'Toy Story' from RaulM: Black Seas Galley and Gunboats

 For my second post, I've gone from the usual ship-rigged vessel to something a little bit more exotic. I have a Barbary States galley, as well as three smaller gunboats to go along with it. I've left them without any ensigns though as you could use them as Spanish gunboats, which is a nice reflection of the unique geography and history of that country.  

I wanted the colors to be more vibrant than the usual, plus it allowed me to move away from the usual black and yellow stripes look that a lot of Napoleonic ships had. So I used lots of reds and blues, as well as giving each gunboat a unique sail. 

The oars were a total pain to get clean, as I needed to go back and forth a lot to fix mistakes I made, especially in all of the crevices. Which is ironic as I thought it would be an easier time without having to do all of the different sails. 

The gunboats were much simpler by far. I had a lot of fun with these, especially picking all of the different sail patterns. These are miniatures from Hagen Miniatures, a German company, who make models in the same 1/700 scale as Warlord. Normally gunboats come on bases of 3 in Black Seas, but I don't really like that look and I prefer them on their own individual bases. 

Finally, for the Toy Story part of the challenge. My first foray into what you could call miniature gaming was with an old game, Pirates of the Spanish Main. It was marketed as a "Constructible Strategy Game" or CSG. Packs came with 2 styrene punch out ships, some crew, islands, treasure and dice. Unlike a boardgame, you set up the island terrain and used the sides of the card to measure movement, hence why I say it introduced me to the idea of miniature gaming. I still have my old collection, and when I saw the Black Seas models I found an avenue to play in the Age of Sail again. 

They had all kinds of different ships, but in the spirit of this post, I've included a 1-mast galley to go along with the rest of the models I painted. 

As for the points: 

5 points per gunboat

10 points for the galley

50 points for the challenge completion

Which I figured gives me 75 points for the whole thing.