Sailing the Uncharted Seas [16.01.09]

[Court Jester]

The Uncharted Seas is a new fantasy naval wargame release late last year by Spartan Games. Being a HUGE Man O War fan I knew I'd have to buy a fleet and get painting.

I have already been working on this project for a couple of months so there will be quite a few update straight off the bat. If you have any questions just shout 'em out.

I realise this is quite a niche game within an already niche hobby but thought there might be a few people here that would be interested to see the game and what can be done with the models.

[Court Jester]

So I have made a start on my Uncharted Seas Human fleet. So far this has involved cleaning the figures, assembly and basing with one tiny conversion.

The Human Battleship has very little in the way of sails for the first third of the ship and to me that looked a little off. Now it has already been pointed out that the sails on these miniatures would never work in real life but I'm not all that interesting in making them look real.

HOWEVER in my mind a fighting ship like this needs three masts and two other triangular sails at the front and the back. I couldn't tell you how this sail pattern works in real life but as long as my ships follow this vague idea I'll be happy.

So I stole the sail off of one of my smaller ships and drilled a hole into the front of the battleship and stuck it in place. This now fills up the empty space at the front of the battleship and finished the shape I had in mind.


I have not glued down two sets of sails yet, to allow me some room to get to the gundecks during painting.

The other human ships have been assembled "as they come" and I have already bought another pack of Frigates to replace my now sail-less boat.

Everything is based and I'll be undercoating them tonight.

Colour scheme?

I'll be using a rather light brown undercoat (almost GW Bubonic Brown) and work from there... No idea where it will go...

[Court Jester]

I didn't get undercoated tonight...

Instead I decided to fanny about with the bases. Adding small waves with green stuff. When painting the base I'm not going to highlight each rise or shade each trough instead I'll dapple the entire surface and maybe add the odd area of surf. I don't think that description works too well but hopefully when it is painted you'll see what I mean.

I need one more pass at the base to add the waves about the ships hull but I won't go overboard with them. Once that is done I'll base up the remaining ships and undercoat them.

[Court Jester]

Still no paint I'm afraid...

Tonight I based up all the frigates and added the final bits to the Battleship.

I'm no sculptor, my skills with the purest green are indeed limited so I aimed for what waves might look like... in my mind. They are quite cartoony but I think when painted will fit the style of the ships that are not overly realistic looking. At least, thats my excuse and I am sticking to it...




Tomorrow (tonight) the Cruisers and then paint on Tuesday (maybe)...

[Court Jester]

And a quick run through of how I did the bases...

1. I sand the bases before gluing the ships down. Then I roll out a thing sausage of GS and place it along the edge of the base...



2. I then press the putty down towards the ship's hull and forwards to the edge of the base creating a wedge of putty rising up from the ship to the base edge.



3. I then press the troughs into the GS as well as building up the peaks. Take no notice of GS going over the edge of the base. In fact try to make sure the putty overlaps the base for a cleaner finish later on.

[Court Jester]

4. Roll out a smaller sauasge of GS and wrap it around the bow of the ship.



5. Then through various prodding and pulling shape the waves around the hull.



6. When the GS is dry take a very sharp knife and trim away the excess GS around the base edge for a nice clean base edge that also shows off the rise and fall of the water...



The wake was sculpted like the waves along the hull. A blob of GS was placed on the back of the base and then pressed down to create the two waves trailing the ship.

As I said, nothing technical or amazing but it is working for me so far...

[Court Jester]

THERE BE PAINT!

I started painting the whole fleet this afternoon... I decided on a colour scheme as well.

I didn't wan't a sombre looking fleet and decided instead on somthing rather different. The ships of the sixteenth century always looks very colourful and decorative so I wandered the webs until I found a colour scheme I liked. I didn't need to wander far because there are not that many pictures around of 16C ships and one of the first I found inspired me.





This ship is a reconstruction of a real ship from the 16C, built using similar techniques, tools and materials. I really liked the green red/brown colour scheme it had going so picked my colours based on it.

