Anchors away! Building a pirate ship part 3

Based on the rigging schematics in Part 2 I used elastic cord for the rigging. The reason for this will become apparent below, but in any case it will enable you to make some nice and tight lines. All the standing rigging is in black, as it is supposed to be. Standing rigging did not need to move and was tarred for durability. Running rigging, used to hoist and manipulate sails, needed to be flexible and was therefore not tarred and hemp-coloured. Failing to find light brown elastic cord, I forewent this difference. 

As I drilled holes in all the masts and yardarms running the rigging was as simple as running it through the holes and tying knots to fix it in place. Don't forget to put some superglue on each knot to keep it from slipping once everything is in place!

Take care not to glue in place anything else. The tension on the cord is quite sufficient to hold masts and yardarms in place without glue or other attachments.

Below are some details of how the cord runs through the holes and how the sails have been furled and sowed in place. I really wanted to add sails, but decided for furled sails to be able to easily reacht the deck during play.

A learing point below: you will see how the stays bend over the railing. I should have attached the knotting point higher up, so that the stays would clear the railing while running upwards.

 I made several flags for the Reaper, so I could sail her as a pirate ship, a privateer and a British Navy ship.

Glueing bits of plastic tube to the masttops enables me to easily switch flags.

Some last paint touch-ups, finishing the figurehead and the nameplate on the stern and here she is: finished for as much as I want to finish her before the first game: HMS Reaper and crew!

The finished figurehead.

Some additional freehand on the nameplate. 

And now the final test and the reason I used elastic cord for the rigging. When you remove all the loose parts you can pull the masts out of their sockets as the cord gives way and fold the entire rigging back for easy storage and transport. A trick I read somewhere and gratefully borrowed for this project!

And just as easily he is put back in order again!

Arr me mateys!  Hoist the mainsail! Battle stations! The Reaper is coming!

Splice the mainbrace! Building a pirate ship Part 2

Before making the masts I had to decide on the rigging. Googling around I found this brigantine that looked perrect for my ship. 

I dug around for bits and pieces and found enough dowel and chopsticks to fashion me some masts and yardarms. I even had a steeringwheel that I had bought for the Barsoom ships (ssshhh. don't tell anyone).

Lazy bugger that I am I fastened the mast parts with ductape. If it works for the Myth Busters, it certainly works for me!

Here the stays will be fastened. Being a wargaming ship model, the rigging must be severely simplified to enable the players to reach the deck at all.  I also added decorative ridges on the hull to suggest the lines of the planking. These were made of wood from wickerwork diner placemats. I have no idea what kind of wood it is, but it is soft and very flexible.

Some fitting of the masts.

Here the ductape is covered with cable made from a couple of shoelaces. The problem with modelling on a Sunday is that all the shops are closed and you have to make do with what you have at hand....

An old plastic zombie provided the figurehead. And the ship's name: Reaper.

Fitting yardarms. Since I measure as little as possible most parts are made "on the eye" and have to be fitted before assembly.

Long long ago my father made these two brass gun barrels for me in 20 mm scale. In the scale of this ship they make excellent swivel guns! I fitted them on pintels made from plasticard and tube.

All the parts together before painting. I decided to paint the parts first before rigging the ship, as you can't easily reach some things anymore as soon as the ship is assembled completely.

And here she is with her coat on!

A learning moment: fitting the figurehead before painting was not smart. This part still needs some work.

So on to the third and last part: making the rigging and the sails.

Missed the first part? You'll find it here. Part 3 is here.

Heave to! Building a pirate ship! Part 1.

Having enjoyed myself mightily in a recent game of Legens of the High Seas, I decided my collection sorely lacked a pirate ship. I Googled around a bit and decided to build one myself based on Gary Chalks designs. 

The Chalk templates look like this...

and result in a 4-gun brigantine. I decided to enlarge the ship a bit and lengthen it to 6 guns. So I drew my templates on printing paper and carefully measured out all the needed parts. It's a bit of dull work but will save a lot of work later on. 

Then I drew the needed parts on foamboard and started cutting. 

I measured the gun-ports to my collection of plastic guns, remnants of a long ago acquired Pressman Pirate Battle Game. And built the rest of the ship around it. After all, a warship is simply a means to transport guns to the appropriate place to fire them!


After cutting out the parts from a piece of 5mm foamboard I engraved a planking pattern in the decks using a wheel knife.

 The result was a pile of foamboard parts, ready to be glued together.

I managed to burn my fingers twice on the hot glue gun (do NOT try this at your own home)

The ship's outer hull gave me some thought, but in the end I decided to make it from thick cardboard, usede for framing pictures. It is a b*tch to cut, but is very smooth and strong. And it will curve well so would follow the lines of the hull.

After adding the bow stem and ornaments I kept adding details like railings (cardboard and kebab sticks), door- and gunport frames et cetera. You can keep doing this for quite a while...

I fitted the guns on the gun deck and was relieved to see they still would fit!

The stern castle was made from cardboard as well. I used fly net mesh for the windows.

That being enough for today, I dropped anchor and retired to my bunk. Tomorrow more detailing and rigging!

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Turning a cheesy German into Sean Connery!

When I acquired Warlord's free Count von Hosenschlange figure (it is a gift with the Devil's Playground book. Do NOT Google the meaning of the word!) I was immediately  reminded of a character in one of my favourite movies: Sean Connery as Juan Sanchez Ramirez de Villa Lobos.


The figure was close, but not perfect. The eyepatch was wrong and of course the iconic peacock feathered cape was lacking. But for the rest it was spot on as far as I was concerned.

