Pirates! Miniature Adventures on the High Seas - Return to Skull island!

" The best part about being a pirate... is the shanties! "

~ The Pirate Captain

Skull Island and the shoals

Because, like rust, I never sleep and love adventure- I volunteered to help some very good friends make up some terrain for an upcoming Pirates! Miniature Battles on the High Seas game at Pacificon next weekend. That meant painting an ocean and rebuilding Skull Island (in typical pirate form, I traded my last one for some rum and a prized ham!)

Layout on the canvas to see how many islands needed

Skull Island in the raw. She's made of foam and pumice gel.

My trusty cabin boy wets down the canvas for painting.

Now, to be fair, I did write the rules, so felt a bit obliged since they are running the game. Okay, I also may have promised, oh...seven or so months ago,  that I'd do it. Nothing like a couple of weeks' deadline to get the juices flowing! 

I came out to check and see if the canvas was dry. Luckily yes!

Long story (and a couple of long nights) short, I built up a new Skull Island, some adjacent islands and painted up a canvas for the water.  My fearless Fossling crew helped - although it took longer to clean them up afterwards than it did to paint it! Total mayhem and fun. 

Below are some shots taken to help with set-up as I'll be running a Wooden Wars game at the same time. 

Navigating the rocks will be hard, but worth the risk!

A sloop will fit perfectly in the jaw.

Lo to the larger vessels that cross the reefs.

~ The Scenario

Revenge of Skull Island starts with three fleets of three ships: a galleon and two sloops or gunships. Each fleet has a map and are racing to get the treasure held in the eye of Skull Island. Only the smaller sloops and gunships can safely enter the shallow water past the ring of islands. The galleons can slug it out in the deep water or land on the shores of islands on the deep side.  I am sure that at least one island is inhabited by "locals". 

~ Pirates! Rules and Ships
If you are interested in purchasing ships, ordnance and rules, ScaleCreep Miniatures is the current publisher and seller.   

Cheers - and back to the painting table for me!

Venitian Galleys (and that one from Malta)

"When ships are locked and grappled together, the soldier has no more space left him than two feet of plank on the beak head."...

~ Miguel Cervantez, Don Quixote. 

The Fleet forms line, inspired by Angus Konstam's Osprey on Lepanto

Galleys Galleass and Galliots - oh my!

I have always admired the line of the renaissance galley. I've even sculpted a few ships after their fashion for my "Pirates, Miniature Adventures on the High Seas" game.  So, when one of my South Bay Game Club collegues mentioned he had some galleys that were in need of paint, I pretty much reverse Tom Sawyered him - and offered to paint them up! 

The front two ships are Galleass, and the die is for scale

Oh, I can put rigging and those cool banners and flags and... wait - what scale are those?!

With stars in my eyes, I pulled out all my research books on the battle of Lepanto and relived the moments, as we do.  I wonder if anyone has ever done an audit to see how much money they spend on "research" books for a particular period in comparison to the actual miniatures. When I got the miniatures in hand, I was firstly taken aback at the scale. 1/1200, aka: small. Quite small.

I am not sure what I was thinking. Actually I guess I was thinking the whole time that these babies were gonna be straight off the assembly lines from Rod Langton miniatures, which to me are the Bentley of ship miniatures. They are of course priced as such. 

The ships delivered into my care were from the Navwar range. Overall dependable specimens and when building large fleets, cost effective.  The one downside to these models would be the masts, which are thin and damn near impossible to straighten up all the way.  This dissuaded me from trying to mount any rigging or larger flags.

My Lepanto research material, including a postcard of a beautiful model in Venice.

I had good fun painting these guys, and jumping back into my Lepanto books; they were a noble distraction between painting Wooden Wars units. The whole lot probably took me about 4 hours, or better translated as the free painting time over a week. As the masts are fragile, I decided to present them (lightly glued) on a single piece of painted matte board. 

Now... if anyone has any Rod Langton galleys laying about in the slips that need paint...

A Langton  turkish galley, in all its brass etched glory!

Pirates! Attack on Orky Island

Long view of the table. Orc ships in the distance come to the rescue

Last Pacificon  saw more awesome Pirates! action in the way of a combination sea battle and island attack, ran by my friend Mr. B Miller.  I got to help out here and there with some ships, some cheating (one can do that when one wrote the rules... ) and playing part of the defensive force of goblins in the fort.

Battle Report:

dwarves launch, mindful of the mines in the water

A good view of Orky Island, built by the talented D. Empey!

After the successful capture by the goblins of the Dwarf admiral Sir Stanley Stiltlegs, the Hot porridge dwarf clan attempt a marine landing of the fortress on Orky Island.  As the short boats are launched from galleas and ironclads, they are fired upon by stone throwers and goblin navigators tossing out fireballs, losing 3 rowboats and their crew.

Dwarves hit the beach while the flagship, the SS Ironpants makes a breach in the fortress wall with its cannons.  A huge melee swirls around the fortress as goblins counter attack with Orc Marines and even a troll or two!

After a hard fight, the Dwarves drive back the goblins (or rather slaughtered them) and successfully scaled the walls. Peter Grose, commanding landing party on the right was the first to get his ladders up and over.  In the end the goblins tried running away with their hostage, but were cornered and had to surrender him. Victory to the Dwarves!

As the Goblin leaders beat a hasty retreat, the Dwarf Admiral plays his last card and summons not one, but two love struck Kraken.  Okay, this is a staged shot, but that's how I would have ended the game.

All in all a great time had by all 15 players.