Following the completion of the Republican Romans I am using the Christmas New Year break to clear a few other bits and pieces from the painting queue, first in line being eleven GHQ WWII German ships. Here are the German destroyers Z1, Z2 and Z3 (which did actually adopt names of WWI German sailors, which were too long to fit on the labels):
And the later Z25, Z28 and Z30 destroyers which, to the best of my knowledge, had no alternative epithets:
The light cruiser Konigsberg with the rather garish yellow gun turret upper surfaces, in use during the early stages of the war for air recognition when Germany had a measure of air superiority:
And her sister ship Koln:
With another light cruiser, the Emden:
Finally, a couple of battleships in the Scharnhorst:
And the mighty Bismarck:
WWII Naval gaming is not every one's cup of tea, but I plan to give these a go with a set of WWII naval rules we used back in the 80's. I purchased a later set but cannot remember what I did with them, but have managed to locate a copy of the original plus an aircraft supplement which must be 45 years old and very dog eared through much use:
Lawrence, you really do terrific work from painting to basing. These ships look superb!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jonathan. They really are quite fiddly to glue together and seem to take two to three hours each to paint, but I'm thoroughly enjoying them as a change of pace.
DeleteMy God I remember those rules...and the authors! David is still around, but no longer gaming and John disappeared to the USA sometime in the early ‘90s We made the 1:4800 ships for use with them. Nice work on the ships.
ReplyDeleteI remember both John and David very clearly. I remember John being very interested in IT and he had one of the first personal computers from memory which he used to compile competition results. Must have been an early spreadsheet of some sort. I wish I could find what I did with the later version of the rules which were nicely bound in a single volume with a pale blue cover, and were in much better condition than this earlier set.
DeleteYes John ran a software company here for years. He was involved in GIS applications if I remember correctly. He had a photographic memory and could write pages of code in his head. The best John story I remember was about attending a convention in Nelson. He just turned up on the day and registered so there was no pre-prepared name tag for him and the busy registrar handed him a blank name badge an told him to write his name on it, which he did. The problem was it was a pale orange and he wrote his name with a yellow highlighter pen. He was colour blind and to him there was a vast tonal difference between orange and yellow, but no one could read it course. I will check with Barry to see if he has a set of the later rules.
DeleteThanks Mark, that would be great if you could. The second combined volume was very nicely presented and it is about the only thing I appear to have mislaid from the 80's.
DeleteI love the story about John's colour blindness. I'm struggling to remember which armies he played, and can vaguely recall he had a nice 15mm ancient army and was one of the first to play in that scale.
Looks like a great bit of nostalgia Lawrence and as the others have said, you have done a great job on the ships, even though naval wargaming isnt really my cup of tea, I recall purchasing most of the Falklands taskforce in 1/600 or 1/1200 - dont recall the scale but they were pretty small - but that was just a bit of knee jerk Jingoism brought on by the invasion in 1982 and the fact we had a bunch of mates in 45 Commando based down the road in Arbroath who went over and kicked some Argie Ass! I cant recall what I did with the ships now but I only ever painted a couple of them - HMS Hermes the mini aircraft carrier and HMS Fearless the commando assault landing ship.
ReplyDeleteThanks Keith. I think there can be a bit to naval wargaming over and above just lining ships up and pounding each other, so I'll be interested in whether my nostalgic recollections hold true. I remember HMS Fearless and that was an era of some lovely Royal Navy ships, although my gaming always seemed to stop at WWII.
DeleteExcellent looking ships!
ReplyDeleteCheers Ray, I was happy with the way they turned out.
DeleteGreat looking ships, Lawrence!
ReplyDeleteThanks Peter, they were great fun to do.
DeleteSuper looking ships,be interesting if the rules hold up!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Cheers Iain. I am in the process of retyping them and they do seem to be as good so far as I remember them and quite easy to relearn, which bodes well.
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