So the first step was to gently cut away the eyepatch and use the metal there to more or less sculpt an eye. Not easy and not entirely satisfactory but my sculpting skills are quite limited, so it would have to do.

The second step was to add the peacock feathers to the hat and cape. I simply sculpted them over the existing figure parts using green stuff. It made the feathers look more bulky and fluffy. Hmm. So far it could still be mistaken for a complicated fur coat....

Putting the primer on did not really lay my worries to rest....

I briefly considered to replace the rapier with Ramirez katana, but dismissed this.

Undoubtedly Ramirez would have been adept with a rapier as well and it saved me the trouble to cut away the poniard.

I also chickened out of giving him an open shirt. Removing the front of the coat ran a serious risk of ruining the figure alltogether and I liked the laced collar.

As the rest of the figure's clothing nicely matched mr Connery's costume in the movie painting those was a matter of matching the colours in a satisfactory way.  I still need to add some details.

Then some serious study of the colouring of peacock feathers ensued. I gathered all my courage and started mixing greens, yellows and blues with the result below.

There is still some detailing to be done on the coat, but as one of my first serious attempts at sculpting something other than hair it did not turn out half bad!

And to show off his new cape, he went a-pirating!

Shadows of Brimstone review

I have been a long time fan and reader of H.P. Lovecraft and his weird and creepy tales. Whenever possible I try to collect his creations for the wargaming table so when I came upon some flying three-tongued snakes I was of course very interested. Some tracking revealed they were part of a new boardgame and thus I fell for the creepy charms of Flying Frog's Shadows of Brimstone game.

The Harbinger Demon, one of the two "End bosses"of the game.

SoB was originally a Kickstarter in 2014 but I  missed it completely. This was very fortunate for my financial health, since I would doubtlessly have spent a fortune on it.

The Goliath, the other End Boss. Gesundheit. 

SoB has several unique features. First, it is a horror boardgame set in the Old Wild West. The game's fluff recounts that a strange mineral was found in the second half of the 19th century: Darkstone. Darkstone proved very valuable and very dangerous. Eventually the hoards of Darkstone tore rips in the fabric of reality and Earth became connected to other worlds, from which monsters enter ours and destroy at will. Here the players start: Heroes every one of them they fight the Darkness wherever they can!


Another feature is that the game is set in several alternate worlds. Games usually start in the Darkstone Mines set in the Old West, but may spill over into any of the alternate worlds connected to Earth by way of Gates. So far Flying Frog has released two boxed sets, each holding the Mine/Earth world and one other one; the sweltering Swamps of Jargono and the frozen Targa Plateau and its ancient city. Each world brings specific threats and advantages.

Flying Frog's release schedule promises at least three more Other worlds in the coming years, the first of which; the Caverns of Cynder to come out in September 2015.



The board is another, if not unique then at least creative, feature. It is entirely built up from puzzle tiles. You can play on either a pre-made board or pull Map cards during play and discover the board while playing. Each tile has a "Mines" side and an "Other World" side. So even during a game you can hop into another world!

The puzzle like nature of the board brings great versatility

Chambers yield randomized encounters and events, mostly card driven. Falling rocks, growing fear and attacking monsters will try to defeat you while you and your fellow Heroes try to beat the game.

The Rancher (uncomfortably close!) and the Indian Scout battle a Slasher

The game comes with its own plastic monsters and heroes and a multitude of counters. The miniatures require some/a lot of modelling skills, depending on how nice you want them to look on the board. With some skill and paint they can be made to look excellent in my opinion.

Each boxed set comes with four Heroes so will harbour four players. Buying a second boxed set gets you four more Heroes, another Other World, new Mine tiles and a new set of monsters and threats. The game can be played with six players at that stage, this being the maximum number the designers have envisioned.

The Heroes are Old West archetypes: the Gunslinger, Law Man, Saloon Girl and Indian Scout being examples. Each has different strengths and weaknesses so there are combat machines, long distance fighters, fast hitters and special types, like the "magic" wielding Priest and the dynamite slinging Bandido (my favourite!).

There is no Game Master, since the game itself is the opponent. This works very fluently even to the point of creating an unpredictable deadline for each game which you will have to beat. The game is therefore cooperative: the players compete with the game, not with each other. The aim of each game is to collect a given number of clues (found through the encounters in the chambers) and then play the Endgame: a true computergame-style endboss-defeating Endgame full of threats and mayhem. On the road to the endgame you are plagued by sanity-wrecking monsters, mutating Darkstone, cracking ceilings and other nastiness.

The game can be played stand-alone as well as a campaign. In between games, you can play the mini-boardgame Travelling Into Town where you travel to the nearest frontier settlement to replenish your supplies, buy weapons, trade and heal and you can even have deceased Heroes ressurected (if you have the money to pay for it!). During the game you collect Experience Points (blast from the past!) and when a given treshold is reached your Hero levels up and can do more/shoot straighter/drink harder or whatever benefit the new level brings. Heroes may develop along several routes, so here too is the option to add versatility to the game.

Homemade Corpse Piles. 

There is room for scratchbuilding fun. The cardboard Corpse Pile counters (one of the most annoying monsters in the game) fell short of my expectations so I made my own from zombie leftovers I hads lying around. Likewise the pile of Darkstone the Void Spiders below are crawling over is homemade.

Darkstone and the Creepiecrawlies that come with it

A Game in full swing

Long ago in the 80ies I begun my gaming life with Fantasy Roleplaying. My first miniatures were bought with this in mind. Gradually I moved to miniature wargaming until I rarely played any boardgame anymore. However SoB has made me come back full circle: horror war/roleplaying on a board with miniatures! 

It's a great game. I am looking forward to its expansions in the coming years.