Man O'War Chaos Additions - Plus everything

In my quest to get everything I have for Man O'War painted I've just completed my Chaos Fleet.

There's there's the Hellrammers and Hellslicers for the Slaanesh fleet.

And the Ironsharks for the Khorne fleet.

This brings my entire Chaos fleet to be completed.

Finally all the Man O'War ships I own are now painted. 

(There's a game of "Where's Wally" with the Lord of Change in that photo)

Man O'War Skaven

 Another week, another Man O'War fleet completed.

This time it's Skaven. I bought a few of these painted about 2 years ago on Facebook. Since then they've been sat not doing anything. A couple of weeks ago I bought a few more Deathburners and Warp-Raiders. 

Since the paint job on the 2nd-hand ships was pretty good I just decided to paint the extras in the same style. I did go back and add a slight bit extra highlights to the original ships and the whole lot has had a matt varnish since those had been quite glossy. Anyway, I'm quite pleased with how they have come out. I'll be trying them out next weekend.

The way things are going I'll soon have all the main Man O'War fleets. I have plans to make a 3D Printed High Elf fleet and once that is done I'll only have Chaos Dwarf and Dark Elf left. I guess I'll have to do those just for completeness. First though I have the last few Chaos ships to paint.

Man O'War Orcs (and Brettonnian Pegasus Riders)

Since we've been playing Man O'War for the past few weeks I thought it a good time to get some more of my unfinished fleets completed.

I have been working on three Orc Hulks for most of the week and didn't think I'd get chance to use them today as I also needed to get three Bigchukkas painted and some Wyverns. However I surprised myself by getting the Bigchukkas completed last night and the Wyverns completed this morning. So we're on for a game using Orcs my complete Orc fleet today.

Also last week I completed my Brettonian fleet with a squadron of Pegasus Riders.

Brendan chose to play Dwarves in the game this afternoon. We extended our rules to include Flyers and he chose to use some War Baloons. We both had fun dropping bombs on each other as a result. The scenario was the Treasure Fleet and the Dwarves had the treasure. I set up a defensive line of Bigchukkas supported by Hulks and the Drillakillas swept around the flank. The line proved tough for the Dwarves to get through and the Hulks, Wyverns and Drillakillas were very effective, though the Dwarves made the Orcs pay in blood for their very close Victory. This was loads of fun!

Dragonstone Castle

I've been looking around for islands to 3D print for use with Man O'War (etc).

I came across this rather wonderful and well scaled model of Dragonstone Castle from Game of Thrones.

It was the longest print I've done yet and came out brilliantly on my new Prusa Mini. The model has a recess which has allowed me to add lighting to it.

#

We used it for the first time today as the main island in the Treasure Island scenario. Brendan used Empire again, this time with the addition of the expansion ships and a Sea Dragon. I used Dwarves with a Kraken. 

Brendan set my Dreadnaught on fire in the first turn, disabling it for the entire game and landed sailors from his Wolfships on the treasure island finding the treasure straight away. He then attempted to sail away with it but my Kraken jumped on the Wolfship with the treasure and killed all its crew.

In the mean time I devastated Brendans Ironfists and Wargalleys with my Nautiluses and Ironclads, but my Monitors were all destroyed. 

In the end there was no way I could get enough battle honours to win despite having stolen the Treasure from his re-crewed Wolfship, so I conceded the game and took consolation in having at least got the gold.

A fun game as usual.

Man O'War - Bretonnians vs Empire

Having finally finished my all-3d-printed Bretonnian Fleet it was time to try it out against my old Empire Fleet, controlled by Brendan. Since it's a long, long, long time since Brendan played we decided to play a fairly simple game, 750 points of basic ships each with a single Master Wizard each. Nothing from any of the expansions.

The Bretonnians can get a lot of the tiny Buccaneers in a 750 point fleet, which makes it actually rather powerful. They act to mask the bigger ships with the larger firepower whilst not being worth many Battle Honours themselves. My fleet has the full 12 Buccaneers in it along with 3 Corsairs and a Galleon. All are 3d printed on my FDM printer apart from the Galleon which was 3d printed on a resin printer and bought from Etsy.

The Empire fleet is the one I started Man O'War with back in the '90s. It's all original ships and all painted by myself at that time. It's a similar make-up to the Bretonnians, but because the Wargalleys are twice the points of the Buccaneers there's only 6 of them. Also there is a squadron of Wolfships and a Greatship.

Wind was very important in this game. To start with the wind changed to be in my favour and my sails filled. Brendan's ships had to switch to oars, which meant they still made progress, but left the Greatship behind. Then Brendan's Wizard cast Wind Master and changed the wind to be directly at me. My whole fleet stopped dead in it's tracks and had to try and turn out of the wind. 

Brendan's Wargalleys then reached my front line of Buccaneers and rammed them, several were sunk, but there were still loads left. Being so close did mean my catapults could not fire though.

Whilst his best way of attacking was to ram my Buccaneers with his Wargalleys he couldn't keep doing this for long and eventually he was too close to ram. After a couple of bad boarding actions he decided that the way to deal with the Bucaneers was to stay just within close range and shoot them. This was very slow progress and was pretty much a stalemate.

On the other flank I faced off against the Wolfships. To start with I couldn't get very close, though my Galleon did get a couple of good broadsides off immobilising one. But then the wind changed and I was able to break through and attack properly. I brought the Galleon around the side and destroyed another Wolfship. My wizard then got lucky and pushed the third one into the island sinking it!

