My Pound Store Naval Convoy

My convoy of Merchant Shipping

The Wolf Pack

It might be stretching it a bit to call Flying Tiger a pound store, although these two packs of eraser ships cost £4 in total.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/hms-flying-tiger-eraser-battleship

It’s come quite a way since picking up these in Flying Tiger a few weeks ago.

Two stubby cruise ships joined together to make a hospital or troop ship maybe? 

I now look forward this autumn to working out some kind of (solo) convoy gaming simulation, once I have puzzled  out what to do for escorts. I might have to raid the card ships from our old family copy of the Dover Patrol game for now.

Thanks to many of you for all the excellent suggestions regarding simple naval wargames rules. I have now ordered a paperback copy from Lulu of the Bob Cordery’s new Gridded Naval Wargames which received most recommendations, as well as a £2 bashed up, ex-library copy of Donald Featherstone’s Naval Wargames.

If these rules don’t suit an old infantry skirmish gamer, there were other helpful suggestions. Thank you all.

It will be interesting moving out into new territory or terrain, a whole new language of ships and naval warfare, a world or ocean apart from H. G. Wells type Little Wars or the small infantry skirmish game of Featherstone’s Close Wars.

https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/dipping-my-little-toe-in-the-big-ocean-of-naval-wargaming

What next for my Merchant Shipping Convoy? 

Two tone grey camouflage makes it difficult to identify individual ships, which is the point of the dark grey lower and light grey upper sections. However it makes identifying individual cargo ships in any future naval game a problem, so a few pre-war coloured funnels might return as they did in WW2.

Paints used are several coats of Revell Aquacolor Acrylics, Gunship Grey and Stone Grey for the ships and  painting separate layers of Ultramarine Blue and Mossy Green onto the black card bases made from scrap art framing or mounting card. What colour the sea?

Big ships don’t leave such a wide angle wake as a small river craft. Getting some kind of bow wave and wake was more tricky, a blob of off-white paint on the bow brushed along the side of the ship and its aftermath seemed to do the trick in most cases.

I also have to name and label my convoy ships, probably with some Bronte inspired Angria, Gondal and Gaaldine names: Angrian Princess, Gondal Queen, that sort of thing that suits possible  Imagi-Nation naval campaigns.

Blogposted by Mark, Man of TIN, 19 August 2018