Cruel Seas - a little diversion

One of the Xmas presents to myself was a Cruel Seas starter set. I had been looking to do something like this as last year I picked up a host of metal stuff from a bring and buy for bargain price. They were mostly the old skytrex stuff that is either 1/600 or 1/1200. I had picked up a sea mat from Deepcut  Studios last year  - its a good cold grey colour - just right to my mind for the North Sea.

So - first up the initial British forces - which have also kicked off my first entry in the painting challenge.

3 x Vosper type II

I have drilled through the mast at an angle to add a metal pin stay to support it and it also allows a good place to fly the ensign from.

I have staged the wakes on these with a bit of table salt for the photos - I am tempted to  model proper bases once  I have a had a game  and see how it all works.

 I have added some crew figures to these 3 - which I think really helps - some came with the set so I used them - but I think there will be suitable heroics and ros stuff in the lead pile to re-purpose too

Vopser type I MTB

the start of the merchants - this is the Tanker from the Warlord set I got - its about the size of 4 MTBs , not massive in scale terms , but it does look nice. I did have to add an extra layer of support to base I found the resin was pretty thin and was flexing a lot - I added a cardboard base which seems have done the job.

The scale for the models in Cruel Seas is billed as 1/300th which makes the smaller craft a bit easier to model and use a playing pieces. There will be a bit of scale mix and matching for larger vessels as practically and larger ship is going to need a really large table- even something the size of a liberty ship will be 35cm long .

you can see some of my other merchant ships from last years acquisition on the prep desk .- I have started on the E boats too...as we have a first game planned for the weekend