The Corsairs also broke through and the Greatship became surrounded. Because of the masking that the Bucaneers had done the Corsairs and Galleon were untouched at this point and the Greatship was easily sunk. With most of his fleet in tatters and only a few Bucaneers sunk to show for it, Brendan's Imperial fleet struck it's colours.

I had warned Brendan that this Bretonnian fleet is a very tough one to crack and it proved to be so. Even though in the early stages of the action the wind was against me it proved very strong indeed. I'd be interested to see how it fares against the other races.

Man O'War Norse

It's been a while since I painted any Man O'War models, but I decided it was about time I got some of the ones I've had primed finished off.

The first of these are the Norse. 

Man O'War Slaanesh Hellship

I was going to use my Chaos fleet for the Man O'War UK Championships at Black Dragon Miniatures. I didn't go in the end.

I was just going to add a single model to fleet for the tournament, the Slaanesh Hellship. I painted this up over a month ago now and just realised I'd not posted a photo... So here it is!

Habour 1/1200. Napoleonic Naval, etc... Part 3

So, the plastering is complete...

I've given it a light sanding to smooth the plaster a little especially where buildings will be placed and glued sand on areas to texture it.

Habour 1/1200. Napoleonic Naval, etc... Part 2

The extra buildings from Brigade Models arrived on Monday and I set to putting them in place. At first I thought they were way to small in comparison with the Langtons and whilst to a degree I think that is true I have managed an arrangement where I don't think that's too bad.

In order to get the buildings to sit flat on the slopes I've glued some pieces of card into areas I cut out of the polystyrene.

Last night I applied some filler to the polystyrene to make cliffs and smooth out the hills. I've decided after that to add two higher bits to the top of the hill. These will have filler applied tomorrow night.

Habour 1/1200. Napoleonic Naval, etc... Part 1

About 3 years ago I built myself a piece of coastline with a castle on it for use with 1/1200 Naval games, including Man O'War and Fighting Sail.

Soon after completing that I decided I enjoyed doing it so much that I'd make an extra bit of coast which could be used with the first to make a large island or separately on the edge of a sea board. I decided that I really wanted to try a harbour this time. I ordered some buildings and harbour walls from Langtons and then did nothing with them for 3 years.

Finally I've got around to starting work on it. Things are progressing well with the basic structure in place. The buildings are all just placed in position at the moment as I keep thinking I need more. I did a second order to Langtons and at the moment have an order with Brigade Models for even more. I hope they mix in all right!

I have added in some boats and a brig to populate the harbour. Here's what I have right now. Remember all the buildings and ships, etc, are just placed on at the moment. I will paint them all before gluing on.

Work in progress shots:

Initial Harbour plan

Planning the hardboard cutting

Polystyrene and hardboard cut and glued

Harbour glued in place

Fill in the town street area

Try out placement before deciding more buildings were needed, again!

Man O'War Tzeentch

A couple more additions to my Man O'War collection. The Tzeentch Great Winged Terror and Lord of Change.

I'm really happy with these paint jobs, I do wish they matched the Bane Tower I painted a while back though. I may have to repaint that at some point.

Man O'War Orcs

My 4th Man O'War fleet has started... This time Orcs.

From what I understand they're not the best of fleets, almost as likely to destroy themselves as the enemy. But that's the fun part!

I've started off with a squadron Drillakillas and a squadron of Bigchukkas. These can be used as allies to my Chaos fleet to start with.

What I really need now is a load of Hulks. These are the best ships in the Orc fleet and with the composition rules I can have 3 of them with these. That's exactly what I intend to get... Then add another Bigchukka squadron and a 4th Hulk and some Wyverns.

Man O'War "Monsters of the Sea" and "Beasts of the Deep"

For Man O'War GW produced two boxes of sea creatures to be used in all fleets in the game. These two boxes together gave 9 models.

Like all of the Man O'War models they are lovely clean sculpts that are a joy to paint. I've now got both sets painted up and ready for use in my games.

Naval Fortifications

I spotted these 1/1000 Naval Forts on the Brigade Models stand at Robin earlier in the year.  I bought them with the intention of using them as "Shoreforts" for use with Man O'War. A bit nicer than the cardboard templates in the game.

When it came to painting them up I did my usual Google search and found that someone had managed to put cannons on them. These are not usually supplied, but I eventually found them in the "ACW Coastal Forts" section of the Brigade Models shop, here. They're lovely little cannon and despite being obviously too late a design for the fortresses certainly add something.

On painting the forts I could see striations in the surface texture which indicated that these are originally 3d models, despite being cast in resin.

Anyway they painted up lovely and fit in great in our Man O' War games (and also in Napoleonic Naval). I just wish I had reason to buy more of this little scenery. Brigade have such a wonderful range!

Man O'War Chaos Fleet Complete

A couple of weeks ago myself and Steve got a game of Man O'War in. We'd stopped playing for a while as we'd found that we never got games finished in a COGS night. Well this time we managed far better despite Steve being very late we got the game finished in plenty of time. The reason being was that we used a scenario.

After the game we decided that we really should play it more and I looked at my box of ships. If we were going to play then I was determined to get the Chaos fleet painted for the game. So with that in mind we set a date and that date has made sure that the fleet has been completed in plenty of time.

In addition to the Plagueship and 3 Plaguecrushers I had before the full fleet consists of 3 Nurgle Deathgalleys, a Bane Tower of Tzeentch for my Chaos Wizard to sit in and a Khorne contingent consisting of a Bloodship and 3 Khorne Deathgalleys. The Deathgalleys are actually just converted plastic Wargalleys from the basic set.

I'm really pleased how its come out!