Dreadfleet - Bloody Reaver

At last I'm done with the bloody Bloody Reaver which has been quite a headache.

It was tricky to paint and to put together and then, when I thought I was nearly home and dry, the damn thing wouldn't fit in the base correctly.

I scraped and filed at all the places where I thought the problem was and it still wouldn't seat down.

All the time I was doing this I was afraid of breaking a mast or something and I was covering the thing with plastic filings. 

Not ideal.

Finally, I glued it in, as best I could, with a slight list to port.

The cause of the problem may be the fact that there are three joins in the hull not just the one.

Cliff 1

That excellent brewer of tea, bearer of tea cosies, and teller of tall tales (and occasionally long, thin ones), John Curtis, has kindly volunteered to tackle one of my more recent cunning plans.

I'm thinning out some books which will leave at least one shelf bare.

An ideal spot to display troops.

However, they do tend to get in each others way so that the spotty ones in the back row cannot be seen.

So I thought of a cliff face with troops in front of it, others high on a plateau and a further rank higher still, on the top of the cliff.

John has constructed and painted an excellent initial mock up, as shown here, measuring about 8 inches square.

The eventual cliff will be about 1 foot 9 inches, in old money, and about 5 or six inches high.

But isn't it good!

(What have you written on the back John?)

Swordfish 4

 At last I've located the three remaining bases giving me an excuse to put something on the blog despite so little progress being made.



The allotment and The Ashes are my excuse now but I think I'm close to completing The Bloody Reaver.

Then just one more to go and I can look at playing the game.



Where are you Lewis?

The Bloody Reaver

To show progress is being made on The Bloody Reaver.

This is the most complex of all the ships with an inner and outer hull.

It also has these odd 'locking' ends to the masts.

I can see no need for them, in fact they make life difficult as you have to put sails and masts in place before fixing the inner hull together and encasing it in the outer hull.

I intend cutting them away so that the masts can go in last, as in all the other ships.

Dreadfleet - Swordfish 3

A few shots of the completed Swordfish with the tide well and truly out.

(I still haven't located the bases for these final three ships.

As you can see, the painting on the sails is very mit and hiss - beyond me, I'm afraid.

However, OK for the tabletop.

Again, a really fine model with no problems apart from the painter's eyes.

(Why the skeleton with the dual purpose garden forks and egg whisks is wearing a bow tie I've no idea)

Dreadfleet - Swordfish 2

Nearly done on the hull and, with the sails all but finished, a clear hour of painting should launch the Swordfish.

Trouble is, with all the putting away and fetching out again, when we have guests, I cannot find the last three bases!

Swordfish sails

These sails were beyond my skill level and it shows.

How do these guys do it?

I tried dry-brushing, painting all over black and filling in the white with a fine brush, leaving it white and working the black in among it.

Nothing worked for me!

As well as them being messy, they are all black/white where to photos in the rules and magazines show various colours for the different components.

There should be metal in there and green

This I noticed when they were almost finished and I'm NOT doing them again.

Only the one sail is completely finished. The ropes are painted and the mast attached. I again found that that gap filling super glue most useful. More so than liquid green stuff. Thanks John.