Pass in Review: Blood & Plunder Quick Pic Collage

(Image from Living in the Past--Wooden Ships)

 Because I've been dealing with major health issues for the past two years now, I don't get a chance to do full-blown photo shoots.  

Lately I've been taking some quick snapshots of figures on my workbench dining room table and posting them on the Pacific Northwest Miniature Painters Society page for their "# Miniature Monday" and their "#WIP [Work in Progress] Wednesday."

Last week, I realized I haven't posted any of my "quick pics" directly here on my blog.  And as I started rummaging through my photo gallery on my Ipad Pro, I was shocked to discover how many quick pics I took--and how far behind I am at posting material.

So to make up for lost blog-fodder, this will be Part 1 of a collage of projects I've worked on for the past several months.

For this week, we'll turn back to the Age of Sail and the so-called Golden Age of Piracy.

Here's a 28mm bark I recently assembled, painted and rigged.  This comes from Firelock Games' Blood & Plunder:

The rigging is rather elastic and I learned--the hard way--to be careful.  My first attempt brought down the ship's foremast.  After re-supergluing the mast, I re-rigged the vessel, but kept the lines loose.

The bark is just the latest addition to my Blood & Plunder "fleet." I bought two pre-painted and assembled vessels several years ago, off The Miniature Market website.  These are:

 1. A sloop 

2. A brigantine:

The bark isn't the first vessel I painted.  I first "practiced" on the following:

3. A Caribbean native piragua: 

4. Some dugout "canoas:" 

I plan on using these as suitable substitutes for Woodland Indian canoes in my French and Indian War (F&IW) collection.

5. Some longboats: 

These boats will be suitable for any Age of Sail gaming.  

The plastic bags in each boat contain a painted, yet unmounted swivel gun.

While I don't have any Golden Age of Piracy crew figures, I do have some Napoleonic naval crew figures in the process of being painted by a friend, and I'm trying to get my 2 dozen Woodland Indian figures painted to complete my F&IW collection.

My justification for having these vessels is that I feel ship design differences from the 17th to 19th Centuries wouldn't be much of a concern due to the small size of the vessels and at this level of gaming. 

Firelock Games  makes high-quality products--when they make them.  The company seems to manufacture a limited supply of items then halt production.  I've had to search around the internet for items that are not listed on their website.  And while every vessel larger than a longboat is powered by sails--there's no guidelines for making sails, or even a template to use on paper or fabric of your choosing.

For now, adding sails to my bark and piragua will be on the back-burner.

The next Quick Pic Collage will focus on 20th Century vessels, so no "sail cloth" will be necessary.