"Cruiser Battles of WW1" Topic

I'd like to play some of the cruiser actions of world war one, I have some 1/3000 ships for this but since the ships are mostly smaller cruisers I'd like something a little more detailed and was thinking CinC 1/2400.
Does anyone have any picts of CinCs sms emden, HMAS Sydney, HMS Bristol, or any of the Armored Cruisers of these actions?
or any other sugestions?

Coronel and the Falklands are covered in Barrie Pitt's book of that name. See Massie's "Steel Castles" for the Helgoland Bight battle. Conway's books have photos of most of the ships involved. I have the CinC ships and they are nice but simple. Viking Forge make most of the armored cruiser classes you seek. Again simple but accurate.

CNC Emden

CNC Sydney
CNC Glasgow (Bristol class)
CNC Scharnorst

GHQ and Panzerschiffe also make 1/2400 models for this in addition to Viking Forge
Some interesting cruiser destroyer actions in the Baltic 1915 or so.

thank you dragon6, the sms emden looks a little deformed, are there really 2 per package?
is there a bigger scale available for these ships?

Well, it's a pretty gigantic blowup of a tiny model. I have several of them and they are quite nice. Of course I bought mine many years ago.

Yes the Emden comes two to a pack. It's a small cruiser.
There are discounts for cheques or money orders and, I think, a current sale price.

CNC and GHQ are extremely cleanly cast. Far beyond any other company I've seen. GHQ adds a bunch of detail that should be invisible but looks good. They add masts now to all of their newer models and vertical details add to the three dimensional look.

But I have Viking Forge models that I purchased in place of GHQ models because, to me, the price difference was much greater than the quality difference.

Is there a bigger scale? Sure. 1/1200 for American or British makers and 1/1250 for european produced models.

here are a couple of sites that do 1/1200 1/1250 reviews
steelnavy.com
link

I have a few 1/2400 GHQ and CnC in both WW1 and WW2 cruisers and smaller. They both are excellent quality IMO. We don't have the space nor budget for 1/1200, but that would be the ultimate if you wish to do that.

Prices rise disproportionally as scale gets bigger. Be prepared to pay $50 USD-70 per cruiser in 1/1200 or 1/1250. For the same price you can be in resin 1/700, though you will need lots of room for either.

Here's another vote for Massie's Castles of Steel. There's enough data in there to to set up Graf Spee's squadron with alternate orders of battle as well as some what-if scenarios. What if Graf Spee goes south instead of east? What if Craddock got the ships he asked for instead of what he received? I've put together a few of these and have them on my home computer if anyone is interested.

Even if he had brought along Canopus things might have been a bit better. Of course, with her he probably would have never met up with the German squadron. Hmmm, thatīs not a bad result either :)

Then again, if the weather had been foggy, and the two sides had blundered into one another at say so many thousand meters…

Leland R. Erickson

I can recommend "The Kaiser's Pirates" by John Walter. It has great detail about the cruiser warfare away from Europe, including von Spee's squadron, and has lots of photos.

Another good "what if" is von Spee approaching the Falklands in the evening with limited daylight available. Or von Spee bypassing the Falklands and hitting Capetown, where he would have run into HMS Defense & HMS Minotaur.

For ships, I've got all those C-in-C ships. The Bristol type is pretty good, and the Emden looks pretty good too. But the Strassburg type is my favorite of the C-in-C light cruisers. Note that there is some scale variation between the different makers of 1:2400 scale ships. The C-in-C may be the most correct in scale, not sure about that, but the other maker's ship models of the same ship are a little bit longer and wider. I would definately avoid the C-in-C version of Sydney & Melborne. It just doesn't look right to me. I think the Panzerschiffe version of this class is much better. I have painted up my C-in-C versions of this class, but I'm going to replace them with Panzerschiffe.

For doing the cruiser actions involving von Spee's squadron, I'd recommend a mix of Panzerschiffe and Viking Forge. The Panzershiffe models are the least expensive, and they are cast very nicely in resin. Now Panzerschiffe has specific models for Emden and Nurnberg (use Strassburg, not the Konigsberg model as it says on the website). The Pz model for Leipzig is fine too. These are simple sculpts without a lot of detail, but a good paint job can make them really snap.

I bought some Viking Forge models for the British heavy cruisers, and I like them a lot. They don't have any more detail than the Panzerschiffe, are a bit more expensive ship for ship, and are cast in a brittle white metal that can show mold lines. However, the sculpts look more like those British heavy cruisers in the photos than those of other makers, to me anyway. I really like my Viking Forge Good Hope, Monmouth, Carnarvon, Cornwall, and Kent. But the Panzerschiffe versions of these ships are not bad either. The Viking Forge and Panzerschiffe mix well in a collection because they have a similar level of detail.

The alternative is to go ahead and spend for GHQ for as many of the ships involved as you can find models for, and try to paint them in the most spectacular manner you can, including painting great sea bases. I've seen a GHQ version of the Gneisenau that just about took my breath away because the painter was a true master. GHQ has Dresden (Emden class) and Leipzig, but not Nurnberg, has Gneisenau & Scharnhorst, has Good Hope and Monmouth (same class as Cornwall & Kent), has Invincible & Inflexible, has Bristol, but does not have Carnarvon (Devonshire or Hampshire class) or Canopus (grounded in the mud in the inner harbor). So GHQ does not quite have every model, but almost does. For "what if" versions of Coronel or Falklands using HMS Defense, that's also not a cruiser model that GHQ makes. But both Panzerschiffe and Viking Forge have good models for that class. I've got the Viking Forge version myself.

One thing that puts me off of GHQ is the exaggerated ribs on the funnels of German ships, which is meant to evoke the sort of thin railing or wirelike metal bits that ran around these funnels. This huge ribbing is far too dramatic, and looks kind of odd. But maybe a good painter can find a way to minimize this odd feature.

Lots of good advice above. For WWI so far I have modeled Coronel, Falklands and Dogger Bank. For Cruisers I have been very happy with 1/2400 Panzerschiffe. They are about 25-30% of the cost of a GHQ model and look pretty good for gaming. Lately I have been focused on Pre-Dreads and started adding masts to my Panzerschiffe models with very good results. I plan to go back and add masts to my WWI ships. I do use GHQ for my larger capital ships as Panzershiffe just lacks the superstructure detail I prefer on the larger capital ships.

Here are some of my panzershiffe with masts from my RJW fleets:
rallyroundtheflag.blogspot.com

Span Am fleets:
link

Here are some GHQ USN BBs for comparison:
link

HTH,

Aaron

Finally pulled the trigger and ordered a the HMS Good Hope and the HMS Monmouth from GHQ. The Sydney. Glasgow, Emden, Breslau. And Scharnhorst from CinC. Still undecided on weather or not to get another Scharnhorst from cinc or spend a couple more dollars and get Gneisau from GHQ. I will wait and see how the models look when they arrive. I still may order the Leipzig from ghq as well.

The HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth arrived.
First there is a significant size difference between 1/3000 and 1/2400. The size difference for me is enough between having a ship that represents a class and a ship where you can almost see the guns banging away.
The two GHQ ships are very detailed. In fact I am a little intimidated to paint them I hope I can do some justice to them.

I will try to remember to take pictures