More ships finished ready for Blood Sweat & Iron gaming.

Well as the title says I have more ships ready for my games of Blood Sweat & Iron, they have been painted up so I thought that it may be good to show how they were done.

I am hoping that this might be of interest to a gamer somewhere, as I have said previously, I am not a great painter but think I do get my stuff up to at least table-top standard… it’s the old saying “they are not too bad if you look at them from about a three foot away!!!” 😉

Well first off I have two new ships done, these are 3D printed from files I got from the internet.

I started with the basic 3D printed hulls for the two ships and a few sections of masts that didn’t print that well, my printer always has trouble with masts as they are normally too thin and detailed for my printer to print well, I am sure it has something to do with the set-up, I have probably not got things aligned properly or I am not getting the details right when I slice the file ready for printing.

Any way I except the masts will not be great, after cleaning up I add new masts to the ship using cocktail sticks, these were cut and shaped to fit on the ships.

USS Susquehanna
USS Minnesota

Then once these were done I then added the milliput furled sails, these are probably not accurate to what the actual ships would have had, but they are sort of close compared to a few pictures I found on the internet.

Once all this was dry I stuck the ships to their plastic-card bases, then added the river and then primed them.

The first coat for the decking and masts was a coat of Beasty Brown, once this was dry I coated all the wood colour with a Strong Tone wash, darkening everything down nicely.

Then I dry-brushed the decking with a light coat of Buff, and hit all the furled sails with White, once this was all dry I added a very light wash of Soft Tone on the sails and the decking.

USS Susquehanna
USS Minnesota

Then I painted the river as always using heavily watered-down Beasty Brown, while this was still wet I added streaks of again heavily watered-down Heavy Blackgreen, this gives a great muddy river effect.

Once this was dry I lightly dry-brushed white onto the wash at the back of the ships.

When this was dry I covered the base in a good coat of gloss varnish.

Then I started on the rigging for the two ships, I hate this part!!

As you can see from the pictures this is not finished yet, I needed a break as I find this part very hard to do.

Once I add the rest of the rigging ( it will not be accurate in any way! ) they should look good enough to game with.

Well just for fun I have added a couple of pictures of all the ships I have done so far for the Union and the Confederates.

The Union fleet.
The Confederate fleet.

I remembered these four ships after I took those photos, they are four more Union ships, these just needed the river bases finishing off, now they are done they will go to build up the Union force.

And last but not least I have a picture of the last few ships I have left to do, after they are done I think that I will have a break from printing and painting ACW ships for a while and actually get in some games of Blood Sweat & Iron.

I have had one or two ideas for some new scenarios for the game, so these all need playtesting before I can write them up.

So I am looking forward to some fun gaming over the next few weeks.

Come on over to my Discord server to chat about your games of Blood Sweat & Iron and show us some pictures of the battles, or show us some pictures of your ships, or just come and chat about the rules.

You will find the link to the server on the community tab at the top of the site.

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2 Comments

  1. Zac

    Hi Mac
    Nice work!
    Reading about the process you go through to get these ships up to scratch makes me glad I never made the mistake of getting into black seas.
    I don’t think I could do all that with out throwing it out the window and it landing on the pile of kneeling down and prone toy soldiers.

    • Mac

      lol the basic modelling and painting are not that bad really, it’s the damn rigging ( or my attempt at rigging! ) that really is a pain.
      Big fingers and bad eyesight don’t help.

      Once I finally get it done it will be worth it… that’s what I have to keep telling myself.

      I have seen some of those Black Seas ships and some of those have some really complicated rigging, there would be no way I could do those, I would have to throw them on the heap of kneeling and prone figures as well 😉

      Mac

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