I haven't quite finished the first lot of Tumbling Dice 1/2400th scale ironclads for the Royal Navy but, nonetheless, I have already decided on the next instalment, which will be an eclectic selection of armoured turret ships and an ironclad ram. This is partly because I really like these weird and wonderful bits of Victorian naval engineering but also because I've had enough of painting sails, masts and spars!
There are a couple of ships with masts and sail sets, however, with HMS Monarch and HMS Black Prince having already been partially blocked in. I've included HMS Black Prince even though it's not a turret armed warship because I enjoyed painting the HMS Warrior model, which came out looking quite nifty in the end.
The other ships include HMS Devastation, HMS Thunderer, HMS Royal Sovereign and HMS Prince Albert, all ironclad monitor type warships equipped with multiple turrets, together with the odd ball ironclad ram HMS Hotspur, just to round off the force. I think painting this lot will be a lot less fiddly and probably quite good fun.
It's interesting that given the general ineffectiveness of guns at sea in this period that naval thinking went back to the ancients to consider ramming as an effective method of attack. In reality it proved very difficult to get an actual broadside ramming manoeuvre unless the opponent was already disabled. It proved a short lived experiment.
ReplyDeleteI do like these - especially the picture you have at the top of the page at the moment. They look really good!
ReplyDeleteYes, it's an interesting point. I've tried ram attacks in a couple of games and they always end in the ramming ship being damaged so much that they are effectively neutralised for the rest of the game, not to mention being a point blank sitting duck!
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's fun to paint these up and they should be appearing in a game report sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteNicely done.
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