Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Pre-Dreads Galore

Existing 1/2400 Fleets
While preparing for last weeks NAVCON I was admiring my fairly large 1/2400 scale Pre-Dread collection which sadly has not seen any service since prior to my most recent deployment.  My group decided to go with WWII scenarios for NAVCON, but I still want to get my Pre-Dread fleets sailing again. 

"Remember the Maine"
I currently have the entire RJW fleets as well as those for the Spanish American War.  We have done all three major battles for RJW (Ulsan, Yellow Sea and Tsushima) multiple times.  I attempted to do SPAN-AM, but all the historical engagements are so lopsided it begs for alternate history with additional ships.  As a result I ordered some, well OK I ordered many.
Tsushima fought at Hedgecon 2011

I placed my order with Panzerschiffe last week to complete the entire U.S. navy up to 1905 along with the Spanish fleet so I can inject the aging battleship Pelayo and others which were actually in route to Manila before being recalled.  Additionally, I ordered several German ships who historically tried to provoke Commodore Dewey into a conflict during the SPAN-AM war and had other disputes with the U.S. in the Pacific as well as secret war plans to invade the U.S East coast at the turn of the century.

USN Additions
Spanish and German Fleets


Masts added using piano wire
My thought is with my existing RJW fleets and these new additions I can stage alternate history battles between the IJN and USN or USN and Germans as well as expand on the SPAN-AM war.  Either way it should make for some good gaming.
 
Best part is when I arrived home from NAVCON last weekend my package had arrived.  In addition to the back log of other projects my work bench is now completely full for the fall.

The ships  are already primed and waiting for paint.  I have been working on bases and getting them labeled as well as securing more wire for masts.  My hope is to start painting this weekend.  I doubt these will be ready for ROCKCON at the end of the month, but definitely Little Wars next spring. 

7 comments:

  1. Very impressive, sir. I am waiting on both another Panzerschiffe Pre-Dread order as well as some of the new 1/2400 War Times Journal "rapid prototyped" ships.

    By the way, your masts do add an awful lot to the minis. I wish that I had the skill to do this also.


    -- Jeff

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    1. Jeff,

      Thanks, the masts are not as hard as you think. They just require patience. I basically learned the idea on WTJ site and modified it slightly with the spars. I did a how to blog awhile back if you want to give it a try.

      http://rallyroundtheflag.blogspot.com/2012/01/adding-masts-to-your-models.html

      I look forard to seeing your WTJ ships. I would have tried a few with this order for sister ships to compare if I would have know about them sooner.

      Good Luck,

      Aaron

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  2. I look forward to seeing more, Aaron.

    Regards,
    Steve

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  3. Aaron,

    I don't know if you saw my post about the WTJ ships and Masts. Jim from WTJ sent me the following:

    "BTW regarding masts, most ships should come with mast holes already present. The 1/1500 holes for major warships are typically .80mm in diameter (about .032") so on the 1/2400 ships that would scale down to about a .020" hole. At that size, the hole probably fills with wax and needs to be flushed out, but it is there.

    Typically the ships are designed with enough thickness below the mast hole to support a mast. In the unusual event that the mast hole is directly over a relatively thin deck section, a boss is located on the underside to prevent the cross section at that point from becoming too thin. If anyone sees otherwise, it's a design error on my part and I'll ship them a replacement for free… I did that by accident on some ships during a revision update, although to be honest I masted one of them anyway and it held fine – the fit was exact (tight) and the plastic is plenty hard. Still, just wanted to emphasize that this subject has been given a great deal of consideration. Also, I am already phasing in a support design that automatically gives the mast even more support without having to manually check for it on each ship configuration as I go.

    Thanks for posting the photos, I have some I've taken of both 1/3000 and 1/2400 ships that I'll be adding to the store… just haven't had time to process them as I've been finishing up the Kaiser Wilhelm II and Formidable and been getting going on Powerful and Kasagi. Those first two should be posted to the store this weekend."

    I hope that this helps.


    -- Jeff

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    Replies
    1. Jeff,

      Yes, I saw your post on the other boards. Sounds like they have the masts issue covered which is good news. Unfortunately I have not made much progress on my fleets as I had a couple other things come up. Once I complete these I will look to including WTJ in my future fleet expansions.

      Aaron

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    2. It looks like WTJ just added a few more ships to their lists too.

      -- Jeff

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  4. Aaron,

    I just posted some "Comparison Photos" on my blog:

    http://jeffsnavy.blogspot.ca/2013/10/wtj-panzerschiffe-comparison-photos.html


    -- Jeff

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