Ships from Valiant

Yet another new arrival:

These miniatures are from the Ramming Speed line from Valiant Enterprises.  At 1/900 scale, they are right between the almost too small (for me!) 1/1200 ships and the oddly shaped 1/600 line from Xyston.  I just can not put my finger on why the Xyston ships look off to me, but I am finding that I really do not want to work on them.

The variety of ships above were selected in order to flesh out my idea of what types of miniatures from Valiant could fill out the roles for Tékumel naval gaming.  Since the Valiant selection is limited, I am being careful about filling those roles in a fashion that is easily identifiable on the table top.  The information on the Valiant website has the triremes at the same length as the quinqueremes, so I am hoping that the wider beam of the quinquereme will make up for that.


Here is a comparison pic:

Each square is ¼".

Lots of good news in this pic.  The triremes are slightly shorter than the quinquereme, which is good.  Also, the triremes have a noticeable difference in beam from the quinquereme, and this will alter even more once the oar banks are attached.

 In my mind, the ships types will correspond in the following fashion:

     The pentekonter from Valiant (not shown above) will represent the Tékumeli séscha;

     Triremes will be the srügánta;

     Quinqueremes will represent the qél;

     Heptares and dekares (not pictured above) will be the Tékumeli zírunel.

The Valiant ships are plain enough that modifications will be easier than on the Xyston models - I intend to try to make some ships that look something akin to the ships illustrated in this wonderful post about Tékumel naval actions.



Although it seems simple, that bit of organization posted above is a weight off my shoulders!

Egyptian ships

After reading the books I received about ancient Egyptian ships, I was able to piece together a list of common building materials for the Pharaoh's navy:

Acacia
Sycamore
Cedar (red and white)

Also used, but much less often:

Cypress
Pine


Cedar, of course, would be imported from the Levant and was often used for funerary barges for the high-ranking citizens and royalty.  I intend to paint up only a few ships in red cedar, and the rest in a more tan color.  Masts, as another nifty detail, were often made of the same material as the hull.

Egyptian ship books...

Hmmm, long time no post!  Hopefully, these will help me get back on track:

I was looking for information on the colors of ancient Egyptian ships, and came across these on Amazon.  The book by Sintich is more about making models, and might not have much information on the colors of actual ships, but is very handy as it has plans for making scale ship models.  Besides, it was only $2.28 with free shipping, so I could not pass on it!  The Vinson books just arrived and I have yet to peruse it in depth.

The plan for my Bronze age ships is still as follows:  paint them up as historically plausible as possible, and use them for both historical battles and in my fantasy Tékumel battles.  No one, except the fine readers of this humble blog, will know the difference...

Langton ancient ships, part 2

Here are some closer looks at the recent purchase:

Egyptian Warship of Queen Hatshepsut

Egyptian Warship of Ramses III

Warship of the Sea Peoples

I am still digging into some research on the fleets, but the fleet lists from Naumachiae list several types of ships for both the Egyptians and Sea Peoples.  It would be interesting to get a mix of ships, especially for the Sea Peoples, as they were a loose confederation of tribes their ships should be different also.  It is interesting to note that this Sea Peoples vessel was modeled without oar banks.  How hard might it be to add some?

A slightly different direction?

I recently became the proud owner of some new ship miniatures:

More Langton ships, all the way from Down Under courtesy of Ian (who has a fine blog at Thomo's Hole!)  The package included ten Bronze Age Egyptian and ten Sea Peoples ships along with bases.  Of course, what to do with them...  The first course will be to integrate them into my Tékumel fantasy naval project, where, due to their older appearance and small size, they will be representing minor powers (the Tsoléi Islands among others) or perhaps pirates.

