In the sea, on the sea and over the sea!

Sea Related Things

We shall begin with a short showcase of things maritime, for my Victory at Sea Regia Marina fleet.

First the first couple of the islands I bought from Battlekiwi: 

I have to rave a little bit about Mod Podge for this. Applied liberally in around 5 coats, most of the print lines on the PLA islands have basically vanished. I've lost a bit of the crispness of some of the more 'reefy' islands but that's kind of okay given the scale and a bit of flock and sand to cover up the rest has done a nice job. The only lesson I will impart is it probably needs a blast with a hair dryer or heat gun or something to pop all the bubbles. If it bubbles, those set pretty hard.

 Secondly, the RM Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta:

This was an easy ship to paint in the end and has a goodly amount of detail for the white and orange splashes I like on the grey. On the other hand, I had to strip and repaint the stripes as I confidently finished this ship well in advance of this blog and then discovered I'd painted the stripes rising left to right, not right to left like EVERY OTHER SHIP I OWN. 

 Finally, some BA 201 Dive Bombers over the sea. I needed another four stands of planes to fully crew the RM Aquila and given I already have some RM 2001 fighters, some dive bombers seemed like a good call. 

They're painted broadly the same, but different, from my fighters just for my own sanity. I still find the weird asymmetric stands for these things to be odd but I'm used to it now.

French for Silver Bayonet

An order from Perry Miniatures, my first, arrived this week so I've started working on the French for Silver Bayonet. I'm building my crew out of Perry's Retreat from Moscow range as it's suitably characterful for this game. 

Dismounted Cuirassier, Supernatural Investigator, Officer

I'm stuck now waiting on an order of paint for this - Blogger Pooch recommended Vallejo's Prussian Blue as the best base coat so I have ordered some but having some courier-driven chicanery at this point has delayed really getting into these models. 

I have managed to do one model so far, this chap looks suitably like a Cossack, I went off down the Google Image Search rabbit hole and found a great illustration of a Ural Cossack from 1812. I could do this without the necessary blue so I figured I'd crack on. 

He'll be a Native Scout in Silver Bayonet terms as that sort of works for the French in Russia.

Knight

So the core of the build is done and dry fitted, looks like this:

I'm really happy with how it's come together and given how little pose-ability there is in the legs of these models it still looks dynamic enough for me to be happy. The arm is hanging lower than it will when I'm done but I'll have it reaching more forward.

 The current conundrum is whether to paint the pilot and then how to pop the carapace hatch open without it weirdly getting in the way of the rocket launcher.

It's a bit of an evolution of style and design from the original Epic-scale Knight Errant.

Next Time

The Teutons will hopefully get a run in ADLG and the Regia Marina will sail again against the American navy.  I'll be finishing up the rest of the islands before then too.