I have basecoated the whole fleet and then inked them all. However I decided it was best to fully paint one ship to get the technique sorted before plowing on with the rest of the ships.

[Court Jester]

Askold is the first vessel to set sail from the shipyards...






I'm happy with how it turned out.

The paneling along the side of the ship is highlighted but not too heavily, just enough to make the individual panels stand out.

The sail design was spur of the oment and could have done with some planning. I don't want overly frilly designs on the sails (because the rest of the ship is frilly) but red stripes seemed to be the order of the day...

I also hooned up the shading of the front sail. Quite why each stripe was painted light to dark I dont know... I won't dwell on it though. It is fantasy after all. :smt003

The blue on the base is not that great. I like the wake and waves but the dark blue just looks sloppy. I think it is because there is sooo much extra sea on the base that the other classes don't have. I'm going to see about adding some water effect...

The flags were made out of embossing foil.

I can now tackle the rest of the fleet...

[Court Jester]

They are yet to have their bases finished (awaiting info on paint from the USA) and they haven't had their pennants made/attached yet.

[Court Jester]

After really taking a look at the sail layout on Tudor warships (which seem to be the starting point for the Humans in US) I have had a tinker with the layout of the Battleship...



And take a look at his website for plenty more drawings of the ships.

The layout of the sails uses a cruiser main sail at the front and then the regular BBS sails followed by 2 Frigate sails. I was going to build up the front of the ship to make it look a touch more Tudor but decided to leave as much of the original model as possible (afterall it isn't actually a Tudor ship...) The plasticard parts will be painted up as part of the rigging moorings.

[Court Jester]

You know when you just aren't happy withe something you have painted and you just can't leave it... Well I repainted the sails on the Frigates.

I felt the lines on the sails were badly finished, they were annoying me. Or at least the lack of consistency with their spacing and width was annoying me.

So I went with the full on stripe design. Simple but effective.

They are still waiting for pennants and the paint to finish their bases (getting Reaper paints in the UK is a nightmare!).

2 pictures because I couldn't decide on the better angle... :P




I have also done a bit more on the battleship. Mainly blocking in major colours.

[Court Jester]

I received my transports last week so decided to have a fiddle with them. they are obviously going to be troop transports so I have been experimenting with adding some battlements to the sides and I will probably add a ram to the front as well. I also think I'll upgrade to three sales per ship...

Lessons learnt here... glue the plasticard on before the sails... ! ;D




I used them in a game today... 1 Transport rammed a cruiser and blew it up on a critical hit that in turn sunk 3 other enemy ships and the other 2 transports rammed the enemy Battleship and overpowered it's crew in 2 rounds of combat... nasty little ships these...

I have also done some more work on the paneling of the Battleship... I'm still pondering the sails..

[Court Jester]

Yup... three sails is the way to go...

[Court Jester]

I spent a few hours tonight pondering sail designs for the remaining ships... I was leaning towards black and red stripes for the transports and for the battleship I had doodled this design (stolen from the MOW Empire Greatship).

[Braad]

Do I see some Dutch flags on your inspirational pics... Excellent!

Anyway, nice blog! Good to see something on here a bit different from the traditional GW stuff. Keep it up!

[Calibretto]

Very sharp paint jobs, cant go wrong with that color combination. Not bad work on the greenstuff either. I look forward to seeing more.

[Killshot]

OMG! These are fantastic.

[spikedog]

Loving this blog so far, the ships look fantastic and are enough to make me want to start playing this game. (I can think of no higher compliment)

I saw this on their site a while back but I may just have to take another look.

Thank you.

[colhodg]

Am very much enjoying reading quality logs on non GW stuff - the quality of the painting and sculpting on Warseer is generally very high and your stuff is no exception - having to physically restrain myself from ordering Warhammer Historical's Trafalgar and it is entirely your fault.

Very nice work.

[Hadriel Caine]

lovely work. the sails and wave bases are especially cool i may have to try this out...