The one with my foray into Great War naval wargaming; Der Kaiserliche Marine

A few weeks ago my buddy Andreas randomly asked if I was keen on trying out some WW1 naval wargaming with a set of rules he found interesting and I jumped at the chanse at once. 
Naval wargaming has been something I have been very interested in ever since I saw those bags of 1:2400 WW2-ships hanging in the rack at Flammans in Gothenburg anno -92. I have never really gotten further than that in all these years. 
My mindset has in the past always revolved around the notion that "I need atleast one friend to be able to play wargames", which we all know is far from the truth. Solo wargaming just wasn't on my radar at all. Hell it was even a revelation for me to play Arkham Horror for the first time; Wait what, we are playing together against the game!??! *mind blown*
This kinda meant that I never got into projects I thought looked really cool; I couldn't find anyone to play them with. 


The finished ships, bases got some extra detailing done and printed out tags.

Fast forward to now as an avid solo-player with the added benefit of having someone come to me with a style of wargaming that's super cool. Yeah, I'm diving in head first.
The startingpoint for our naval games will be Fighting Battleships:1906 -1918 The First Dreadnoughts as written by Brian Phillips (Available from kimryoung@yahoo.com). 
It is what it sounds like; a (pre-)Dreadnought naval wargame mainly centered around the Great War.
As a system it comes with a rules-book with 26 pages, an information booklet about the era and the different shipclasses with 20 pages and a few sheets with QRS, counters, measuringstick and so on.
I will probably do a more extensive rundown of the system once I have a couple games in.


Front cover of the PDF rules.

We prompty decided that Jutland shouldn't be the first thing we try, but use a handful of ships to try it out and while Andreas chose the Royal Navy, I was more than happy to paint up the Kaiserliche Marine. The Imperial German Navy for us non-germans I guess.
For the playtests we are going with the proposed 1:6000 scale but with slightly larger bases, mainly to be able to properly fit the biggest of the ships for the era. Models are 3D-printed in resin by yours truly and come as a free download in from the excellent marcusmole on Thingiverse. I dare to say that he has most of the ships of the battle of Jutland available in his repository, so if we keep the smaller scale (I would like 1:2400 if possible later on) I will keep printing his stuff.


Primed (and promtly dropped on the lawn for some extra texture.....)


Had to open my last bottle of paint I bought back in -96'ish on Lincon to find a blue to match my battlemat. Perfect condition after all these years.


Went with Vallejo Khaki for the decks and slathered the models with diluted Graveyard Grey.


Mounted on the drybrushed bases.

All in all, this was a superfun and quick project to do. I think I totaled around 10 minutes per model over two evenings (dryingtimes on speedpaints..) and am very pleased with the results. (Edit: Zooming in on the finished pic at the top of the page, I see that I forgot to paint in the edges of the bases and tags.) 
Getting all of Jutland painted should be a really quick process even tho it's a truly massive fleetoperation. The Kaiserliche Marine had 99 ships in that engagement!

Cheers!
/Fred
Back to The Factorium!



Comments

  1. The bases on the ships look great.

    Congrats on another fun project - well done.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment