WWI German Navy 1/6000

Figurehead Jutland Fleet Box

These ships had been sitting on a shelf untouched, probably since 2004 when I picked them up along with the British Jutland box at Origins Game Fair down in Columbus, Ohio.  World War I is the last true or mainly true naval war.  The advent of planes really pushed the Second World War at Sea to an Air War; this is less true during the early war in the North Atlantic, but in general this stands I think.

A year or two ago I painted an IJN fleet box for a friend and while a nice break from 28mm, it was a lot of work.  I knew there had to be a better way of painting these ships, recent work on 6mm had shown me that.  The approach I came up with (Image 5) was to prep all the ships in rows by placing them on upside-down painters tape.  Then I used grey Gesso to prime and base coat them in one go.  From there it was a relatively easy job to apply some wood decking, brush them with black ink to bring out the detail, then apply white wherever there are ships lifeboats. 

Maybe because the actual painting of the ships took so much less time, I decided to base the ships differently.  I’ve become a very big fan of sheet magnet (Image 4) as a transportation system.  It takes up much less space than foam, is possibly more secure, and the magnets make a great bottom surface for the miniatures;  magnet slides easier over felt than wood.  So thin sheets of wood laminate are applied to flexible sheet magnet, and cut to standard sizes.  Then I apply the ships with a drop of glue, paint the ocean the blue I’ve chosen, and apply the label.  I actually wrecked a few bases with incorrect labels and had to start over at one point.  I’m still not sure about adding cresting whitecaps to the bows of the ships or not, they do give a sense of motion but are easily overdone.

Ships: Figurehead 1/6000
Magnets: Litko Game Supplies (updated link)
Labels:  Unfortunately the file is lost.