yards are separate pieces. I am thinking that I could just leave the sails off the mini, and add some yards. The staysails would require much more work to remove; they look OK to me as they are.



Now, all of this work on minis for Lissa has, of course, got me to thinking... Compared to the Baltic, there is a lot more naval action in the Adriatic: Greek triremes, Roman quinqueremes, Venetian and Ottoman galleys, all the way up to WW1 and beyond. Maybe I should be looking at the Adriatic more than the Baltic as a focus for my naval activity?

10 March 2010

Another naval gaming blog...

Scott is just starting up a ACW ironclads naval project, which can be followed at his blog.