But, it occurred to me that they could be used for historical purposes also.  I could paint them up in historical schemes, and they would still fit in with the fantasy scheme.  Some sea battles circa 1200 BC might be fun, and it would not be hard to expand the collection, especially if some of the other Langton ships fit in time-wise, maybe the 20-oar galley or pentecontors to represent Mycenaean or Trojan ships  :)

Books to start off 2014

A good way to start off a new year is always with a new book, or maybe even two:

We found these at the local used book store.  The ACW book is a new copy, and the Salamis book is used but in great shape.  For US$20 total, this is not a bad way to get into the upcoming year.

I have read that there is some controversy about this ACW book by Dougherty; I have the similar work by Tony Gibbons and I will try to set up a compare and contrast post in the near future.

Langton ancient naval rules available

It would not surprise me that I am, once again, late to the party on this, but the set of ancient naval rules from Langton Miniatures, Naumachiae, is available as a free set of downloads... at this link.  

It is in PDF format, and fairly large, but worth the download wait!

Langton ancient ships

And now, a closer look at the Langton ships:

Deceres

Octeres

Hepteres

These are among the largest ancient ships that Langton makes.  For Tékumel, they will fill the role of the zírunel, the largest of the common classes of warships.  I believe that there are larger warships plying the oceans of Tékumel, but they are rare and I will not worry about them, for now...

Roman quinquereme

Carthaginian quinquereme

Quadrireme

Trireme

The next step down in size, these are slated to represent the qél for my Tékumeli navies.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the relatives sizes of these miniatures are very close.  This will allow a lot of variety, not only for different navies but also within a particular empire's navy (Langton has other miniatures of this size that I have yet to purchase).

Liburnian

Trihemiolia

Hemiolia

These three miniatures are markedly more narrow than the previous four, as well as being slightly shorter.  For Tékumel, I think these will work as the srügánta, although the hemiolia is a bit smaller than the other two and might be better as a séscha.  Out of these, the liburnian is especially appealing with the stern platform.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the appearance of these miniatures.  There is still work to do, as the representation of a séscha is not fully set yet, and there are a couple of trireme variants I would like to look at before setting it all in stone (heh) for the building of some flotillas.

Fantasy naval, part 2

The first flotilla of Langton Miniatures (ordered through Waterloo Minis) has arrived:

They are looking good so far; I just need to sort them out by size to match their Tékumel counterparts.  I think that I will need a few more samples as the smallest ships types might not be covered...

Fantasy naval, part 1

The first set of ships has arrived - from Valiant:

A trio of Heptares.  Although a length for the miniature is given on the Valiant web site, I was still surprised at them.

Here is a closer look:

Looks like assembly will be straightforward, although I seem to have too many starboard-side oar banks (see the bottom ship in the above pic).  I will send off an e-mail about that.

No matter what scale I finally choose, and I can see using a combo of 1/900 (for larger ships) and 1/1200 (for the rest especially cargo ships), I intend to use some of the ideas found here.

Something missing?

Over on one of my other blogs, I have been slowly working on a system to create a fantasy naval collection based on Tékumel, which can be seen here.  Unfortunately, I have found that I really do not like the Xyston ships that I had originally purchased, and my source of very inexpensive Xyston ships dried up, so I am investigating a different scale.  And, recently I found these:

No actual ships though, which is a bit disappointing!  (These are bases for Langton ships)



I do have a selection of Langton ancient ships on order, and some Valiant ships as well.  I will be posting pics and info here and the other blog, so apologies in advance if you are one of the few that will getting multiple posts on the same subject matter...

Ancient Naval rules

Lorenzo at Dadi & Piombo has a new set of rules for ancient naval battles - Impetus Navalis - for large scale actions. The PDF download is here. A brief scan of the rules indicates that you might need a copy of Impetus to use them. Some interesting concepts in there!

Another, much older set of ancient naval rules is De Bellis Navalibus - based on DBA they are simple yet subtle. I hope to give them a try sometime, or better yet convert them to a more Renaissance-era style...

Roman Seas

Here is a pic of a Roman Seas game in progress:




This was taken during one of Eric Hotz's games during Enfilade 2006.


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